News and Views

June Blog

2009-06-19T14:45:00.002-04:00

Budget / Economics

We are wrapping up the tentative assessment rolls for the Town and the drop in property value is even worse than we expected. This along with the new fees we keep getting from the Governor’s Office (which take effect this month – instead of the beginning of next year; heck, I guess that we should be glad they aren’t retroactive!) such as the MTA Payroll Tax expected to cost us around $27, 000 per year, as is the new MVP surcharge, around $28,000 per year make for a challenging budget (update!!! The State Insurance Committee has just denied the MVP surcharge – well, they denied it for this year; it will go into effect Jan.1).

I have mentioned to the Board that I have found that there is a computer-operated system that could go on our salt trucks that would monitor / measure the salt that we put on our roads. This would replace the manual system that is used presently and is supposed to be much more efficient. The cost to fit our trucks would be about $140,000; but the manufacturer claims that the system could save up to a third on our salt (which is very expensive) in a normal winter season (we spent about $700,000 last year on salt).

In addition, I have to thank the men and women of our Police Department. They have agreed to extend their contract with no cost of living raise next year and a 3 ½% raise the following year. This is pretty unheard of – now, we did agree to a no-layoff clause and some scheduling changes; but, in a recession, crime goes up and, as our department is not overstaffed, Police layoffs were not really a consideration. This zero percent raise next year will be very helpful in making our budget.

These are just two areas that we have looked at to save money. As far as recreation, which is another big budget item, we have instituted new fees and raised others and we will be looking to see how much closer to break-even we ware getting than we have been in the past.

Philips Road

The developer had appealed to move the Philips Road case to the New York State Court of Appeals and Dutchess County has filed a brief in support of the developer in the suit against the Town of East Fishkill. Well, the New York State Court of Appeals allowed Dutchess County to file their brief in the Philips Rd. court case and then denied the application to appeal and awarded the Town $100 in costs. The only option left for an appeal to reverse the original decision made in the Town's favor (keeping Philips Road open) is to appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

Hillside Lake

We have had two contractors look at the lake and, as we have said, it appears that hydraulic dredging is the way to go. We will be bringing in a professional to help with final design plans and permit applications and we are examining the specific content of the material that will be dredged from the lake. l.

We have made a grant application to DEC for $400,000 to implement a Clean Lake Septic Program and would like to design an artificial wetland at the lake discharge. In addition we are making an application to DEC to allow us to stock Norwegian Grass-eating Carp in the Lake (thanks to Hillside Lake Board member Nancy Foti for that suggestion). I am told that the carp are very efficient at taking care of plant growth.

Presidential Way Water

We will finish installing the waterline in the next few weeks and homeowners can begin to connect shortly thereafter. Water can begin flowing to the homes, hopefully, by August.

Rec Building

Due to the fact that the schools are seriously curtailing the amount of time that their facilities are allowed for our Rec programs we will be, again, considering the building of a Rec building (the new schedules will devastate some of our programs). By chance, I was discussing a local project with an architectural firm the day after the Rec Workshop where the facility cuts were announced and I brought up the issue of a possible Rec building. The firm had experience with such projects and provided some very good ideas for us to consider. I have asked the Town Board to consider looking for a professional to help us with, not only the design / build; but, also an analysis of operating costs. Our Rec programs have been seriously impacted; but, so have our citizens (in this economy), so we are taking a very serious look at such a project to see if it is even feasible. If it turns out that it is too much of a burden, we would certainly put off any action until such time as the economy recovers; still, I think we should perform the analysis.

Brettview Water

We have signed an agreement to purchase the Rand Water Company that serves the Fishkill Plains area and Brettview and are designing the filters to solve the Iron and Manganese problem. We still have a ways to go; but, we are getting closer to resolving a very difficult problem. Actually, in addition to the filters we will be upgrading the facilities and system to be more efficient – something that needed to be done, anyhow.

Shenandoah Water

We have taken over the Shenandoah Water System as IBM and the contractor are finishing up the final stages of the project. If we can work things out with Fishkill as far as supply and storage, this system has the potential to supply water to the Wiccopee and Lake City areas. As well as the High School.

Flooding

We have resolved flooding issues in the Long Hill area and we are finalizing our plan to take care of the flooding in the area of Dogwood Road. I have put out a letter for a professional firm to analyze the Fishkill Creek / Lake City flooding and have received three Letters of Interest. I am hopeful that we can engage the services of a professional to draft a plan to address the Fishkill Creek flooding, get the required permits from DEC, and get to work.

In addition, we are waiting for approval from SEMO on our Hazard Mitigation (read flooding) Grant and hope to get to work on that, if approved. Ed Hoxey from Dutchess County Soil and Water had called to say that he is trying to get the Army Corp of Engineers moving on the Fishkill Creek project again.

Open Space

The good news is that Fishkill Farms has finally been approved to be put in a Land Trust (preserving much of the farm forever) – the bad news is a huge fire that destroyed the barn (the good news is that no one was hurt). I can’t say enough about our firefighters and the response from the firefighters from surrounding towns and cities – they were terrific (in fact, Town of Beekman Supervisor John Adams, who is very involved with their fire department, said that our firefighters and coordinators did an excellent job attending to the fire).

The Johnson Farm Community Supported Agriculture is making terrific progress thanks to the Johnson Farm CSA volunteers. We are looking to engage the services of a farmer (a paid position) familiar with growing crops naturally for the season and if anybody is interested they can contact me at 221-4303.

Our Open Space Preservation Committee has met with our Town Planner, AKRF, to discuss putting together an Open Space Preservation Plan and the Town Board is also considering legislation to maintain open space. Speaking of legislation, when we first started meeting well over a year ago, the East Fishkill Open Space Committee thought that the only way to preserve open space was to fund outright purchases with an Open Space Bond. After talking to several professionals, we have come to realize that there are many ways to preserve open space such as: outright purchase, term easements, legislation and zoning changes, and programs such as Community Supported Agriculture. Our group is terrific and we will be looking forward to holding public workshops beginning sometime in September.

In Closing

Well, that’s about it – I would like to mention that I ran into a gentleman who designs websites and we will be looking into updating our site to provide more information on as well as improving our communication aspects. He had some very good ideas and an upgrade is well overdue.

March Post

2009-03-12T11:57:00.000-04:00

Budget / Economics

Is it spring yet? Boy, I hope so – this winter we have had a bunch of these three to six-inch snow storms that have killed our highway winter budget. ‘ last tally we were something like $180,000 over our salt budget (road salt has gotten very expensive over the last couple of years) so we had to transfer funds from the blacktop budget.

As everybody knows, this economy has been terrible. Although we had dropped our revenue projections significantly, Mortgage Taxes for February were even lower than our estimates. After our trend analysis a couple of years ago we had adjusted our revenue and expenses and last year I think is the first year in many that the General Fund actually finished in the black. Due to the slumping economy, we worked hard to keep taxes flat this year (Town-wide assessments were down about 5.5%, we raised taxes by about 5.1%; so, many people actually saw a small reduction in their taxes); looking at overall tax bills, Town taxes are only 9 to 14% of your total tax bill, the rest being school, county, fire district, and library. Looking forward, next year is going to be a challenge.

Reval

You know, for all the pain the Town-wide revaluation caused (and, the way the contractor did it, it was painful!) it has actually allowed us to be much more accurate in identifying property values (that is why we recognized the 5.5% reduction, itself the Town-wide average, last year – remember these values are based on the assessments as of July 1 the year before; as we all know the values have fallen even further since then). Our Assessors have done a terrific job of completing the reval that that company had begun some years ago and they are always working to maintain accurate assessments.

Philips Road

And, just when you think it’s over…although the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department, denied the application by the developer to appeal the Town’s decision to keep Philips Road open, another suit has been filed. In this case there is an appeal to move the case to the highest court in the land; I believe it is the New York State Court of Appeals.

In addition, our own Dutchess County Attorney (the attorney for the Executive Branch, not to be confused with the Legislature) has asked permission to file a brief in support of the developer in the suit against the Town of East Fishkill. We were relieved when we won the case; but now, with Dutchess County moving to have the road closed, we can only hope that the lower court’s decision is upheld.

Hillside Lake

Recently our Town Engineer, Scott Bryant, met with a company that does dredging out at the lake. Yesterday we met with another firm that has done the design work and permitting on such projects. No matter how we slice it, it is a complicated project due to the location, size of the lake, amount of material to be removed, and the type of material. Although we still have to decide if we can find a place to take the material or if we use it in the lake, it appears the project will run between 1.5 to 2 million dollars.

Another problem that comes up over and over is how do we avoid “nitrogen loading” of the lake. The concern is that having so many residences with septics so close to the lake, as well as the stormwater discharges, there may be runoff into the waterbody of an excess of nitrogen which would create problems. If we invest this much money into lake remediation, we want to be sure that we solve the problem. I have asked our Grant Writer, Michael Hagerty, to look into grants and, especially, technical assistance that may be available from the New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation (a government agency) that deals with water and watershed protection. In the future people that live in the Hillside Lake District may be asked to fill out a confidential income survey from the Town; we would use this information to see if we qualify for grants and low-interest loans for the Hillside Lake Project.

Presidential Way Water

We have finally acquired all the property easements to put in the waterline. Since we are using some EPA funding, we have to submit a letter to the EPA stating that we have all the approvals and easements required to do the project (which we now have). Our attorney and engineer have sent the documentation and when we get approval (in a few weeks) we can award the contract (the low bidder has been calling every few weeks asking when they can begin). Baring any unforeseen circumstances, we should have the waterline in by the summer.

Brettview Water

Brettview water has been a real problem due to siltation and discoloration for some time. Over the last few months we have had meetings with the owners of the Rand Water system as well as the Department of Health, representatives from the Wappingers Central School Board, and School Superintendent Dick Powell to discuss where we go from here. We have come to an agreement with the owners to sell us the system and we will install the filters to resolve the problem. We are still working out some details; but, we hope to complete the purchase and install the filters by the middle of September. I know that it has been a long time; but, there may finally be some light at the end of the tunnel.

Shenandoah Water

We met with representatives from the Town of Fishkill which is supplying the water for the Shenandoah Waterline. They have both a short-term and a long-term solution to the problem of the elevated levels of Chloride (“blending” the water with that from another source) that will bring the levels down well within State Department of Health guidelines. They also agree that the people in the Shenandoah District should not pay for the modifications to the system to meet these guidelines. That being said, last Thursday, the Town of East Fishkill agreed to review, and possibly, accept the section of the waterline that is located on public roadways. That will allow the company to begin the house connections. The EPA has agreed to host a public information meeting this month at the Fire Training Center located on Rt. 52 to answer questions.

Flooding

We have been working to resolve significant flooding issues off of the Dogwood Road area to Route 82. Our Engineer has identified a property upon which the Town has a drainage easement that may help resolve these issues. We are doing some preliminary design work and are in discussions with the owners about the scope of work to be done – yet, it will be a time before we finally get the project moving.

In addition, we have taken the lead in an application to FEMA for grant money for hazard (flood) mitigation. We are representing our Town as well as Fishkill, Wappinger, and the Villages of Wappingers Falls and Fishkill in this project and are rated high on the of the list; still with all of the problems with the economy, it seems the approval process is taking longer than it should. It is our hope to do projects that will address the flooding of the Fishkill Creek.

Open Space

Unfortunately, it appears that the application for Fishkill Farms to be put in a Land Trust has stalled with just about everything else in Albany pending the sorting out of the State budget. Our Open Space Preservation Committee has met with our Town Planner, AKRF, to discuss putting together an Open Space Preservation Plan and the Town Board is also considering legislation to maintain open space.

Shared Services

With everyone’s budgets in such a funk, we have been looking for ways to provide services and share the costs. One area that has been hit hard is recreation space provided by the schools. Members of our Recreation Committee, the Wappingers Central School Board, Councilwoman Walker, and I have met to discuss how we can work together to provide more field and, hopefully, indoor recreation space. Our meeting was very promising and members of our boards are to meet again in a few weeks. I would like to say that School Board President, Doug Bitteker, and new Board member, John McMahon, are genuinely interested in the people they represent. Both gentlemen listened to our concerns, outlined their limitations with their budget, brought up some excellent points, and left us all with an understanding that we shall do our best to work together.

Well, that’s about it - if anyone has any questions or concerns about any of these, or actually any, issues at all you can e-mail me at hickmanj@eastfishkillny.org, or stop in at the Town Hall.

November Already! Blog

2008-11-10T17:48:00.005-05:00

I don’t know where the time goes, here it is November already! I had hoped to write a blog a few weeks ago, but things just kept coming up. This is pretty much an update of things that we have been working on:

Philips Road / Sagamor Sewerage Lawsuits

A few weeks ago we received word that we won the lawsuit brought against the Town by developers regarding our decision NOT to close Philips Road. This is terrific news and I would like to thank our law firm of Wood and Klarl and the firm of Sive, Paget, and Reisel, PC for their defense of the Town’s decision. Last week we received notice that the attorneys for the developer are requesting permission from the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department to appeal the decision. Our attorney, Tom Wood, told me that it is unlikely such permission will be granted because the Judicial Panel unanimously ruled in our favor.

Regarding the lawsuit brought against the Town by Sagamor Sewerage Corp. in response to the Town Board’s decision to deny the rate increase application, both sides have submitted documents supporting their position (the Town included all documents from the Coalition, as well as having the documents reviewed by their attorney). After a couple of adjournments, including a period of a month when the Judge had the flu, we are expecting a decision in early December.

Hillside Lake

When I took office in January 2006, Morris Associates had prepared a plan to dredge Hillside Lake to return it to a viable water body again. Unfortunately, the plan was quite expensive (and that was considering fuel and trucking costs in 2005 / 2006 dollars). Last year the Hillside Lake Board, Councilwoman Ethel Walker, and I met with Great Eastern Ecology, one of four companies to respond to a Request for Proposals for the Hillside Lake project to look into a more cost effective proposal. It seemed that they had a good knowledge and record of wetland and water body restoration; but after changing lead scientists and project managers – as well as missing deadlines – (although they had some good ideas) the final proposal was somewhat disappointing. Next, we contacted a company by the name of American Dredge who specializes in that type of work. After several discussions regarding what would be required to use a hydraulic dredge, it does not appear that we have the large dewatering / settlement area to make that work. In the meantime we are reviewing the original dredge proposal to see if we can make it more cost effective. One consideration is that we may not be able, due to costs and logistics, to bring the depth of the entire lake down to a depth that will stop the vegetative growth that is choking the lake and, instead, commit to an annual maintenance with a hydraulic rake. We are drafting the new plans and discussing the preparations of applications for the permits from the DEC and the Army Corps of Engineers. Once we get the scaled down plan complete we will meet with the residents to discuss the scaled – down and full – dredge proposals.

Presidential Way Water

Although we are very close to actually putting the waterline in the ground to supply Presidential Way with water, it looks like it won’t happen until next year.

Brettview Water

The Brettview water situation has been a nightmare from the get go due to the fact that we are dealing with a private water company, Rand Water. For almost three years we have been asking Rand to install filters to remove the Iron and Manganese in the water that they supply to Brettview, as well as Fishkill Plains Elementary and Van Wyck Junior High Schools. They refuse to install the filters even though the Town’s contract with Rand states that we will pay for part of the cost. We have discussed this situation with the Dutchess County Department of Health on many occasions and we are told there is nothing they can do because the Iron and Manganese concentrations are consistently just below the Maximum Contaminant Levels allowed (in spite of the fact that we brought three water filters that were as black as pitch to one meeting). We have identified another source of water for the Brettview area (unfortunately, that would leave the schools still using Rand water) which we hope to have on line – but, it is still over a year away. In the meantime, our water operators, VRI, are doing their best to address each situation and they have implemented a rigorous testing and flushing program. Still, the water that we get from Rand is the problem.

Shenandoah Water

Boy, what a mess. As part of the Consent Decree with the EPA, IBM has nearly completed the Shenandoah Waterline. In fact, around August / September, IBM and the EPA were pressuring the Town to take over the system. We have since found out that the source wells in Fishkill have a problem with levels of Sodium and Chloride that are above the Maximum Contaminant Level. We are looking at other options to provide water to Shenandoah – but this really threw a monkey into the wrench, as they say. We hope to provide water to other areas such as John Jay High School, Lake City, and Wiccopee; but, with this new development, everything is on hold. **Update to Shenandoah Water** We met today with Town of Fishkill Reps and their engineers - contrary to the original claims of problems with Sodium and Chloride, there seems to be a problem only with Chloride. It appears that there is a trend of higher Chloride, with one spike over the MCL. Fishkill has a plan to mix the water from the Shenandoah source wells with other wells to reduce the Chloride levels and implement a monitoring program for one year. After that they have a plan to connect to yet another source with much lower Chloride levels that will supply Shenandoah as well as many homes and businesses in Fishkill. At first I was skeptical, but after talking to the engineers, this plan may have some merit.

Ryan Drive Water

The EPA, under the direction of a gentleman named Lorenzo Thantu, has been working very hard to address the water problems at the Ryan Drive Superfund Site. Although some controversy has erupted regarding the proposed source of water for the people in the Superfund Site, the EPA is incorporating alternatives into the proposal to provide some discretion as to the source of clean, safe water. This is phase one of the program, phase two will be actual remediation of the pollution.

Flooding

East Fishkill is spearheading an effort to put together a FEMA – approved Hazard Mitigation Plan to address flooding problems BEFORE they occur. The Towns of Fishkill, LaGrange, and Wappinger, as well as the Villages of Fishkill and Wappingers Falls have signed on to be included. The first step (which we made last week) was to apply to FEMA for a grant to create our plan (we were, sort – of, pre-approved by SEMO a couple of months ago). This is a multi-year process; but, once we have a FEMA approved plan, we can implement mitigation projects using FEMA grant money. Our Grant Writer, Michael Hagerty, has been instrumental in coordinating with FEMA and SEMO and writing the grant application.

In addition, Congressman John Hall has been to our Town Hall with people from the Army Corps of Engineers to discuss flooding of our creeks, including Fishkill Creek, and they are committed to helping resolve these problems also. There seems to be a lot of talk about the problem; but these are long-term plans. In the meantime, we did install another pipe under Lake Drive and we have had the developer modify the storm water retention ponds on the Stone Ridge subdivision; unfortunately, Con Ed simply says that the flooding in not their fault and they have not been very helpful in discussing the topography of their property.

Speaking of flooding, we have built a 250,000 gallon retention pond on an area in the Legends subdivision which is helping alleviate flooding problems on Dogwood Rd. Two local developers, Creekview Homes and Reiger Homes helped with this project – and we appreciate their help. In addition, we are planning work on an existing drainage easement that should resolve more of the problem. A lot of credit must go to our Town Engineer, Scott Bryant, who has been working very hard to solve a difficult drainage issue. Scott has also been working very closely with Highway Superintendent, Dennis Miller, and they have done a lot of work addressing floodplains and streams in the Wiccopee area as well as storm water run – off from the Long Hill area. All told, I am very impressed by the drainage work that our people have done this year.

Open Space

Last August I received a call from the Dutchess County Land Conservancy regarding Manhattan District Attorney, and local farmer, Robert Morgenthau, making an application to place nearly two hundred acres of Fishkill Farms in a land trust keeping that property a farm forever. I was asked to supply a letter of support for the application by September 8th. This is terrific news and at the August meeting of the East Fishkill Town Board we passed a resolution in support of that application. I compiled a report describing the work of our Open Space Preservation Committee, as well as letters of support from Assemblyman Marc Molinaro, County Legislator Alison McAvery (who represents that district), a letter from me, the East Fishkill Historical Society, our Town Board resolution, as well as a map and a very in - depth book of open space properties that we have on file (many thanks to Don McGrath for all of his hard work on that). We put all this together and had it to Dutchess Land Conservancy by the deadline – thanks to all who helped in our support of this application and many thanks to Bob Morgenthau for his desire to maintain a part of East Fishkill as we remember it, a farm.

Speaking of farms, this year one of the finest people that I have ever met, former Town Councilman Jessie Johnson, passed away. It is my understanding that it was Jesse that pretty much managed the affairs of the family farm on Carpenter Road. Coincidently, this year our Town Historian (and Open Space Committee member), Carolyn Plage, came up with the idea of a Community Supported Agriculture program which she presented to an audience at the Town Hall. Well, it is funny how these things happen, because it is very possible that we are going to have our first C.S.A. at the Johnson Farm next year. In the C.S.A., there are different option for participation – one is to purchase a share and then during the harvest season you can go and pick up fresh, naturally grown vegetables at the farm. This is a great thing because it allows the farm to continue as a farm and it also allows people to consume naturally grown produce that is grown locally. I cannot say enough about the Community Supported Agriculture group – they are terrific and I thank the Johnson family for their interest in keeping, as Bob Morgenthau does, some of our farming heritage.

Budget

Yep, it’s budget time again and this time things are tough for all of us. The Town tax is 9 to 14 percent of your total tax bill – that is $2.07 per thousand, so a house worth $400,000 would pay $828.00 in Town Taxes. Still, that is an increase of 7.37%. As we all know, property values are falling and we calculate a reduction in the Town wide assessment of 5.08%, which means that the amount that we need to raise through taxes is 2.29% more, or $56.00 for a $400,000 house more than last year.

The revenue side of our balance sheet has taken a beating as Mortgage Taxes, which made up about two and a half million dollars a few years ago is now projected to come in (hopefully??) around eight hundred thousand in ‘ 09. The Sales Tax revenue has held pretty steady, though. We are looking at shortfalls in both the General and Highway Budgets that we will cover out of our “rainy day” fund balance – and we are still in very good shape; but, we need to shore up revenues.

On the expense side, although the cost of fuel went through the roof earlier this year, hitting all of our budgets – it appears that they are (thank goodness) returning to earth. Regarding the budget, it takes a certain amount of money to operate the Town (providing snowplowing / road repair, police protection, recreation facilities, and the normal operations: Assessors, Court, Building Department, Comptroller, Tax Receiver, Planning, various boards, and me and the Town Board). Some of these functions bring in revenue to offset their operations – some do not (Court, Building Department do – Planning / Zoning, Highway, Police, Tax Receiver, Assessor do not). Of course there are always State and Federal unfunded mandates (for example, as of last January New York State requires a pre-inspection before a building permit can be issued – it doesn’t sound like much, but it is more time required for the inspector to make an additional inspection, the Assessors get more exemptions to administer each year, and of course there is the huge MS-4 unfunded mandate, which is sure to grow). So we need a certain amount of capital to operate and provide the services that are necessary to the public, and those that the State and Feds tell us are necessary.

A few things that we have done: we have raised fees where appropriate so that the fee covers the costs of operations; the Police and the Highway Department now purchase their fuel from the same supplier and we are looking into joint commodity purchases with Dutchess County; and everyone except for “grandfathered” union employees now pay a portion of their benefits.

I think that we operate on a pretty lean budget; our Town Hall is forty years old and we have very little Town debt. Our biggest expense, as with any business, is personnel; yet, Highway is down from about thirty-two people in the early nineties to around twenty four now. The Building Department had four fulltime inspectors a few years ago; now they have three fulltime and one part - time (I know that I will receive a call from Dutchess County Personnel after they read this blog!). Employee benefits are a huge problem, going up double digits for the last several years. This is a tough environment to operate in. We recognize that everything is going up and it is putting a strain on everybody;
but, I think that our people have done a good job in keeping expenses down.

Staff

All – in – all, I would like to thank our employees. I think that we have some of the hardest working, courteous, and conscientious people working for us. They realize the situation that we are all in and everyone is doing their best to do their jobs, with the additional workloads, and are very pleasant and helpful, to boot.

Government / Firehouse Issues

I just came from a presentation at the Wiccopee Fire Substation where United States Senator Chuck Schumer announced that he would work along with State Senator Saland and Assemblyman Marc Molinaro to provide emergency access from Townsend Rd. by the Substation to Interstate 84. This emergency access would allow much quicker emergency response to incidents on Rt. 84, possibly saving lives and attending to potential disaster, before it gets out of hand. This is a terrific coordinated Federal and State effort and we look forward to the day when the access is actually provided (or, as Larry the Cable Guy would say, “git ‘ r done!”).

As far as today’s ceremony went, I must say that I am incredibly proud of our volunteer Fire Departments – sometimes I get a little busy with work and I don’t think about the hard work and sacrifice that our volunteers put into becoming the best at what they do. It was today at the presentation where Chuck Schumer was talking about volunteerism and that not all countries have people who volunteer; he said, “…that is what makes America great.” Well, I thought about all of the people who attended today and all of the people that I know who are volunteer firefighters, EMTs, and first responders and how hard they work. The Town of East Fishkill is really a special place, we have so many good people that live and work here, that volunteer and who are, I believe, the most professional and knowledgeable first responders going. I am really proud of that – it says a lot about our Town and our heritage.

I would also like to commend for their hard work and diligence in bringing the matter to the attention of the higher elected officials, John Jackson, Station 4 Captain, Dan Jackson, Station 4 Chief, Scott Post District Chief, and Chairman of the East Fishkill Fire Commissioners, John Paraskeva – good work, guys.

Odd’s ‘n Ends

And in closing, a local businessman has been posting correspondence that I had sent him regarding his annual request for a traffic control officer in his place of business. I am not sure what he is trying to convey but I would point out that it is not unusual for a municipality to provide a police officer for traffic control for flea markets, special events, etc. In my nearly three years in office, we had not had the time to develop the proper guidelines or cost of these assignments (an officer had been provided for that assignment for as long as I can remember); so, when the gentleman came in this year, I told him that we would notify him of the actual cost and we sent him back the check he had left as he did in the past. The bottom line is that although we have provided such services in the past, the Town of East Fishkill is requiring that any such assignments be fully compensated by those benefiting from the service and not the taxpayers.

Finally

Well, that’s about it – we keep pretty busy around here. If anyone has any questions or concerns you can respond to the blog, e-mail me at hickmanj@eastfishkillny.org, or stop in at the Town Hall. Thank you and I wish everyone safe and happy holidays.

July 2008, already? Blog

2008-07-12T15:22:00.002-04:00

I had started this blog and hoped to be done by 11:30 a.m. - it is almost 3:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon and I have not even gotten to the other work that I need to. Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know about a few of the things that we are doing...

Town Hall Presentations

I think that education (for all of us) and the exchange of information makes government work more efficiently. That is why we are hosting, and filming (for our Channel 22), a number of forums. They are:

July 17, 2008 7:00pm- Environmental Protection Agency:
This is a question / answer forum on the Hopewell Precision Superfund Site given by the EPA. All are welcome to attend.

July 21, 2008 7:00pm - 9:00pm: Dutchess County Legislative Environmental Committee:
The Town of East Fishkill is hosting a public forum by the Dutchess County Environmental Committee on July 21st at 7:00 PM at the East Fishkill Town Hall. Dutchess County Legislators Marge Horton, Rob Weiss, Alison MacAvery, David Kelly, Joel Tyner, and Peter Wassell, as well as Town Supervisor John Hickman, will be on hand to listen to the public regarding environmental issues of concern. This will be a good chance to discuss environmental issues with your Legislators; public input and suggestions are welcome. For more information contact Environmental Committee Chair Joel Tyner at 876-2488 or Deputy Environmental Committee Chair Peter Wassell at 350-1007.

July 29, 2008 7:00pm- 8:00pm: Dutchess County Cornell Cooperative Extension: invasive plants species in our area including the “mile-a-minute” vine.

We will also be hosting a presentation by our MS-4 Coordinator, Walter Artus, for contractors on Low Impact Development – all board members and the public are invited to attend – the date has not yet been set.

Speaking of Channel 22 – in addition to our presentations, we have been putting our Town Board and Planning Board meetings on television and hope to have the Zoning Board on soon.

Planning / Zoning

Our new Planners AKRF are getting up to speed very quickly. Their plan review has been excellent and we will be addressing several zoning laws that need attention. We are getting back on track with our Senior and Workforce Housing legislation and we will be (probably next year) be addressing plans for the Hamlet. In addition, we hope to adopt Town – approved policies and procedures that developers can implement in their design to provide development that is environmentally friendly and efficient.

Budget

Boy, this is a tough one – with the boneheads (that is being charitable) that created the mortgage mess and the speculators and manipulators (example: any little, even the smallest, oil – producing country says there MAY be a disruption and the price of oil jumps through the roof!) we are all hurting. I really do believe in smaller government (many of the positions and departments that we have created here are the result of passed-down legislation and unfunded mandates); but, I do think that government should protect and maintain the things that are essential for the people, such as fuel (heating, transportation, etc.) and regulate the markets so that crooks can’t make millions and pawn off the losses to the taxpayers. Did they blow it.

Anyway, I think that we operate pretty efficiently / frugally. Our Town Hall is forty years old – built by my Grandfather when he was Town Supervisor (people used to say “Lyn, why are you building such a big Town Hall?” I am glad he did, we are crowded – but it works). I don’t think that we are overstaffed and we are looking to provide services more efficiently (the water services that we subbed out has been a terrific savings). I would like to point out that if you look at the pie charts in our lobby – the School budget is between 65 to 76% of the tax bill while the Town is between 9 to 16%.

O.k., budgets are based on two things: expenses and revenues.

Expenses: As I said, I think that we are operating a pretty “bare bones” operation – still, we are currently receiving the budgets from each department and we will be meeting with department heads to cut expenditures that are not necessary. Presently our Police are fueling up at the Highway Garage which has saved us money from our previous arrangement with other vendors and we will be looking to see if we can find any savings in the Town insurance package. Fixed costs such as retirement and health benefits (these costs are set by the New York State Retirement System and the health providers that we have contracted with) have been increasing at an alarming rate over the last few years and if we can see some relief in them it will certainly help our budget picture.

Revenue: We need to increase our revenue. First, the Town Board and I are pushing to have services provided paid for by those that benefit. There have been changes to our recreation and sports programs to address this issue and we are looking to increase the fees charged by our Building Department; in addition, we have been pretty successful in obtaining grants (although as Federal and State budgets get tighter there be less grant money available) and we have more people contributing to the cost of health benefits. In fact we made some changes to health benefits, not only in contributions; but, also in length and type of coverage. Through the PILOT Program East Fishkill IBM provides between 7.5 and 8 million dollars in revenue – a large chunk of our School, County, Town, and Fire District budgets. One thing that I feel is very important is developing an industrial tax base. I know that it is not a popular idea, but the old IBM West Complex is empty. This is an industrially zoned property, over one hundred acres, which could potentially provide more tax revenue and, importantly, jobs.

My feeling, and the feeling of the Town Board, is that things are tough all over and we will do our best to keep our Town Tax reasonable. Hey, we are all in this together and, personally, I find the current economic situation very, very scary.

Shennandoah Water

IBM is fast completing the Shenandoah Water line to address the Shenandoah Superfund Site and should be turning that over to the Town by the end of the year. That pipeline has been upsized to allow the Town the ability to serve other areas along the Rt. 52 corridor and, as soon as we resolve some supply and storage issues, we will be looking to make that water available.

Brettview Water

Although we have tried to have iron and manganese filters installed by the owners of Rand Water for three years now, they still refuse to do so. It is the iron and manganese that reacts with the chlorine in the water that produces the silt and brown coloring of the water that we purchase from Rand to serve Brettview. We have discussed the matter with the Dutchess County Board of Health and they insist that the iron and manganese problems do not pose a health risk and that it is only a nuisance. We have gone so far as to propose the purchase of Rand Water so that we may install the filters ourselves (we have done a financial and operation analysis and this could be feasible), but the owners will only sell on their terms; terms which we cannot accept. We have identified another source close to Brettview which we are presently having tested and hope to bring this online to solve their water quality issues.

Presidential Way

Concurrently with our efforts to solve the Rand Water problem, we have been moving forward with the plan to bring water to Presidential Way. We hope to break ground as soon as possible – but the timetable rests entirely upon New York State Audit and Control. If the cost of the project to the homeowners is above a certain threshold an application must be made and approved by Audit and Control – a process which takes between six and nine months.

Article 78 Lawsuits

In the next few weeks we should be receiving rulings from the courts regarding the Town Board decisions not to close Philips Road and not to approve the rate increase requested by the Sagamor Sewerage Corporation.

Dogwood Flooding

I would like to thank Creekview and Rieger Homes for their participation in the construction of a 250,000 gallon retention pond to address flooding issues on Dogwood Road. Although this is only one part of the solution (we have been denied permission to build another pond that we had proposed) – we are still working on other measures to address the situation and I am confident that we will contain the flooding. I would like to point out that we would never have gotten this far in the resolution of these problems had it not been for the work of our Town Engineer, Scott Bryant.

Lake City Flooding

Con Ed has done a study of their right -of-way and stated that their property does not contribute to the Lake City flooding. I have written back and asked for copies of the surveys and elevations to see if there is anything that can be done to help alleviate the flooding from the back of Circle Drive. We have had the developers of the Stone Ridge subdivision change the discharge from their retention pond and we plan to install another pipe on Lake Drive (by the pond), at an appropriate elevation, to help the Guildersleeves Creek discharge more water at a point below Lake City – a possibility that Scott Bryant noticed during one of the rain storms.

Hillside Lake

Earlier this year we contracted with Great Eastern Environmental to develop some options for us to make Hillside Lake a viable water body again. I had provided them with the information that they had requested and they were to come back sometime in June. Unfortunately, due to staffing changes, they dropped the ball. I met with them Friday and registered my dissatisfaction with their fulfillment of their obligations. They understand and have promised us at least two plans in the next few weeks.

Finally

There really is so much more: trying to build a new Recreation and Senior Complex to address our needs; working with our Open Space Preservation Committee to keep our town a place where we want to live; working with the Fishkill Creek Watershed Committee to address many issues of development, flooding, and the environment; looking for new water sources to supplement sources that we currently use; trying to make sure that all of our boards operate efficiently and fairly; working on updating the Master Plan for the Town (probably setting up that committee before the year is out); always being concerned with revenue and expenses; and, most importantly, listening to and addressing the needs of our constituents – the people we work for.

In closing, I would like to recognize the many people who work for the Town. We have a lot of hard working, conscientious, people who really care about the people who live here and I think they do a tremendous job.

Quick Blog

2008-04-26T12:02:00.001-04:00

Quick Blog

Things have been pretty busy around here, but I would like to put out a quick blog.

Congressional Hearing

For the first time in the history of the Town of East Fishkill a Congressional Subcommittee hearing was held at our Town Hall. Congressman John Hall, along with the Committee Chair Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson and Congressman John Boozman, held the meeting of the Congressional Committee on the Environment and Water Resources here to address issues of the Ryan Drive Superfund Site and the response of the EPA. I was very impressed with the hearing and I hope that legislation mandating stricter measures for TCE handling and other guidelines are implemented so as to prevent any other such tragedies.

Low Impact Development

On April 17th we sponsored a seminar by the DEC on Low-Impact Development. This means development that allows stormwater to be kept on site in ponds and water gardens to recharge the aquifier instead of sending it into our creeks and streams. I think that this is an excellent concept – unfortunately, the seminar was not very well attended. We shall have more!

New Planners

At the April 24th Town Board meeting we will be appointing a new Town Planning firm named AKRF (yeah, kind of a funny name – but they have something like 230 people on staff including traffic experts, planners, hydrologists, experts on open space, and others – a very impressive firm) after reviewing five proposals. The Planning firm that is currently with us has been with us for something like 28 years – hmmmm, looking at the Hamlet, not to happy with that track record! In fact as they began to scale back on working for our Town late last year, issues that require Planning and SEQRA initiatives (zoning changes, including Senior and Workforce Housing) pretty much came to a halt. Anyway, we look forward to addressing those issues as well as establishing a new vision for the Town (with public input) and updating our Master Plan, much more extensive Planning Board plan review, and some special projects including Hamlet revitalization. Also some changes to the planning process such as a new application requiring much more information up front (thank you Mr. Koch and Mr. Staudohar for that) and a change to response deadlines will make the process more efficient. I think that these changes will have a profound, positive effect on the further development of our Town.

Hillside Lake

Great Eastern Environmental is currently working on some proposals for the Hillside Lake remediation project – we expect to be making a public presentation this summer.

Grant Writer

Our grant writer, Michael Hagerty, has secured a $7,500 grant for Hamlet Planning, we have submitted a $25,000 reimbursement application for our sidewalk project in front of the Mahopac Bank, we were denied a $150,000 grant from Dutchess County for our Senior and Recreation center, but our grant writer has submitted another grant application for the new Rec building and is currently working on grants for more Hamlet sidewalks, trees, planning services, and disaster remediation.

Lake City Flooding

I spoke to a manager at Con Edison this week, their engineers have been to their property behind Lake City and will have a report to us in a couple of weeks. We are working to see if we can keep the water from coming in from the back of Circle Drive. During the last storm, Councilman Dahncke and I ran into Town Engineer Scott Bryant in Lake City. Scott pointed out that the inlet to the pipe that runs under Lake Drive into the pond could be lowered to take more water. I looked at the watercourse maps and I see that that pond discharges into the Fishkill Creek at a point below Lake City. We are looking into whether it would be feasible to make this a major discharge point. In addition, even though the DEC denied our creek permit, after several phone calls (and a discussion with Congressman John Hall’s office) I finally got a response to my letter. Maybe, maybe, with some help from DEC we can address some Fishkill Creek issues (this is one reason that I REALLY like Low – Impact Development techniques).

Dogwood Flooding

In addition, Scott Bryant has proposed a solution to stop the huge flooding of the Dogwood Road area – something that we hope to resolve this year. Since we hired Scott as our Town Engineer last year, we have made significant progress in addressing issues that have plagued us for years. Scott has been a tremendous asset.

Hmmm…Lawsuits

We are still waiting for the court to make a decision on the Town Board refusal to close Philips Road, should be another month – or – two.

The Town Board has been notified that we are being sued for failing to approve the wastewater rate increase request for the Sagamor Sewerage District – another case that should take a few months.

Town Clerk

Carol Hurray is our new Town Clerk, replacing Dottie Mekeel who has retired after nearly forty-years in that position. Carol has been meeting with other Town Clerks to discuss issues that are common to them all. She has installed a new computer with the BAS Town Clerk software and has been making changes to procedures in the office. In her first four months in office Carol is doing a terrific job.

Presidential Way

We will be holding a public hearing for the expansion of the Presidential Way Water District, known as “Brettview 2.” This will allow another leg to be incorporated to create a loop system. DEC has acknowledged receipt (though not approval – yet) of the water supply application and the Town is working to ensure a consistent supply of water.

Open Space Committee

Our Open Space preservation Committee has been meeting regularly. We have identified several properties that we feel represent the rural heritage of the Town and we have had discussions with a couple of the landowners. We are currently in talks with property owners to bring back farming on one of our old agricultural parcels – possibly through Community Sustained Agriculture (a new farming concept which we will be providing presentation on in a month – or – so). We have been discussing a bond issue to help fund open space and we will be having public meetings on that in the future also. In addition, the Open Space Preservation Committee will be working with our Conservation Advisory Council and our new planners to address open space in the planning process.

Channel 22

Our municipal Channel, 22, has turned out to be a fantastic way to bring government and information to people who ordinarily could not attend the meetings. We have had a few technical and programming issues, but as we work things out I feel that this is going to be an incredible tool for providing public information.

Well, ‘ gotta run – there is always something to do! You know, with the changes that we have made in the last few years – the building moratorium, appointing in – house Town Attorney and Town Engineer, new laws on wetlands protection and lot – count formula, examining open space and senior and workforce housing, hiring new planners, as well as trying to be open and listening to the public, I am proud of the progress that we have made and I thank my Town Board for working as a team to address these issues.

January Blog

2008-01-13T15:27:00.000-05:00

‘sorry it has taken me so long to write a new blog – it seems that the end of the year gets soooo busy. In November we have elections and budgets, then end-of-year stuff (including a little presentation to our Town Clerk, Dottie Mekeel, who retired after nearly forty years – it was real nice), then reorganization and - wow, here it is January 2008!

Anyway, it has been a busy two years and I do think that we got a lot accomplished; but, there is still so much to do.

Town Engineer / Town Attorney / Town Comptroller: I have to say that since we have established and filled these positions things have really come together.

For instance, our Town Engineer, Scott Bryant, although he has been really good at managing the Town’s projects – he has been excellent in working on what he calls “the big picture.” Take water for example, he has maps and reports and has been working to identify water sources and distribution systems to create an integrated town water system. Not more than a year ago, before Scott came on board, projects in front of the Planning Board were being considered with no thought as to resources that they could offer the Town. Since, that time we have found water sources that we are working to access and we are working to put together a distribution system which will provide water to areas in need.

You know, I read about other Towns getting rid of their contract engineering firms – I don’t think that that is the answer. I find that with Scott on board the communication and oversight with Morris Associates has improved tremendously (Morris has some very talented people on staff; I find that engineers generally have their specialties – no one engineer can know everything about water, wastewater, structural engineering, etc.).

Our New Town Attorneys, Tom Wood and John Klarl (of Wood and Klarl), have many years of municipal experience. Tom has been terrific in advising us on everything from land use, affordable housing, and open space preservation to water district formation, and General Municipal Law and John has a tremendous amount of experience in Planning, Zoning, and, also, General Municipal Law. Together they have brought an incredible amount of experience and knowledge to our legal affairs.

Our Comptroller, Christine Mitchell, and her staff have been excellent in recording and verifying our fixed assets, verifying and paying our bills, working with our insurance company, analyzing our revenue and expenses, and putting together budget projections, as well as identifying problems that may arise. In fact, two weeks ago I told Christine my concerns with the economy – I think that we are all a little concerned. I said that we had better look towards tightening our belts even more – the economic outlook is sure to be “challenging” (unfortunately our recent Sales and Mortgage Tax revenues are down a bit this period – not a good sign).

In-house: Many of the changes that we have implemented are changes to policies and procedures done in-house. Some examples are: cash collection for many of our departments is now done in one office, road bonds are reviewed regularly before they come due, and bills that are submitted for payment are receiving a higher degree of verification than before. I asked Scott and Christine to do an analysis of how efficient our Highway Department is at blacktopping compared to the private sector (it turns out that they are pretty good), we are now comparing our catch basin cleaning operations with the private sector, and we have decided that it is more cost effective to outsource our water department operations. I have discussed this outsourcing with many people. Presently, we are at a crossroads with the water department: do we expand our water department (at considerable expense) to handle current and growing responsibilities or do we find a company whose core business is the water business. We have spent a lot of time interviewing several companies that have responded and we have impressed upon them the very important matter of service to our customers. One company, VRI, seems to hold those same values - they have put in a lot of time helping us and reviewing our systems at no charge. We have contracted with them to oversee our water districts – they have a large staff and a lot of experience in the field and I think that they will do an excellent job. We are trying to be sure that taxpayer money is well spent and that we operate efficiently.

MS-4: We have hired John Paraskeva as our MS-4 Officer. John has been following the MS-4 program (yep, that big unfunded mandate from the state) for sometime now and he has the background to put that knowledge to use. John will be working under Scott Bryant and Walter Artus, our MS-4 Coordinator, in the development and administration of our MS-4 program.

Grants: Our grantwriter, Michael Hegarty, announced that we have been approved for a $7,500 grant from the state to engage the services of a Planner to work on our Hopewell Hamlet Plan. Unfortunately, Dutchess County has recommended that our application for a Community Block Grant to help with our proposed Senior and Recreation center be denied. Michael is currently working on more grant applications and it is great to have him on board.

Sagamor: The Sagamor Wastewater rate issue is a very emotional subject for many people in that neighborhood. In an effort to provide relief and rate stability, the Town made a proposal to take the system over. On Saturday, January 5th, a vote by the homeowners in the district was held on that proposal. Due to low turnout and a contingent of homeowners in the district opposed to Town ownership the proposal failed. The Sagamor Wastewater District will continue to be owned and operated by a private company.

Lake City: Con Edison will be working with us this year to alleviate the flooding situation from their property onto Lake City. On the other front, I have found it to be very frustrating working with Dutchess County on clearing a huge obstruction on the Fishkill Creek. After months of waiting and unreturned phone calls, this past December we finally made an application to DEC to remove the blockage. Unfortunately, DEC returned the application as “incomplete.” They also included a list of rules and regulations to protect the floodplain and ecosystem. Now, I am the last person that would want to damage the floodplain – and I am a big believer in the ecosystem (hey, didn’t we just pass a wetlands protection law), but this obstruction spans the width of the creek at an area of high banks, is probably five to six foot high, and it is dense - being made up of several LARGE trees and smaller branches. I still feel that removing this obstruction may help the discharge of water through the creek and possibly relieve some flooding.

I must say that I do agree with Mr. Ed Fowler about the problems with the creek and the volume of water that it can handle (last year I was amazed at the grass still hanging in tree branches five feet over my head from the April storm – this was in an area of the creek that was very wide – it must have been an incredible amount of water flowing at that time!). Development and construction have added a huge amount of water runoff to the Fishkill Creek. I will be having a seminar for our Planning Board on Low Impact Development which promotes natural landscaping to keep storm water on site (still, it is like closing the barn door after the cows are long gone).

I don’t know if I ever will be able to remove the obstruction – fortunately, Mother Nature is working on it. I checked the other day and I see that one huge tree that was uprooted up on the bank is now in the creek – the creek has eroded the bank creating about a three-foot wide channel around the obstruction. I guess that the creek will now makes its’ new channel.

Brettview / Presidential Way: We are still looking for a new source of water to serve Brettview and Presidential Way. We have identified areas that can supply close to half the water required – and we are still looking for more. The Town Board and I have directed Scott and our engineers to make the DEC and DOH applications to get the Brettview 2 (Presidential Way) project approvals.

Hillside Lake: Councilwoman Walker, the members of the Hillside Lake Park District Board, and I met with representatives of Great Eastern Ecology to discuss making Hillside Lake a viable water body again. We are looking for alternative proposals to the full dredge plan put together by Morris Associates. It was an excellent meeting – Great Eastern uses natural approaches such as artificial wetlands and special plantings to provide solutions to address the issues of nutrients, and aquatic growth; while sedimentation requires source analysis. They will be putting together some options that we can present to the public in the next few months.

Well, that’s it for now – at least that is all that I can think off (there is still so much going on). I will leave you with a copy of my speech from the reorganization ceremony. I hope that it is not boring (well, it is a speech), but I do look forward to working with my board this next term. Thank you.

Supervisor’s Address:

Two years ago I stood before you along with, then, returning Councilwoman Walker, newly elected Councilman Dahncke, and the rest of the Town Board; at that time we described a new direction that we would be taking our Town. I stand here before you today to say that we have made major strides in our quest – we have instituted our moratorium, enacted legislation to protect our wetlands, created a Senior & Workforce Housing Committee (which has finished a final draft report), created an Open Space preservation Committee, and are currently working to address water, stormwater / flooding, and wastewater issues. Yet, we have only just begun. We have changed many internal processes in our government; we have analyzed many of the services that we provide always asking ourselves how we can do things better. We have tried to make our government more open and responsive and we have brought talented people onto our staff whose bottom-line concern is what is best for our Town. We have done a lot of things in the past two years – but we have a lot of work ahead of us and I am confident that we, as a team, will succeed.

This year I welcome returning Councilman Peter Cassidy and newly elected Councilman John Koch. Returning to the board, Councilman Cassidy brings years of service, experience, and stability. Councilman Koch brings his many years of experience on our Planning Board, dedication to our Town, and new ideas. County Legislator Robert Weiss brings to the Legislature his knowledge of business, understanding of the environment, and community involvement.

I have always respected people that serve from parties other than my own. I feel that if you truly have the best interests of the people in your heart, although we may hold different points of view, we will find common ground. This new board is made up of members representing more political parties than any other time, probably, in the history of our Town. As we see in the newspapers and on television, getting people of differing political parties to work together to address complex problems has become more the exception than the norm causing political gridlocks. I truly believe that this new board will set an example to those other levels of government as we tackle the complex problems that face our constituency. I believe that this Town Board will set a shining example to many levels of government of people working across party lines for the best interests of their community.

The Town of East Fishkill, I feel, is a special place. We have exceptional resources, talented people, an educated workforce, a strategic location, a long and rich history and culture. Yet, we face challenges just like anyone else: environmental problems, economic concerns, and development pressures – just to name a few - and difficult decisions will have to be made. I am confident that these officials new and returning are up to that challenge and I would like to say thank you to all of you, for allowing us the privilege to serve.

October (where does the time go) Blog

2007-10-08T10:49:00.000-04:00

When our web-person set up our blogspace she told me that I should post a new blog every two weeks. Wow, I have been able to blog only about every two months! There is so much going on that I normally am in the office seven days a week – although only a few hours Saturday and Sunday – (holidays included, although my wife did put her foot down about Christmas Day) and I don’t get a chance to write my blog as much as I should.

Some people have suggested that I should hire an assistant; problem is: I hate to spend the money. As everyone knows, generally, the biggest cost of any business is personnel. Actually, I don’t think that the number of people employed at the Town Hall has actually grown much – but the costs have! A BusinessWeek article that I read last year summed it up pretty well. It said, ‘over the years the private sector paid much more than the public sector. To keep employees without paying higher wages, the public sector provided good benefit packages. Over the last decade, though, as the costs of employee benefits have increased by double digits almost every year, it is starting to look as if the public sector would have done better by paying premium wages’. Who would have thought that benefits would have taken off as they have? With the employee contracts we negotiated this year we have addressed some of the issues with benefits and we will continue to do so with all Town positions.

Oh, before we get too far I would like to thank Assemblyman Marc Molinaro. He has helped us with our application to D.O.T. for our Lake Walton / Robinson Lane turning lanes (still a couple of years away – this is fastrack in D.O.T. terms) and now he has helped in an application that was stalled in D.O.T. for the Hopewell Plaza entrance and with the D.O.T. / M.T.A. resurfacing of the railroad tracks on Rt. 82 at Fishkill Rd. Marc has been very responsive to the needs of our Town and he will be at our Town Hall on October 22 at 6:30 p.m. to meet with the public to discuss issues.

Public Service Announcement:

There is an invasive plant species known as the “Mile-a-Minute” vine that has been found in a five acre site in LaGrange. If you get a chance, “google” this vine. It is almost certain that we will be facing this predatory varmint next year.

New Laws / Moratorium / Montage:

At our September 27th Town Board meeting we adopted our Wetlands Protection, Steep Slopes Stabilization, and the Lot Count Revision Laws. I am very proud that we have taken steps to protect very valuable water resources as well as address slope erosion and to make a common sense revision to our lot count formula. We had taken much public input and faced a bit of opposition, but I think these laws are fair and represent a turning point in the direction of our Town.

In addition, we did vote to raise the building moratorium threshold to allow applications for up to ten lot subdivisions. This was to give the smaller developers and local people relief – residential construction has always been a part of our local economy – although this would never have been considered without the adoption of the three laws cited above. As to the larger subdivisions, that is still a matter to be considered along with the review of our Master Plan.

The zoning application which would have allowed the Montage Senior Housing project to proceed was denied. As Councilwoman Walker put it ‘although we recognize the need for this type of housing, and this is a very nice project, this is not the location for it … the Town Board is taking a new direction in how we look at the impacts on our water and resources’ (this is not verbatim – but I think you get the gist of it). In addition, there were many, many people who spoke against the project and only a handful that supported it. The problems we identified is that approving this zoning change would have allowed this type of development as an “as of right” in three other areas of Town, disturbed over 180 acres of wetland and floodplain, and did not appear to provide housing that was in a price range to help local seniors. I would point out that presently there are two other senior and workforce projects being proposed.

Workforce and Senior Housing Committee:

I have received the final draft of recommendations from our Workforce and Senior Housing Committee which are being reviewed by the committee prior to submission to the Town Board (and then Planning Board) for their review.

East Fishkill Open Space Preservation Committee:

Our E.F.O.S.P.C. had a booth at Community Day. I would like to thank those members that manned the booth – it is so important to get our message out. Although we are just starting, it is important to gather public input and support. We meet on the second Monday of the month at the Town Hall at 7:00 p.m. Normally it is just the seven members of the board and me that meet, but we look to having informational public presentations in the future. Even at this stage of development in our Town it is very important to work to preserve what we can of our heritage and open space.

Brettview Water / Presidential Way Water:

Our Town Engineer has been doing a terrific job in overseeing numerous Town projects as well as addressing some problems that have been issues for years. Scott takes a “big picture” approach that makes a lot of sense. Recently we have been reviewing some twenty-year old studies on water that may offer some new options to solving problems at Brettview and Presidential Way. Although nothing is concrete at this point we are examining some interesting proposals.

Lake City Flooding:

Lake City was hit again in this year’s April N’oreaster. As I understand it, this was a repeat of flooding that had occurred less than two years prior. What really got me is that these two events were unlike past flooding in that I am told that the water came from a completely different direction. This summer I took a kyack trip down the Fishkill Creek from Lake City. I went with a friend who is an outdoorsman and we kept to the Creek that seemed to flow closest to Lake City (the Creek does fork in several areas – seemingly, only to reconnect further on downstream). I cannot tell you how many times I had to carry the kyack over downed trees. As we went we would discuss if this or that tangle of downed trees could actually cause a backflooding event. At one point we suggested that the flooding may actually be a cumulative effect of all the downed trees. Then we came to an area, bigger than all the rest, of a very, very significant damming situation caused by a section of downed trees. This dam was dense, five to six foot tall, in an area of a high stream bank. This was much larger than anything that I had seen in the Creek from the Warren Drive Cul-de-sac (actually bigger than anything I had seen in my trip from the Palen Rd. bridge).

We are taking a three-pronged approach to the Lake City flooding:

We are making an application to the D.E.C. to remove this barrier.
We have replaced some storm drain pipes in Lake City and done some minor grading to be sure the water gets to the Creek.
If we get permission from Con Ed, I would like to see if we can intercept the stormwater before it gets to the Circle Drive residences.

Fishkill Creek:

I had been attending the meetings of the Fishkill Creek Watershed Committee for some months now (first Monday of the month at 7:00 p.m. at the library). I must say that after two trips down the Fishkill Creek I have seen the damage that development, siltation, and runoff have done to our poor creek.

I will be working with the F.C.W.C. to bring surrounding communities “on board” with an intermunicipal watershed agreement.

I will be having a presentation to our Planning Board on Low Impact Development that illustrates construction designed to minimize stormwater runoff (inviting other communities to attend).

I am budgeting money to begin a long-term Fishkill Creek maintenance project working in conjunction with the Fishkill Creek Watershed Committee.

In my trips down the Fishkill Creek, in many areas I found our creek to be beautiful. Other areas showed distress and destruction and I hope that with new practices and maintenance we can revitalize our Fishkill Creek.

Hillside Lake:

I have written to four companies that specialize in lake remediation. Two have responded, one with a written proposal. I hope to meet with the boardmembers of Hillside Lake along with these professionals so that we can put together another option to the full dredge proposal designed by Morris Associates. The full dredge proposal was projected to cost 3 million dollars and would have an incredible impact due to lake material dewatering and truck traffic on the community. It is my intent to have another proposal in addition to the full dredge proposal for the community to consider. I would like to meet with the board later this year and have a public presentation in the late Winter / early Spring of 2008 to consider our options.

Budget:

I think that we have made good progress in improving our financial house; yet, I have asked our Town Board and Comptroller to consider a bare bones budget. One thing that I think is necessary is to build our industrial and commercial tax base. One example is that we are considering a law that would make an office building use “as of right” in an industrial zone. At the present time, offices are allowed in an Industrial Zone only if the use of the office is accessory to the use of the property. By allowing offices in an Industrial zone we would enable more flexibility in the marketing of those types of zones (I would have no problem with, say, an accounting firm taking offices in I zones).

In addition, we are trying to gage our operating efficiencies. I have asked our Town Comptroller to compile data on the cost of specific Town operations to see if we provide these services in a cost effective manner. Services such as brush pick up (which I hope to bring back), water district services, and paving are being examined to see if we should provide those services in-house or if it is more cost effective (or even possible) to sub them out.

Then there are: UNFUNDED MANDATES. The Grandaddy of these, this year, is the MS-4 program. MS-4 stands for Municipal Separate Storm System something-or-other (I can never remember) a mandate handed down from the Feds to the State to the Towns which says that we have to perform an extraordinary amount of work to be sure that the water that runs off properties into the storm drain discharges is very clean. This means there will be costs for (a lot off) maintenance, enforcement, inspections, and record keeping. Unfortunately, there is no funding provided (except for one $9,000 grant that we will be applying for). I sent a memo to the Planning Board a couple of months ago to establish stormwater districts in subdivisions with such drainage systems to offset the costs of maintenance – a policy which would have been very helpful if begun some years ago – but, who knew? MS-4 will be with us forever and we will be working on best ways to fund it.

Actually, when I look at the breakdown of taxes I see, for example, that last year in Wappingers the School Taxes were 68% of the tax bill, the County 16%, and the Town 14% (that year the Fire Tax was 4%). Although I hear a lot of talk in Albany about changing the way schools are funded (one example is an income-based tax), I do not think things will change until the school boards become more cost conscious and until laws are changed that will allow impact fees to be collected from developers to construct new schools (hey, if they did not build so many houses – we would not need so many classrooms). ‘ just my thoughts.

Philips Road:

Immediately after the Town Board voted not to close Philips Road, the developer filed a lawsuit against us to force us to do just that. The case is now pending in Appeals Court.

Sagamor Sewerage:

We will be having a public hearing on the proposed purchase of the Sagamor Sewerage facility / system by the Town in October. A town operated system will save some money and provide stable wastewater rates. We would also look to see if we could save money by bundling the operations and maintenance with the plant that we are building in the Hamlet.

Reval:

We are finishing the first school tax cycle under the reval. As I have said before, the Southern Dutchess Consortium (eight Towns and Cities) contracted with M.J.W. in, I believe, 2004 to conduct this joint revaluation. To be honest here have been some issues with the process. First, I have had a major problem with the timeliness and the data collection by the contract vendor M.J.W. Ironically, had we the time we could have addressed inaccuracies found in some of the data. Unfortunately our Assessors received huge amounts of property valuations (overall, twelve thousand in East Fishkill) with little time before the vendor sent out notices. Our Assessors worked nights and weekends, right up to the legal deadline, to address these issues. We also found that the vendor response and follow-up was deficient and I am now told that had the data been compiled sooner, the vendor could have included school apportionment calculations which would have provided more accurate projections.

I had asked the members of the Consortium to meet for a “post-reval” conference. We have met twice more since that first conference and we are examining our options. New York State Office of Real Property Services attended the last meeting and they were very helpful. We are putting together a plan to maintain our valuations at full market. This is very important when it comes to taxing across municipal borders (such as school taxes) and reflecting changes in the valuations due to changes in the market. Again, we had not had a town-wide revaluation done in thirty years and valuations got pretty out-of-whack (similar properties assessed at much different values). It is our intent to keep our assessments fair and equitable so that we all pay our fair share. It is a difficult process at best, especially after thirty years. In my opinion, the vendor made a tough process much, much more difficult.

Summary:

Well, that’s about it - I am sure that there is more but that is all that comes to mind. We did install a credit card machine to pay tickets in the Traffic Court (saving time in billing and transactions) and we are looking at appointing a town-wide safety coordinator (which will lower our insurance premiums). Boy, it is a busy Town – until next blog. Thank you.

New Blog

2007-07-15T13:45:00.000-04:00

A bit late on this blog – the last few weeks have been verrrry engaging; but, now an update on Town affairs.

First, a commercial from our sponsors:

The Town of East Fishkill is looking for volunteers to serve on our Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals, and Comprehensive Master Plan Review Board. Those interested should submit a resume’ to the Town Supervisor’s Office. For more information, please call 221-4303.

O.k., now to blog:

Town Engineer:
Our new Town Engineer, Scott Bryant, has been overseeing, coordinating, and developing projects from the Hamlet Wastewater Project to the state-mandated MS-4 Program to the Town Recreation Center, down to the sidewalk restoration project in front of St. Columba. Scott is also working to resolve several stormwater and flooding issues and working with our attorney to determine if there need to be additional guidelines and requirements in our planning process to ensure proper stormwater remediation. What I really like is that he is also looking forward to implement reviews and standards for future potential stormwater issues (instead of only accounting for present flows), looking at a town-wide water system, and the possible future expansion of one of our wastewater systems.

Brettview Water:
Speaking of water systems, I am very unhappy with the performance of our latest well-driller (we did appear to find an underground stream of water approximately at the 20 ft. depth – that will most likely prove seasonal). All of which is a moot point since the Dutchess County Dept. of Health has stated that they will not allow any further drilling for water at the Brettview site. That leaves us with only two options (the County Waterline is not an option because of the high cost of the water, $3 + per thousand gallons and the very difficult terms of the contract): purchase Rand Water – which is now supplying Brettview – and install the filters and have control over the operation, and / or develop a new water source not far outside the Brettview area. We are currently evaluating both possibilities to bring to the public for their consideration.

Presidential Way Water:
A gentleman recently e-mailed me and asked why Presidential Way could not get water from the Wappinger well fields behind them? Wow, what an excellent idea! Although the initial plan was to get water from Brettview – this was an option that I had not considered. I have e-mailed Wappinger Supervisor Joseph Ruggerio regarding system capacity and such and I will have our engineer contact Wappinger’s engineer next week regarding this possibility. We always welcome suggestions from the public.

Rt. 376 / Lake Walton Rd. / Robinson Ln. turning lanes:
Shortly after taking office I made an application to D.O.T. to install turning lanes at this very difficult intersection. After hearing nothing from them for several months I contacted Assemblyman Molinaro’s office regarding that application. I soon received a call from the acting director of D.O.T. Region 8 and was told that they (D.O.T.) would do the entire project and it was going to be put on the “front burner.” I recently attended a meeting and found that the “front burner” means a starting date of the year 2010 – boy, I am glad it is not on the “back burner.” Sometimes we all get frustrated with the pace of government.

Philips Road:
The new section of Philips Road is now open for public use. It has always been our intent at some future date to open both roads to allow more options to access Beekman Rd. In fact, the county recently verbally notified us that they would be opening the new intersection on Beekman Rd. by St. Denis Church, thus forcing us to open our intersection at the old / new Philips Rd. In a letter that I then faxed to the county’s lead engineer of the project, we agreed to open that portion of the road with the understanding that the Town of East Fishkill recognizes that the old Philips Road is, and will remain, the main road and thoroughfare for our residents to traverse.

Hillside Lake:
I have sent out letters to several companies that perform design and oversight for projects such as the Hillside Lake remediation project. The original proposal was for a full dredge operation (then estimated at $3 million dollars – likely much higher now) of the twenty-six acre lake. ‘ problem is that with hundreds of houses around the lake it is difficult to remove that much material without impacting the residents for some time (one gentleman from DEC estimated one truck leaving the site every five minutes, everyday, for a full year). We are now considering recontouring / reconfiguring the lake and possibly building islands as another option. We will be bringing both of these options to the Hillside Lake property owners for their consideration.

Grant Writer:
Our new grant writer, Michael Hagerty, has made one grant application for trees and is working on another for funding the sidewalk restoration project. One proposal that Michael told me about that is really exciting is funding for hamlet / village planning in which we would receive funding to hire a planner to perform a study and make recommendations to make our Hopewell Hamlet more “user friendly” and restore / instill some character. These grants come out in the October cycle. He is also looking for grants for our new Town Recreation Facility as well as open-space funding. Michael has a lot of experience with grant applications and administration and it is good to have him on board.

Senior and Workforce Housing Committee:
We have had several meetings to date. We have had discussions with many involved in the field and we have a set of draft legislation enabling this type of housing. This week we will meet with the Town Planner and Town Attorney to set a timeline to refer these proposed laws to the Planning Board and the Town Board for their review.

Open Space Preservation Committee:
We have had a few meetings of this new committee – we generally meet in the evening on the second Monday of the month. Rebecca Thornton from the Dutchess Land Conservancy gave a presentation in June and our Grant Writer stopped in for a chat last week and at that meeting Vice-Chairman, Carmine DelGaudio, gave a report on the excellent D.E.P. properties in the Town. Seeing as we are new to this, we are still feeling our way around. Marge Jackson is our Chairwoman and she is doing a terrific job. We are presently working on public outreach (that reminds me – I have to contact our Webmaster to put a webpage on our Town website for the Open Space Committee) and we will have a booth at Community Day. One of our first challenges is to assemble an inventory of vacant land to consider for preservation. Delbert Lee is going to check with the county to see if maps are available. There is a lot of work to do, but I must say that this committee is very dedicated and enthusiastic.

Master Plan revision:
Because the Town adopted a Master Plan some years ago we have a document to build on. Due to the fact that we will be revisiting hamlet development, introducing open space preservation and senior and workforce housing, it would be wise to review the old document and incorporate these new initiatives.

Summary:
There is so much more to report on. For example, Dutchess County Soil and Water and I will be exploring the Fishkill Creek down by the Lake City area in the next few days. I just attended an excellent workshop by the county on flooding and stream maintenance – this is not only a local issue, it is a regional problem. The Shenandoah Waterline is being built, we hope to adopt Wetland Protection and other laws in the next few months, the Hamlet Wastewater Project is moving along, and we will have the new Little Switzerland Water Tank online as soon as the Dept. of Health signs off, and we recently interviewed a Stormwater Management Specialist (who knew that there was any such thing?) who will provide us with oversight and training.

Recently someone chastised me for making too many changes too quickly. You know, I wish that I could have taken office and just eased into it. Unfortunately, we were facing a chronic deficit, out-of-control development, major impacts to our infrastructure, and an incredible drain on our resources. I am really happy with the team I have assembled. Our Town Attorney, Town Comptroller, and Town Engineer all have the best interests of our Town at heart and each one of them understands that we are spending taxpayer’s money. We are constantly looking at ways to do things more efficiently, eliminate waste, and serve the public better. Although we are incredibly busy taking care of issues that need to be addressed immediately, we are quickly reaching a point where we can be pro-active in addressing the needs of our community.

Finally, I would also like to recognize our Town employees. In each of our departments I have found that our staff goes out of their way to serve our constituents. We have a lot of hardworking “unsung heroes” working for the Town of East Fishkill and without them we would be lost. As in any organization – we are only as good as the people that make it up and I think that the Town of East Fishkill is an excellent organization.

Belated Blog

2007-04-30T14:17:00.000-04:00

I meant to write a blog earlier this month but with a lot going on, and then the storm, I am pretty far behind. Well, some things to bring you up - to - date on:

Regarding the N’oreaster of the 16th - I must commend the work of our Highway and Police Departments in fixing our roads and maintaining order through some difficult times. In addition, I cannot say enough about the fire people and first responders - volunteers - who went way above and beyond the call of duty to help those people devastated by the storm. We have sent the first report to the county for FEMA; our initial estimates show approximately 1.4 million dollars in damage in East Fishkill. I visited the FEMA website and it appears that Dutchess County has not yet been designated a Federal Disaster – but I know the information was sent to that agency yesterday (Friday, April 27th) so, hopefully, it will be soon.

Reval - Our Assessors have been working overtime and weekends to review and correct (if necessary) property valuations compiled by MJW, the contractors that are doing the Southern Dutchess Revaluation. As I am sure everyone is aware, we are not happy with the performance of the contractor that was hired in 2004 – but our Assessors have been fantastic in reviewing nearly 2,000 individual properties. I do not know if other Town’s Assessors are doing the review work that ours are doing, but our people have been terrific.

Brettview Water – this is a tough one. First, a well report on well #2 at the Brettview pump house indicates that the level of MTBEs has dropped dramatically and that now the well may be approved by the Department of Health to be brought back on line with the installation of filters.
We had been in discussion with our engineers regarding a supplemental water source in the area of the Brettview pump house to help supply that area, and Presidential Way, with consistent / clean water for quite some time. Last summer, after waiting for a couple of months for approval from the Dutchess County Dept. of Health, we were finally able to drill our first test well; unfortunately we were unable to find water at that location. At the next meeting with our professionals and people familiar with the water in the area we determined (partly from the results of the first test well) that there is probably no deep water at the site. Reviewing the historical data and the well report from the Wappinger well fields across the stream we do feel that there may be water at a depth of, say, 40 to 80 ft. deep. Water at this depth (due to stream influence) would require filters, which our engineer said is no problem.

Unfortunately, the well driller – who did a fine job – told me that due to the type of equipment they use, they would not be able to drill what is referred to as a “sand well” at that depth. I was then directed to another well driller who was supposed to be very good and last Fall discussed the drilling of a series of test wells at the depth of 40 to 80 ft. at the site. I saw the gentleman at a meeting in December and he told me that he would be out to find water at the end of January…then it was February…then March. Finally in April a small drill rig was dispatched to the site and drilled a series of 20 ft. deep holes. At the site I was told by the rig operators that they had consistently found water between 13 and 20 ft. deep (with the water table so high it is questionable that this would be a reliable source) – but that they could not go deeper that 20 ft. due to rock. I was surprised that they could go no deeper and I was told that they would need another rig and to talk to the owner of the company. ‘ not very happy about that one!

I have since spoken to another well drilling company who had actually done work at the site when it was privately owned and we will be meeting to discuss the possibility of developing a supplemental source at the 40 to 80 ft. depth. I hope that we can find the additional source so that we can move ahead with the supply of clean / consistent water to the neighborhood.

IBM Waterline - The work has begun on the IBM Waterline to supply water to the Shenandoah Superfund site. Immediately after taking office I was told by our engineers that we should discuss with IBM the installation of a larger pipe so that after the Town is operating the water line, we can provide water to other areas such as Wiccopee, Lake City, etc. I did this and the larger pipe is being installed – but, when I spoke with the folks in Fishkill (who are supplying the water) about future purchase of additional water they asked me about storage. Hmmm…I am not an engineer, so when I contacted ours I was told that, yes, we would have to find additional storage. After sixteen months in office and numerous discussions and e-mails – nobody had told me that we would need storage capacity also. Now we will have the larger water main, yet no storage capacity to allow us to use it! I am currently exploring alternate storage proposals.

The East Fishkill Open Space Committee – I established this committee 2 months ago and they have now held three meetings and one field trip. We are currently evaluating properties to preserve and funding mechanisms to do so. I hope to have an attorney at the May meeting to discuss enabling legislation for funding and a representative from the Dutchess Land Conservancy will be meeting with us in June.

The Senior and Workforce Housing Committee - has received the first draft of local laws to allow different types of housing aimed at providing workforce and senior housing. In fact, due, in part, to the efforts of this group we have seen developers proposing the type of housing that will serve the needs of our workforce and our elderly. I hope to have draft laws ready for the Town Board in the next couple of months.

Local Laws - I hope to adopt our Wetland Protection, Steep Slope Stabilization, and Lot Count Formula Revision Laws in June. We have been receiving significant resistance from certain parties – but I feel that these laws are not only necessary – they simply make sense (really, should a developer get credit in the lot count for building a house on wetlands – when they wouldn’t be able to build there in the first place!).

In January of 2006, we appointed an in-house Town Attorney. I think that this was an excellent move and I cannot tell you how valuable, with his years of municipal experience, Mr. Wood is to our government. In January of 2007 we appointed a Town Comptroller. Ms. Christine Mitchell had been our Finance Manager – now with her knowledge of our Town finances and the authority of Comptroller we are implementing changes to our organization to better maintain financial discipline. On April 26, 2007 we appointed an in-house Town Engineer. I am proud to welcome Mr. Scott Bryant, PC to our team. It is my feeling that a Town of this size could certainly use the services of a Town Engineer to oversee many of our projects (hey, regarding the IBM waterline, he would have known that we need storage in addition to a larger water main!). I am excited that we are making the changes necessary to address the issues that face our Town and move us into the 21st century.

Reval Blog - Update

2007-03-03T12:21:00.000-05:00

To say that I am livid is an understatement; I am beside myself with the mailing of the reassessment notices from MJW the other day. In 2004, the Town of East Fishkill entered into an agreement with several other towns and cities (Wappinger, Fishkill, Beekman, etc.) to have one company perform a joint revaluation of our properties. I believe that the concept and reasons for the reval are sound and, to be sure, this is a huge undertaking, eight cities and towns. Also, I do not think that there is anyone that does not agree that the computer program that MJW has developed is truly an excellent program. I do think that there have been problems with the “on - the - ground” data collection of the firm and their response.

What I am furious about is that Mr. Watch (of MJW) refused to take into account issues and concerns raised by our Assessor (who is, herself, a very experienced and recognized assessor) in the weeks before the mailing. When I was told Thursday afternoon that the mailers were going out regardless of our concerns I tried in vain to contact Mr. Watch. I did finally reach him Friday morning (to be honest, it was better that I did not see him in person). He kept trying to change the subject, but I pointed out in no uncertain terms that when our Assessor has a problem with his values, it is his responsibility to address that problem.

The issue with the mailing this last week is twofold. One, I think that the time frames established early - on in this process were difficult to maintain and did not allow adequate time to review the data (yet, problems identified were not always corrected by MJW). Still, the time frames were designed to allow a significant period to address and change values that are in question (myself, I would have allowed much more time for review so that there was less needed for correction; but, that is me).

I am not an assessor but I have learned a lot about the subject in the last few weeks. The Town Tax Assessment Rolls have to be certified by our Assessor and the New York State Office of Real Property. Although Mr. Watch is a contract vendor for the Southern Dutchess Consortium that is doing the reval, MR. WATCH IS NOT, NOR WILL HE EVER BE, THE TOWN OF EAST FISHKILL ASSESSOR, and it is only the Assessor that has the authority to certify the tax rolls.

That said; it is now up to our Assessor’s Office to review the valuations of those parcels that are in question. So, what do you do? If there are questions regarding your assessment; first, call the number on the assessment mailer, then notify our Assessors at 226-6353 or stop in. Our Assessors have a big task in front of them, but know that our people will work to make this fair – please have patience and understand that this will be resolved. Thank you.

Reval Blog

2007-02-13T08:50:00.000-05:00

With all the talk about the ongoing town-wide property revaluation it is probably a good time to discuss the issue. I do want everybody to know that this is not a money-making proposition for the Town – the cost of running the Town is the same, reval or no reval (and, as I was thinking the other day while walking my dog – the only way to keep town taxes reasonable is by watching spending and creating a broad commercial and industrial tax base). So, if you look at your tax bill and see that your property is assessed at $100,000 – and the per-thousand tax charge is, say, $16. If, after the reval, the property values go up to 400,000 – the per-thousand tax charge will drop proportionately, in this case to $4.

Now let’s talk assessment stuff – I have learned a lot about property assessment in the last few months. The Town of East Fishkill has not had a town-wide property revaluation since 1972. Wow, that is almost thirty-five years! So, a couple of years ago the Town of East Fishkill joined with other towns and cities in Southern Dutchess to form a consortium of eight municipalities to do this together.

Residential properties are assessed based upon comparable property sales – at market value. There are a few problems with not having town properties assessed at current values. First, it is unfair to some people with newer houses because they are paying more than their fair share of property taxes compared to someone who has not had a recent assessment. So, it is a matter of fairness. But, there is a much larger issue. If your town has not had a current property valuation, the great State of New York through its Office of Real Properties will examine sales in your town and through some formula assign you what is known as an “equalization rate.” In the Town of East Fishkill the Office of Real Properties (or “ORPs”) has assigned us something like a 9.7% equalization rate, which I believe is the lowest in the county. Now this has to do with housing sales records – and there have been many expensive houses sold in our town. This means that ORPs considers every house in our town to be currently valued at 9.7% of true market value. This is not necessarily a bad thing – my house has not been re-assessed since it was built in 1979 so the state has actually made some adjustments to keep my assessment somewhat up-to-date. Still, you cannot say that the assigned equalization rate is accurate for every parcel. But, there is a much larger implication for the low equalization rate that has to do with that 800 pound gorilla of property taxes – the school tax. If you are paying taxes in a district that cuts across town or city lines, such as Arlington or Wappingers Central School Districts, a town with a lower equalization rate will pay a larger portion of taxes than a neighboring town with a higher equalization rate. That is why when, say, Wappingers Central School District announces a 6% tax increase, Fishkill may pay 4%, but we get hit with 8%! This will all go away when we, and the other towns, are valued equally.

Another plus is that senior, disabled, and veteran exemptions that had been pro-rated due to the equalization rate will now be fully valued as well as the STAR and Enhanced STAR programs. Still, until the numbers are in, no one knows what the new assessments will be - and that is the $69,000 question.

A Look Forward and Some Project Updates

2007-01-21T13:44:00.000-05:00

First a couple of public service announcements:

If you notice an increase of signs in the East Fishkill area it may be due to a new law that the Town Board passed a few months ago. Properties that are before either the Planning Board or the Zoning Board of Appeals are now required to post (in some cases many) signs stating that these properties have a pending application that is coming to the public hearing stage. This is our effort to let people know about projects that may affect them and to allow for proper public input. It was only about a decade ago when the only notice that people had were those small legal notices in the newspaper! We now realize that the signs are a bit difficult to read but this is our first attempt – so bear with us while we work out the bugs.

Draft Environmental Impact Statements and Final Environmental Impact Statements for certain projects before the Planning Board (and sometime the Z.B.A.) will soon be posted on a website that is linked to our Town homepage. This is in response to a law enacted last year by the state – a law that we heartily support.

Now to the blog:

I was just reading a newspaper article that I was given a few months ago. The article described the efforts of the Dutchess County Planner and a planning firm hired by the Town of East Fishkill to address issues of growth. The reporter talked about the impacts of future growth on Southern Dutchess County in regards to industrial and residential development and the importance of proper land use and planning. The article described the consequences of the move of people and businesses out of the city into the outlying areas and the resulting sprawl and rising property values. It was a very good article, interestingly enough, it was written in April of 1962. And here we are, nearly 45 years later still wrestling with the same problems!

I suppose that since the last blog was a look back – this blog should be a look forward. To say that we (the Town Board and I) have a lot of work ahead of us is such an understatement. Looking forward, I see nothing less than a dramatic change of direction. Personally, I feel that there is an incredible need to change things – yet there is little time.

Regarding the more immediate issues, I have assembled a Workforce / Senior Housing Committee to help find solutions to that housing shortage. I am presently setting up an Open Space Preservation Committee to identify properties that, if preserved, would maintain some of the historic and cultural (hmmm…is rural a culture?) features that have attracted us to East Fishkill, research funding mechanisms and matching funds, and steward the land. In addition, I am hopeful that in the next few months we will find water sources to resolve the Brettview Water quality issue and provide a viable source for Presidential Way. We still need to install filters at the Revere Park Water District, but the Shenandoah Water Project is finally moving along, and the Board and I are researching the Sagamor Sewer rates. Over six months ago I had made an application to the D.O.T. for turning lanes in the Robinson Lane / Lake Walton / Rt. 376 corridor. We are still waiting for the go-ahead to bring on an engineer (just to design the project!). In addition, I am looking at services that we, as a government, provide in order to gauge whether we are doing these things efficiently and cost effectively, or whether we should have another entity provide those services. We are still working to implement laws to protect our wetlands, steep slopes, and address the permitted lot count. Yet, several large development projects are lumbering through the approval process (those that began years ago and could not legally be impacted by our moratorium).

Speaking of the laws that we are proposing, we are finding that many of our zoning ordinances are sorely in need of revision. The enactment of our wetlands, steep slopes, and lot count laws, although very, very important do not address the bigger issues of large-scale development. This is making me think that we may need to review our Master Plan. This would mean extending the moratorium in some fashion, yet again.

Still, looking ahead I would like to increase our commercial and industrial tax base – and, hopefully, create new, quality jobs. I would like to establish our senior and workforce housing, as well as preserve open space. But, viewing the big picture, the challenge is how to allow growth that affects a balance of residential / commercial development which maintains a solid tax base while preserving key properties that reflect the character of our town. This presents a very difficult problem – one which will most likely require the formation of a Master Plan Committee.

Year in Review Blog

2006-12-17T12:30:00.000-05:00

Please note that this is a rather lenghty blog. It may be difficult to read because the blog program does not enter the underlines that I inserted to identify topics.

Boy, my webmaster is going to be some mad at me! When I was first introduced to the concept of having a blogsite, I was told never to go more than 2 – 3 weeks without a new post, so I am a bit behind schedule.

Let me offer an explanation. For, oh, around fifteen years now I have been going to night school studying business. On Thursday December 14th at midnight (but who’s counting) I finished the last day of my last class. As anyone attending college knows, this time of the semester is considered “crunch time” and today I am completely exhausted and (if I pass this last course) very happy to be done. So, on to our blog.

Being the end of the year, it may be useful to review what we have done:

We have instituted, and extended, a building moratorium of residential subdivisions of five lots or less.

We have had several public hearings on laws to protect our wetlands, steep slopes, and adjust our lot-count formula (I INTEND to have these new laws passed in the next two months).

We passed a law regarding false alarms as well as several zoning ordinances regarding neighbor notification (of a pending project), shared driveways, and fences, and we are currently examining our Zoning Ordinances in an effort to improve our land use policies.

We passed a resolution providing for the proper disposal of surplus property.

We are working internally to better coordinate the reviews by our Fire Advisory Board, Architectural Review board, Conservation Advisory Council, Planning Board, and Zoning Board of Appeals.

We are actively monitoring our departmental and vendor expenses and have implemented regular budget reviews.

We have changed internal procedures to better monitor road bonds and subdivision fee collection.

We had an independent audit.

We have established a Senior and Workforce Housing Committee which has met several times (hopefully to have a draft report in a couple of months).

We are putting together an Open Space Preservation Committee. We have several names and if anyone is interested in volunteering, please contact my office.

We are actively working to address the Brettview / Presidential Way water problems (drilling a new well, reactivating an existing well) to provide Brettview water and to extend to Presidential Way.

We put out bids for our Hopewell Hamlet Wastewater project.

We will be forming the Shenandoah Water district – those bids will go out early next year.

We did not close Philips Road; it was evident from our public hearings that our constituents do not want this road closed.

We have made an application to DOT to install turning lanes at the Rt. 376 / Robinson Lane / Lake Walton Rd. intersection to help traffic flow.

And, some small, yet significant changes – changes that allow better communication with you, our public:

We have changed the layout of our meeting room to allow a more public forum.

We have improved our website in an effort to provide better communication.

We are working to establish Cablevision Channel 22 as our Municipal Channel – we will be having cameras installed to televise Town Board meetings.

On the downside:

We settled two lawsuits from the previous administration. Yet, on the positive side – we passed a resolution prohibiting harassment, sexual or otherwise, instituted a sensitivity training session and we have the first draft of an employee handbook.

Even though we have passed and extended the building moratorium, there are several large projects that are moving through the pipeline. Legally, we could not intervene in their applications while we change our laws to better address the issue of growth.

We raised taxes. No one likes to raise taxes, but for years we have been spending more than we have been taking in (see my budget blog). It is my intention to get our financial house in order and I think that we are well on our way.

In conclusion:

Boy, all this and the day-to-day operations of the Town; it has been a busy year! I could not do all this without help from my Town Board, Ethel Walker, Peter Cassidy, Bill Dahncke, and Heidi Resk. I also could not have done this without the public. We work for you and many of the initiatives that we are pursuing are a result of input from you. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas and many of the ideas that we implement are a result of public input so, thank you.

Well, it is that time of year. I love the movie “Scrooged” with Bill Murray – I do think that someday it may be considered a classic. I wholeheartedly agree with Bill’s character in the end when he says that Christmas is a time of year when people go a little slower, treat people a little kinder. I know that that is not verbatim, but I do think it is true; this is a time of year when people treat each other a little kinder – I have seen it. So, I would like to take a moment to wish everyone reading this, whatever your belief, whatever your holiday, a very healthy and happy holiday season. Thank you.

John Hickman

Budget Blog

2006-11-10T11:31:00.000-05:00

Last night we held the public hearing on the 2007 budget. Because it is sometimes difficult for people to get out and attend these meetings I am blogging (is that the right term?) a copy of the budget report that I presented. One thing that I forgot to mention in the steps that the Town Board and I are taking to put things in order is that we are also exploring shared services. We will be having a presentation at our next Town Board meeting by the N.Y.S. Office of Real Property on the pros and cons of sharing Assessors with other municipalities. Anyway, here is my report and if anyone has any questions, thoughts, concerns, or suggestions, please feel free to e-mail me at hickmanj @eastfishkillny.org, send me a letter at the Town Hall, call me at 221-4303, or – best of all – stop in. I work for the citizens of East Fishkill and I enjoy meeting with you.

2007 Supervisor’s Budget Report

It has been just over eleven months since I took office and I must say that I am very proud of the work that the Town Board and I have accomplished in that time. Enacting the building moratorium, passing local laws regarding false alarms, policies against sexual harassment, regulating surplus materials, and the many laws that we are currently processing, in addition to working to get the Shenandoah, Brettview, Little Switzerland water projects, as well as the Hamlet wastewater project moving – it has been a busy year. And, yes, we still have a lot of work to do!

Well, it is now budget time, and this is my first budget; so, it is time to talk finances. The Town of East Fishkill encompasses an area of more than 53 square miles, includes over 28, 000 residents, and has a budget that is over 15.3 million dollars. The Town budget covers the Police Department, the Highway Department, the Recreation Department, and the Town Hall departments, in addition to retiree benefits. Now keep in mind that the Town portion of your tax bill is between 9 and 12% of the total tax bill, depending on which school district you are in. Historically, the Town tax rate last peaked in 1998 at $18.07 per thousand of assessed value. From the 1998 peak, the tax rate dropped every year until 2004 when it reached $16.57 per thousand. In 2004, the tax rate rose to $16.70 and then to $18.21 last year. This would lead one to think that the cost of operating the Town fell from 1998 to 2004. But it appears that that was not the case. Now where does the Town get the money to fund the budget? There are property taxes, of course; but also, revenues from Mortgage Taxes, Sales Taxes, and department fees and fines. In the last few years, the Mortgage Tax revenue has been quite large, but it is apparent that the real estate market is slowing (as are the Mortgage Tax revenues).

As the firm Accounting Associates pointed out in the trend analysis they performed for the Town this past spring, from 2002 to 2005 several budget expenditures rose significantly. These increases in the costs of operations were offset by taking money out of our rainy day budget surplus. That is, over the years the Town has built up a budget surplus – unused funds that accumulated and we saved as a rainy day fund. In fact, in 2002, 2003 and 2004, the amount taken from the budget surplus to offset operating expenses was 2 million, 3 million, and over 3.5 million dollars respectively – and taxes were still cut! As Accounting Associates pointed out, as well as anyone that operates a household budget knows, you can’t do that forever. This year we will use $500, 000 of our budget surplus to “make ends meet” (earlier projections had estimated our shortfall at $1.6 million) leaving us a surplus of approximately 3.3 million dollars.

This is why, even though the East Fishkill Community Library has come out of the Town budget, we cannot lower taxes. Our budget proposes a 4.32% tax increase over last year. The library represented a 7.91% tax, so the two together represent a 12.23% tax increase (remember that this is only 12.23% of the 9 to 12% of your tax bill that is the Town portion) – that is a tax increase of approximately $110.00 on a $500,000.00 house.

We need to get our financial house in order, so the Town Board and I have:

a) raised and established appropriate fees

b) changed job responsibilities and enacted policies in the Town to allow for more efficient oversight and collection of fees

c) been very stringent in monitoring the activities of our town professionals (who’s billing has gone down considerably)

d) eliminated many of the non snow – removal sub contractors at the Highway Department

e) have engaged the Town Accountant to use the 20 hrs. of free services to review purchasing practices in town departments for efficiency.

f) are reviewing several operations of Town operations for efficiency and cost effectiveness

g) restructuring of the debt for the Hamlet Wastewater to lower tax rates for that district

h) moving to expand the commercial and industrial tax base

The Town Board and I have been very busy addressing issues that affect us all. We, too, are residents and taxpayers and we intend to provide government services as efficiently as possible. If anyone has any suggestions about how we could perform our services more efficiently, the Town Board and I will be happy to hear them. Thank you.

Respectfully,

John L. Hickman
Town Supervisor

2006-10-17T16:10:00.000-04:00

Yep – another blog. I hope that I don’t run out of things to write about (somehow, I don’t think that that will be the case!). Let’s talk a bit about residential development (this issue has so many impacts that it will undoubtedly be the subject of future blogs).

East Fishkill is still a beautiful town. Sometimes when I drive around our Town I look at the old houses…the real old houses, I try to imagine in my mind how it was many years ago. Boy, there was some distance between them – really, our Town was made up of many, many small farms and the railroad in the hamlet. I remember as a kid growing up in Wiccoppee, the Eagenburger farm was down by what used to be the fork of East Hook and West Hook Roads. There was a big, old barn with, I believe, four or five big spires along the roofline. Sometime in the sixties or seventies the farm was sold, the barn torn down, and the property developed. Unfortunately, that is how it is; farming is a very difficult way to make a living (at least for the small dairy farms and apple orchards that made up East Fishkill). So many of the farms that I remember, including my Grandfather’s and my Uncle’s, Eagenburger’s, Mulford’s, Wright’s, Morgenthaus’ Orchard, Carey Orchard (to name a few) ceased to become economically viable and became developed. So, what is the result? Well over the years this silent transformation created housing opportunities for all of us (in fact, homebuilding has historically been a big part of our local economy). There were still farms and the town was still beautiful and there were places to live (and in the ‘60s IBM built a plant so there was a place to work).

In the last decade, though, things seemed to change. The developers that came to town were not building forty-or-fifty lot subdivisions – they were proposing two-to-three hundred lot projects. In addition, they were targeting the high end of the market and as demand outstripped supply (due to low interest rates and a desire to live outside of the city) the cost of housing went through the roof. Now, in my opinion, we have housing that is very biased to the high-end and does not meet the needs of the people that live here. In addition, these developers do not use local builders or purchase materials locally.

One of the very first things that our Town Board did after taking office was to enact a building moratorium on residential of developments of five lots or larger. To avoid a lot of lawsuits that the courts have ruled valid we based our moratorium on three standards:
1. A determinate length of time, in this case six months
2. A specific purpose, in this case to enact legislation protecting our wetlands, and making calculations for subdivision lot-count more conservative, and setting stricter standards for steep slope development.
3. Setting a point in the planning process that stops residential projects of five lots or more, yet allowing those projects that have had a “determination of significance” or a public hearing to continue

This last standard is important because the courts have ruled that, basically, projects that have gotten to the point of a determination of significance or a public hearing have spent a lot of money to adhere to the rules that were in place and it would be unfair to have them stopped by a moratorium (something like changing the rules in the middle of the game). That being the case, even though the Town Board voted to extend the moratorium for another six months at our September 28th meeting, some large projects have been ambling through the planning process and will be built according to the old laws.

The board and I felt that this moratorium was sorely needed, yet some people have asked that the moratorium be enacted forever. Although this is an attractive proposal – it is definitely unfair to property owners (and impossible to defend in court). In America, people are allowed to own property and, with that, the right to use their property. The challenge is to find a fair framework of laws that will allow people to use (and, if they so choose, to develop) their property in a way that is also in the best interests of the Town. Boy, this is a puzzle! Although I do not think that the type of housing that has been built addresses the overall needs of the Town, I am glad that we have some high-end neighborhoods. Yet, where are our local workers and seniors going to live?

To address this problem we are taking some steps. First, if our three laws are enacted (as I hope they will be this month) they will have an immediate impact (reduction) on the amount of lots a developer can create. We are also examining other zoning ordinances that need to be changed, such as lot coverage ratios and special permits. I have formed a Senior and Workforce Housing Committee who will meet for the second time this week to study that problem and propose recommendations to the Town Board. A couple of months ago Councilwoman Walker had brought up the subject of open-space conservation. The Town Board and I are very much in favor of such an initiative and are looking at ways these things have been done – we will soon be forming an open space taskforce. We may be raising the threshold for our moratorium from five lots to eight or nine lots in the near future. That would allow the small local builders to proceed, but the problem remains the larger developments. That is where I see the senior and workforce housing – developments that could benefit our community and be done in such a way that it maintains the character of our Town. A local architect who sits on our Senior and Workforce Housing Committee pointed out that this is a problem that the industry is facing nationwide.

Yes, this is a huge puzzle – sometimes I would like to say that I would work on the senior and workforce housing or on the open space initiatives next year. I wish that I could, but these are things that should have been attended to years ago. You may say that we are trying to close the barn door but, unfortunately, the cow is far down the pike.

2006-09-15T11:22:00.000-04:00

Town of East Fishkill
Dutchess County, New York
330 ROUTE 376, Hopewell Junction, New York 12533
Telephone 845-221-4303

JOHN HICKMAN, JR
TOWN SUPERVISOR

Well, I found out that blog is short for “weblog.” I guess that blog is easier to say than “wlog.” Anyway, maybe for this blog we can discuss finances. Shortly after taking office this past January I asked the Town Board for permission to bring in a third-party financial analyst to review our financial performance. I felt that, just as anyone taking over a new business, you simply want to know where you stand financially. For the most part, the board was very interested in this proposal and we hired the firm Accounting Associates to perform what is referred to as a “trend analysis.” In government we have all kinds of checks and balances including an annual audit, in our case we use a very well-recognized firm to handle our audits so there never was any question that the books didn’t balance. What the trend analysis would tell us is how efficiently we were using our resources over a historic five-year period.

To sum up the findings, although Town expenses were rising over the last few years (as were those of any household) the previous administration felt the best way to address the situation was to cut taxes each year (except for last year) and cover the operating deficit out of our fund surplus (which is much like a household savings account). We all know that you can only spend more than you take in for so long; I asked one of the principles of Accounting Associates how long we could continue at this rate. She replied that we would exhaust our fund balance in three-to-five years.

So, what did we do? The only thing that you can do is to cut expenses and raise revenue. The Town Board and I moved to cut any unnecessary spending. We discovered some uncollected fees dating back to 2001 and are in the process of collecting them. We reviewed and, where appropriate, raised our Planning and Zoning and Building Department fees (in some cases, the fees that we were charging were not even covering the overhead of providing those services!) and enacted new fees to cover other types of expenses. Councilwoman Ethel Walker and I now meet with the Town’s Financial Administrator on a monthly basis to review the projected budget and see where we actually stand; Councilman Bill Dahncke reviews the monthly Highway expenditures. We have changed the internal organizational structure to have specific people review specific accounts so that they don’t fall into arrears again and we have instituted new policies to ensure payment of fees due.

The changes that we have made will certainly help get us back on solid financial footing. Still, just as any household that has an unemployed breadwinner – we must continue to tighten our belts, watch our income and expenses. We are not out of the woods yet, but we headed in the right direction. One last point, without a supportive Town Board, interested in the well-being of our community, we could not have made these changes as quickly as we have. We work as a team and I would like to thank each and everyone of them.

What We're All About

2006-08-24T13:56:00.000-04:00

This is my first blog posting (actually, I have to ask our web-person what “blog” stands for). Anyway, I am told that I should write an article to post on our website. I guess that I should begin by telling our web-viewers a little bit about our Town Board. We were elected to office to work for our constituents; the decisions that we make should be in the best interests of our town. I am proud to say that we work very well together and that we take our responsibilities to our town’s people very seriously. We believe in open government. The changes to this website, the changes to our meeting room, the future installation of cameras in our meeting room to televise our meetings (hopefully in October), are all small changes with the intent to communicate better with the public. My favorite President is Abraham Lincoln and in the Gettysburg Address he described democracy as "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." In my opinion, that is what the East Fishkill Town Board is striving for.

One example of reaching the public was the input that we received at the July 13th workshop meeting regarding the proposed closing of Phillips Road. A few months ago the developer of Four Corners had requested that the Town Board abandon the old Phillips Road and make the newly constructed Phillips Road the town road. At our workshop we had an excellent turnout and the people that spoke made some very good points which were instrumental in our decision to deny the applicant’s request to close the road. This was a very complex issue. We had to consider the legal aspects of our decision and we had also to consider the procedural aspects (did the applicant take all the necessary steps to ensure the road closure), the safety aspects, the traffic flows, emergency vehicle access, the County’s recommendations, and, of course, the people. In the end, although the developer may not agree, we feel that the decision not to close Phillips Road was the right decision (although we did accept the new road as a town road also). Boy, it seems that in this day and age nothing is simple anymore; but, we must remember that we work for the people.

Well, that is my first blog posting – I hope that this information was useful. To be honest, the Phillips Road decision was very complicated, and things are not going to get any easier. As a town we face numerous challenges and we will take them one-by-one and get through them, we have to; hey, East Fishkill is our home.