Budget Workshop #2

All set.

All righty. Well, welcome everybody to the Thursday, August 7th, uh, Town of Webster, um, 2026, uh, board workshop. This is the second of two. We uh were here last Thursday uh to hear six or seven department heads present. Um and we are right back here for the second one. Um I'm going to give a similar preamble to last week. Um but with a little uh a little update, Paul, um the preamble last week was that the uh the aggregate of the budgets being presented last week and this week by the individual department heads uh is a budget right now in totality that is under the New York State cap. Um, and I said this board, uh, the last 5 years, at least since I've been supervisor, uh, we have gotten budgets, uh, each year that were under the New York State Cap. And I have no doubt, I think I can speak on behalf of the town board that the 2026 budget, the last the sixth budget and the last one I'll oversee, uh, developing, um, is going to be under

that cap. Also, um I had said last week that once we're done with these uh presentations in these two weeks that the work is not done um we're tenatively scheduled for uh September 4th to adopt the preliminary budget and we would spend the next uh 3 to four weeks tweaking. Um and we already had a tweak this week and tweak this week. How about that one? And uh I gotta say that Paul Adams, our finance director, um I don't want to steal your thunder on this news, but uh our uh our credit rating as a town with Moody's uh came across as AA1,

right? And because we have an excellent credit rating, because of the way that this town has been financially managed over the years, long before I was supervisor, by the way, uh that afforded us, no pun intended, that when we put bids out for our short-term financing and also our long-term bonds on these capital projects this year, this week, we got the uh the results in and the low bid uh created a situation where Paul had estimated um principal and interest on that debt for 2026 in the preliminary budget. And it actually came in about $800 and some odd thousand less because of the interest rate and terms. And that's directly related to our good credit rating. So that's a tweak we got to figure out when you have good news like that.

That was good news. Um, and last but not least, uh, I last week I hand it out and I'll hand out to anybody who's in attendance and I'll pass it around. Uh, this is a a screenshot that kind of shows the last five or six years history of the town's budgets, uh, tax levies, fund balance, and I think even for a non-account, it kind of shows uh, why we're in the position going into 2026 that we are. And that and that's a good position. And so if you would pass that down. And with that, I will hand off to Denim, our first presenter tonight as town clerk.

Hi everybody. Thank you. Um so first we're going to start off with um the tax collection department. There's no change for staffing. It's comprised of one part-time clerk, one full-time clerk. Um and the adjustments to salaries are based on longevity and cost of living adjustments. Um if we go down to computer equipment and licensing, we have one required PC replacement that we're budgeting for. um for printing and postage. Of the $28,50, a total of $15,000 is estimated for reimbursement from the Webster Central School District, which will be posted and realized as revenue once we receive it. Um for department expenses, this is comprised of office supplies and legal notices, which I'm estimating 50% of those costs to be reimbursed by the school district. Um, for revenue for the tax department, it's estimated at $180,000, which is based on historical collection of town and county interest and school interest. And this is difficult to predict year-over-year. Therefore, we do our best estimate for that line item.

Okay. On to the town clerk portion of the budget. In regards to personnel, no changes there to staffing. It's comprised of one full-time deputy town clerk, one full-time license fee clerk, one part-time clerk, and one part-time receptionist. Um, adjustments to salaries are based on longevity and cost of living adjustments. Um, for computer equipment and licensing, um, I'm requesting replacement of five out of eight total computers. All are said to be obsolete during the 2026 calendar year and three of those computers are used at the counter for our in office transactions for printing and advertising. This includes legal notices and the cost to update the town code which typically occurs twice per year. No changes to postage and no changes to office supplies. Um for records management, we're seeing a slight increase in our vendor services for shredding. So that has a very small increase. For machine and computer contracts line item, this includes our general code, laser fee support, town clerk software for fees and licensing, copers, and our Pittney Bose postage meter. There's a

very small increase here due to vendor invoicing increases. The subscriptions and publications line item. This is for e-code, which is found on the town's website, which is where you'll find the town code. For conferences and transportation, this will be used for my attendance at the annual New York State town clerk's conference, the annual New York State Tax Receiver Conference, and travel to Monroe County Town Clerk meetings, which are held every two months. Um there's uh the background checks for puddlers licenses that remains unchanged. And then we're on to revenue. Um the town clerk's fees are comprised of New York State DEEC hunting licenses, fishing licenses, marriage licenses, and miscellaneous fees. Um our return check charges are return fees. We charge $20 for checks that return from the bank for insufficient funds. Um for easy passes, we're seeing um a decrease in our easy pass sales for our office. So I'm lowering that line item for revenue from easy pass sales. Just a downward trend year-over-year. Um dog control fees are charged to the

dog owner when animal control picks up their lost dog. Um, there's a seizure fee of $40 and there's a boarding fee of $35 per day for the firsttime offenders. And I just want to point out to you that all of our town fees, they can be found on our town website by searching for keywords fee schedules. Um, for the Webster Central School District tax collection reimbursement, this is the line item where the reimbursement will be received from the school district and it'll be posted. For dog license fees, we continue to partner with animal control officers, which has helped to increase the number of dogs being licensed in the town, and we've been working together um and working through our backlog of unpaid dog renewals. Um town clerk license fees. This is comprised of pedallers licenses of $4,000 and waste hauler refuge licenses of $5,500. And the last item for town clerk permits consists of special event permits of $2,700 and one mobile home park permit of $300. And that is all. Are there any questions?

No. Answer the question I had. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Uh Jennifer,

I I'm assuming the um PC replacements are all because of Windows 10 becoming obsolete. I think it's just the computers themselves are they're ready for upgrade. They're old.

Jenny, any questions?

Well, thank you. I'm proud to be the lison for the department as well. Thank you, Jenny.

Okay,

I have no questions. Nice, nice work, Denine. Thank you.

Thank you, Denine. We missed you up at the the podium here. So,

um Well, guess what, Steve? you're handed. We're we're we're 5 minutes ahead of time. So, see how you make out on that.

Uh, everybody's been going over next to Art. You know, they're they're nuzzling up next to Art. Come on, Genius. All righty. Put the ticket spread out if you don't mind. All right. Um, as you see the first three lines, uh, that's staffing, myself, John Camille, and Anthony Sansone. Um, any increases in those lines are always greatly appreciated by myself and staff. Um, next one is capital purchases. Uh, that one you do see a little bit of an increase in there. Uh the big thing in there is John and myself are looking to get some laptops, mobile computing devices, things like that to have those in the office for us to work on and use, especially with the new network upgrade we're trying to get get going. It would be very useful to have mobile devices. Um next one is director training and seminars. There is an increase in that line. that line is the primarily the $3,200 from this year was used for

um our training for our staff. Uh it has been increased now because that also includes uh the membership fee and conferences for the New York State IT Directors Association that we went to in the spring which was actually very helpful and very useful. Um they do have another air coming this fall. Um we might be sending John Camille to that. It's actually mobile. So, but we got I got to work out some logistics with that. Um, office supplies pretty flat. That's basically buying paper up at Denine. Same thing with the smartphones. Uh, technical support, you do see an increase there. Uh, some of our radio equipment that we use for interconnectivity between the buildings. Uh, some of that had uh built-in warranty support with it. That warranty has now since expired. So now in order to continue to get the support for that equipment, we had to pay for support contracts. We had to bump that line up a little little bit. Uh director's expenses, you know, mileage, such and such. Website design and maintenance primarily we use that for uh domain name service services, you know, theny.gov, the the cws, all all the different domain names that we have registered. Um and then cell tower rent, um pretty much flat. We're doing pretty good with the

rent this year. So there really isn't much of an increase there. So you do see there is a slight increase. Um but also our debt service is much less this year than what we were actually asking for for this year. Uh cuz we've gone a different route with our network infrastructure upgrade and things like that. So um we're actually what did I say? uh about 27,000 less than 24. So I mean it should it looks like an increase but our actual debt service for

26 will be

a lot less than what we were

is about 29,000 a year for network equipment that we purchased.

And

so we what are we standing on that grant?

Uh actually we're still waiting to hear. Um, last I heard, I guess the state has the money. If the state doesn't know whether they give it to us or not, because, you know, with

okay,

some of the federal stuff that where it came from, they might have to give it back is what I've been okay

hearing. But we're still waiting on that. But we are moving forward with our infrastructure upgrade. Uh, we're just holding off on a portion of it so that we can apply the grant to that portion if we do actually finally get it. That's kind of why we've been holding off getting that done and just kind of throwing a little bit of a wrench in our plans for next year. So there's really no big projects for next year cuz the infrastructure upgrade is going to take a while to get get completed. So we're hoping to have our first round of equipment in at the beginning of the fourth quarter this year. Um that all the equipment is built to order. So they're in the process of building it now and hopefully it'll ship I'm hoping September October time frame.

Great.

Any questions?

Thank you, Steve. I just have one quick question. You talked about the laptops for mobile access and other things. What what are the other things that the laptops are going to enable

so we could connect to like the network infrastructure equipment

so we can actually walk up and like right now John John went out and bought a cable for a smartphone and he uses plugs a smartphone into the switch. Then he sits there and he types with his phone to program the switch. So to have a computer to be able to do that would be a little bit easier. Plus, it'll give us the ability to test new things for mobile access for things and stuff like that. But the big thing is to being able to do like wireless studies to connect the networking equipment. So,

great. Thank you.

Yep.

Any questions?

Thank you.

No, thank you, Steve.

Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Have fun. This is awesome. Moving right along. Uhoh. I I guess the next department needs this extra time. Uh he always does.

Arthur,

I don't know how Art should feel about this. Steve said, "Good luck, Art." And you said, "Uhoh."

Yeah.

I don't mean that. He knows what I mean.

Okay.

All right. Right.

Art have at it. So, uh yeah, we've got a few line items. I'm going to hit the uh the highlights or the biggest deviations, uh during this. So, we're going to uh slide right down to uh computer equipment and licensing. Uh we were able to reduce that a little bit because we've been a little bit ahead of the game on purchasing uh equipment, computer equipment. Uh next one, you'll see a uh 643% increase capital purchase of equipment. Uh and that is for the replacement of the generator and the electrical at Mil Creek pump station. Uh that is north of 30 years old. The electrical components uh the uh breaker boxes, the conduit is rotting. Uh so uh we're going to do that all at once and get it uh take the station down uh put it on standby uh

power and get it all done in one fell swoop. Now we're going to slide down to uh we going to go next. We got a lot of uh lower items percentage wise uh maintenance lift stations uh just again uh that only went up 9% uh from 55,000 to 60,000. uh wet well cleaning. We dropped a couple thousand dollars. Uh we're doing more and more of that ourselves with both flush trucks. Uh there's still a couple wet wells that are too deep and or unsafe to send our staff down into. So we do farm some of that out. Uh the commercial billing software percentage- wise 25% but it's only $500. That is a new software we're implementing currently to give uh better service to our commercial clients uh actually and to uh put out uh be able to take credit cards. They'll be able to we'll send the invoices by email and we'd be saving a lot of postage on that as well. Uh we're going to go down to sewage treatment G8130 uh capital purchase. Uh the largest thing there is a uh

a loader and or andor forklift uh for the dryer building and our receiving area up top. We don't know what that's going to be yet and uh until the we get functioning up there. Then we'll really drill down into what piece of equipment is appropriate. Uh again, computer equipment and licensing. We were able to drop that 42%. Uh payroll time software up 18%. Uh that sort of is just software cost. Uh sledge hauling uh GD1340372. Uh that's going from 573,000 down to 360. And that 360 we're keeping in there uh because we are planning on uh and we have to plan on being conservative uh sending all of our uh dried product to the landfill uh pending New York state uh legislation. I think you've all heard about that that they're considering banning um any land application of uh of class A fertilizers. So it is uh approved in the in the senate stopped at the house.

So we are planning to uh financially send it all to plan if we have to. Uh heating contract maintenance that is up from 10,000 to 14,000. Uh that's a very easy one. We have four new heating systems. We have four new doaz systems. do as systems uh really control the outside air in the buildings and keeping everything at code. Um all of that needs to be maintained uh at a professional level. Again, computer maintenance is driven by it. Uh sledge dryer maintenance. So, uh that's 36 36,000. So what that is, it's a uh a plan for our distributor, our vendor partner to come in once a month to spend uh 8 hours with our with our staff to uh run the machine to help them run the machine and to maintain it. Uh I plan for that once a month and as we uh John looks like you have a question.

No. Oh, okay. So, I planned on it once a month. Uh Rick and I's plan is we will not need that as we go on. Uh but we're planning for it. You know, they'll really tell us from the get- go. Um and these are guys that have that have run these things down in Etica.

That guy they've hired. So, um

you know, how to clean the belts, how to maintain it, and everything. So, uh we plan for that.

Centrifuge preventative maintenance down to zero. So, we're hoping uh we can sell that thing.

It's barely hanging on.

Barely hanging on. So, uh calibration repair went up a little bit. Uh we just have uh so many sensors, meters, level sensors, uh within the facility and we're adding more as we go. Um so, those need to be uh third party calibrated and tested on an annual basis. uh cleaning services and supplies. Uh that went up uh because we do have with all the new buildings going in, we have a tremendous amount more to clean. Um that we're actually looking to um look at other vendors for that to try to drive that down. Uh generator repair. So that uh $6,000 is for the uh current 800 KW plant generator. Uh and that is for service twice a year. And we also added in uh dollars for any repairs that may come up.

Oils and greases that increase from 5,000 to 7,000. Uh it it's just it seems that every new piece of equipment we're putting in takes a different oil or a different grease and we will not deviate from what the manual says. So um it takes X X grease or X oil, we will use that and we will change it, you know, when the when the manual states. So uh lab analysis is going down a little bit. Uh we're doing more of it in inhouse and Rick has gotten past some of the uh uh caught up on some of the hurdles at Tesla that haven't been done for years and years. Uh natural gas has gone up. Uh that that fires the uh that fires the dryer

dryer

dryer. uh electricity obviously has gone up and uh water a little bit uh because we have so many we have so many more areas to clean. Uh although we do our best to use effluent water uh there's still uh areas we need to use potable water and uh we also with the two flush trucks uh when we fill out of uh some of the hydrants uh we obviously get charged with that. So,

I'm going to pass it to you at this point.

Employee benefits. Um, yeah, we the two line items that have uh gone up uh quite a bit are medical insurance for the employees, that's up about 13% and the medical insurance for the retirees is up about 30%. We've seen a very large increase in the uh medic Medicaid Medicare supplement policies. Um, so that's being reflected in this year's budget, but so overall benefits are up about, you know, 60 70,000 in that range.

Uh, you want to talk about revenue or me?

Yeah, I'll do that. Um so I think the biggest one you'll see uh is the high strength organic waste and that is uh obviously one of the core of why we're doing what we're doing and we're having this ability to generate that revenue uh because of that 1.1 million gallon digtor. Uh this is um product from Fairlife. It is product from uh others. It's it's pumpable. uh people call call it food waste I guess is the easiest way to say it. Uh that goes directly into our digtor and that is food for the digesttor that does not run through the plant and does not get processed uh chemically uh fairly rents uh we're estimating them at uh just south of half a million dollars. and those two and along with septic waste. Uh those three uh Rick and I have been very very um conservative on those and we think they're good numbers uh from what we've been told. We've actually partnered with uh a local septic caller, one of the biggest to try to calculate those numbers.

Uh Xerox rents u as we know Xerox is getting smaller by the year. Uh so we've reduced that. um sewer inspection, TV sewer inspection, it's just a flat number, uh dropped about 17%. In that construction, I think we all know in web services it's uh it's sort of slow at the moment and we see that moving forward. Uh Penfield sewer rents reached out to uh Penfield is obviously slow as well. I think they told me they have uh two new uh homes. Uh the schedule's for next year. So uh their rents their rents is definitely decreasing.

It's coming to an end.

Coming to an end. So back to you, sir.

Uh interest earning is based uh conservatively based on history. Uh that's at 100,000 for the year flat year to year. We've got an appropriation of about a half a million dollars. year to year which is we're using fund balance to balance the budget and move on to capital charges.

Capital charges absolutely. So building improvements uh we're keeping flat. We do need to keep some dollars in there. Uh as much uh new construction as we have going on. There are um many buildings that aren't being touched. Uh the exterior or roof uh engineering consultants will stay the same. capital proven pump stations. Uh we were able to lower that a little bit uh over the past uh I'm going to say six years. We've done a very good job of methodically going through our 22 pump stations and uh upgrading them uh from pumps to control systems to uh whatever it may be. Uh you know, we're going to you know and generators quite honestly. Uh we're going to continue that uh step-by-step approach and that has paid dividends in uh overtime hours and keeping staff home at night and not working in the dark at night uh which is unsafe. Uh capital improvement collections. Uh this is um cleaning and lining of uh sanitary sewer mains. We have numerous mains uh that are uh cracked and being infiltrated with roots which are causing backups. Uh one of the things we purchased last year

was a manhole camera which is on a pole and uh with that it's been very efficient with our flushing and it's allowed us to identify some of the worst areas that service. All right. We actually had our um ban and serial bond sale on Tuesday of this week and uh we took uh the ban that was outstanding for the conveyance pipe project to a serial bond. Uh that's a taxable bond. Uh the interest rate came in around 4.5% for that one, which you're expecting it to be higher because it's taxable. Uh but the band uh we're borrowing about uh 66.4 million for the big project. uh came in very good when the interest rate net of the um band premium was 2.6662%. Uh it was very good. I had originally budgeted 3 1/2%. I wanted to have some margin in there, but I wasn't expecting quite that big of a delta. So that uh it's a very good thing. So it ended up net I ended up saving about 637,000 um in interest

um on the sewer side. So it was a very good thing. Uh but overall debt since we're borrowing more debt service is actually the cost of debt service actually up about 563,000 when you net everything out. Um but it's as expected. I think that's about it. Then we have similar revenue items uh for the capital side um which basically pays for the infrastructure and the debt service on current projects and previous projects.

Um Paul would you talk about the transfer of sewer capital reserve please? Again that's something I'm very proud of.

Yep.

You do that.

Yeah. We've actually built in a $300,000 transfer to the sewer capital reserves. So basically, it's going to be held in surplus or a reserve uh to be used for future projects. Um it's the reserve fund currently has about 2.4 million in it. Um we've hit it quite a few times over the past few years, so we need to continue to replenish it. So the fact that we can build it into the budget is a very good thing.

Very smart thing to do. was remiss at the beginning of this to mention that uh unfortunately Rick was unable to be here. He had planned on it um but uh he had something come up and he could not uh join us. So

any questions? Yeah, just on the utilities end on the natural grit natural gas in 2024. Your actual is 24 465 and I understand you know it's budgeted for 2026 at 160,000. I understand it's a drier. The dryer is going to it's going to use that much natural gas you're assuming or you're planning on.

Yes, that's the expectation. Yes, it's a gas fired uh dryer. Did you just also because I I'm really looking forward to this drier building coming online.

I did not think that we were still going to be spending that much money on hauling it to the landfill.

So remember if if you will the the initial plan right when we got into this was to be able to give it away,

right? And we've always kept again Rick and I being conservative, we always kept a number of 200,000 in there. Um, but with the New York State legislation and those are leading New York State want to ban it. This was our plan. In the event they ban uh class A fertilizer from land application, we had to cover it somewhere in the budget. So, it'll be far less than uh it'll be less than we normally haul out uh as far as weight, right? because it's only going to be uh 10% water instead of 70% water. Uh but this is this is worst case scenario.

Okay.

We have to send it all out. That's what we plan for.

But that legislation has not gone through yet. Correct.

It is not. And I and I believe and Rick is uh uh very much in tune to Albany and so forth, but I believe the Senate has passed it. It is stalled in uh in the House.

Yeah. It's been hoed been held up right now.

Right. It still uh it still needs uh some uh a lot of advocating on on our part and everybody's part uh to make sure that doesn't happen.

So again we John we wanted to put in worst case scenario worst case scenario situations there there may be times and will be times that we are setting wet cake out. Uh we have a uh uh we have a conveyor uh being installed uh in the middle of that system. Uh if the dryer's down, it's drowned for maintenance. We need to still keep processing. It'll shoot it out the side of the building into a dumpster. So there still may be times, you know, very small quantities,

but do you track that by month?

What's that?

What you're spending on hauling?

We track it by day.

Oh, really?

Yes.

That's fantastic. Yeah, we get weight tickets per day.

It'll be interesting to see the reduction as we go.

Yeah. And I'm trying to think back, you know, when we started this project, but 3 years ago, I think it was um

I think for every one dumpster we send out now, it'd be like, you know, it'd be six dumpers, six dumpsters to one dumpster, I'm sorry. So, six dumpsters of what we send out now would be equate to one dumpster in the future. Wow.

Because there's there's very little water in and it's holly.

That's great.

Yeah.

Is there more? What's that?

Unless there's questions.

Any questions? Jenny, John,

I'm good.

All right. Well, I can't let this moment pass. All right. Um, Art Patron, our deputy uh, DPW commissioner, joined the town, I want to say in 2017, Arthur, I think so. And he was brought in um, to really oversee uh, the $12 million phase one u sewer renovation project of the mostly the secondary clarifiers. And that was uh Art's specialty uh since he had worked for Christian Construction uh management and actually had been the construction manager for this courthouse and the town uh hall building back in 15 and 16.

Had nothing to do with that post.

Okie dokie. Um I hold it against you. Anyway, I will say this that Art uh his last day with the town uh is next Wednesday, August 13th. uh eight years. Um and Ark, I got to tell you, he he walked into a situation. He managed the $12 million phase 1 project to under budget and really on time or ahead of time. And then he really has been managing the $85 million phase 2 project that we have a contract of uh um with Navatas on energy performance. And I think he's done a wonderful job managing that. Um to give you some perspective and I know people are saying oh my god the debt the debt and all this the sewer business and it is a business. The sewer plant is a business. These upgrades that Art has been you know pivotal and and leading the charge on managing took our actual um business in 20121 was $3.8 8 million was sewer. In 22 it was $4.6 million. In 203

it was 4.6 million. In 24 it was 6 million. In 25 it's budgeted at 8.9 million and this 26 budget is budgeted at 11.1 million. That business has grown from 3.8 million in 21 to what we anticipate in 26 to be 11.1 million. Now the reality is uh the business is funded um by users. He took over a plant that had 17,000 users in 2021. Majority of them being residents, an edu, equivalent dwelling unit. you see it on your tax bill in January, you got an O andM, operations and maintenance or whatever and then a capital. And in 2021, we charged the citizens um I want to say it was and it's on the Excel spreadsheet that I handed out as a preamble to this. We were at $187 that we charged the citizens and essentially we charged our other 1,500 edus which was commercial and industrial clients uh that same rate.

We have moved that rate up over the last few years and in fact this year in 25 it's $253 and next year we're proposing $259. Paul Adams has told me when he left the town back in the early 90s to go into private industry as a young man, still young,

that the the .edu charge in the early '90s was $200. And when he came back 30 years later, he was shocked to find out that that .edu charge was 187. How how does that happen?

166.

How can you char It was 166, right? Um, and there's a myriad of reasons for that. But if you don't fund the sewer plant and that business appropriately when it rots, which it will, and it did in 17, we didn't have reserves of 20, 30, 40, $50 million to pay out of our reserves for those uh those improvements for that rotting plant. And that's why we are going into debt. I got to give Art a lot of credit that he once he got on board and he was very instrumental in bringing Rick Canali, our chief plan operation operator. Rick is phenomenal. And and what he brought to the town back in 2021 was a vision of hey, if you're going to have to fix this old stuff, why don't you try to fix it and make it technologically advanced for major cost savings and revenue production? And we we were introduced as a town board to that concept of an energy performance contract. I'm going to be

very honest with you. The first couple reactions was absolutely not. Never will we do that. That's not the way how municipal projects are done. And so we had to educate the board members and have one-on- ones and this and that. One of our board members, God bless him, who's not with us anymore, he was adamantly against it, but after hearing the benefits of it, he wanted to do every project that way, didn't he?

He's just not at the table. He is with us.

Yeah. He's alive. Uh, Bill Rabbit, we love you. Um, but he saw like, wow, this is phenomenal. Let's do every project. We're like, wait a minute, we can't do every project this way. It's it's a very specialized, uh, energy performance. You have to tie it to things. But, um, when the town board listened to Art and Rick and went that angle, uh, or that option, um, and it's counterintuitive. It cost more in the project, but it was going to cost the taxpayers less. Now, that come on. I'm an accountant. Paul, you're an accountant. That's not intuitive, right? That can't be. But it was because those instead of just replacing the old toilet with a new toilet, we replaced and added some stuff that got us new revenue sources and had big uh cost cutting. And the combination of those things made essentially uh uh what we thought was going to be a $30 million asset replacement project. When we made it to 50 or 60 million, it actually going to cost less than the 30 million. And we had to show that over a series of workshops and board meetings. Along the same time, Greater Rochester Enterprise is looking for Ko Fairlife. They got 12 states and 40 potential sites that they're going to build a plant at.

And Feral Life being a um dairy producer, I didn't know this, is a major uh sanitary sewer uh producer. So much so that this town sewer plant, 45,000 citizens, 17,000 users, does about 3.1 million average gallons a day into that plant. When Cope Fairife is up and running, Coke Fair Life will put two million gallons a day into that plant. That's how big they are. Coke Fairlife when they looked at this site, they were so impressed by what we were building here that I truly believe in their regression equation of decision-m on those 40 sites in 12 states. They'll never tell us, but our uh state-of-the-art sewer visionary sewer plant was what really sealed the deal to get them here. Now Art is leaving and I think uh I I've known Art. He was I knew him uh long before I worked with him here. Our daughters played lacrosse together. Um and he's going into the private industry and they're lucky whoever gets him. Um and the reality is, and I've told Art this is that the skill set Art has, he

was the right man for the right time as we navigated that 8 years of the construction of this plant. Now, we have an 11 million business that to tell you the truth, we have to look long and hard as a town board of what is the type of leadership of that sewer plant going into the future. Cuz I'm going to tell you, if Xerox starts to subdivide and they sell off 40, 50, 100 acre parcels, there's going to be another Fair Life coming. So, we already went from 17,000 users to about 29,000. Now, is it out of the realm of imagination we could hit 40,000 users in this sewer plant in the next 5 plus years? That's a different business than what he took over in 2017. And the board um you know, we'll have to look long and hard on what is that. We we will not go I'll tell you this, you know this, we're not going to go out and get a construction manager as their background because he did that and so it'll be very interesting. But I can't thank you enough. Um, you did great.

Well, thank you

and I appreciate it.

I I also want to chime in because I have been lays onto the sewer department for a very long time and Art and I have worked together on many of these projects and I I'm very proud that we're building a state-of-the-art facility which will take us into the next 30, 40, perhaps 50 years. And we're seeing the benefits of that as you pointed out with Fair Life in the years to come. And Art, both you and Rick have been, you know, you were in place at the perfect time and you uh and you guided us along that process. And I just want to thank you for imparting all of the knowledge about wastewater treatment that you have. And um I'm I've always said I'm way more knowledgeable about sewer plants than any girl really ought to be. Um, but when Art tells calls me out and says, "Bring your boots." I bring my boots and hands me a hard hat and out we go. So, Art, thank you very much and I wish you nothing but the best.

Well, Adam, how do you follow that? I give you the last five minutes.

Oh dear.

He is this poor guy.

Sorry. Hello everyone.

Hello Adam.

Hello.

Art is a hard act to follow and I believe for the three years that I've presented to this board, I've had to follow him every time. So

we don't change the order.

No, no, leave it. Leave it the same. All right. You're going to have to come back next year. Yeah, right.

All righty. So, um, actually, I have a question for Did I miss something? Is it?

Yeah. That's supposed to be about $2,000 less.

I don't know. Okay.

You have to send me the correction.

All right. All right. So, there's a um correction that So, off the top, there's a correction that needs to occur on the uh director's salary, my salary. Um that is only supposed to be a 3% increase. I don't know why that is a um a 6% increase, but um that Paul and I will get that corrected. Um uh that being said, um we'll start with uh salary. So, my uh salary should not be that. It should be um um was the uh budget. That's a 3% increase. Um as a reminder, the library is not part of the um the same town. Thank you very much. The same town um schedule. We do a 2% uh step for full-time staff and a one excuse me, a 2% uh cola for all staff and a 1% step for full-time staff. Um I'm currently on that step scale. Um, so thank you for correcting that. Appreciate that. Um,

going down the line, salary personnel. There is a savings here it seems, but not really. It's actually, um, we're moving a position that was classified in salary to full-time position that we added last year um to hourly because it's actually an hourly full-time position. Um, so that's reflected there. Um, however, all um all staff are receiving uh for full-time staff, they're receiving their 2% cola and their 1% step where applicable. There's only seven steps. So, if they've been there for longer than seven years, they will be just receiving the 2% cola. And then all hourly staff are going to be receiving the same percentage increase that the minimum wage is, which is a 3 3.3% um increase. Um, and again, the reason it looks so large is because we moved that full-time position that was originally SK, uh, positioned or categorized as salary into the, uh, hourly position. Um, moving down, um, our equipment, um, line, uh, is up. Uh, we have a server replacement coming up in 2026 that accounts for that increase. Um, next is automation. Um, as many folks have probably already said, the Windows 11

um, upgrade means we need to buy some new computers that can handle Windows 11. So, that's going up a bit. Uh, moving down to utilities. Um, we're expecting the increase on gas. I don't expect a change in our rate there. Aside from RG& increases, electric, we're actually seeing some savings. Oh, did I jump down? Oh, I'm sorry.

That's okay. I'm looking at my working spreadsheet. I'm sorry everyone.

You're in slightly different order.

I'm in slightly different order. Can we go back up to the top?

Back up.

All right, let's go back up to the top. So, um conference line, we're keeping this flat. Um you all, uh voted to support an increase last year. It's more than served us. We're going to keep it the same this year. Um telephone. Um this is um playing catch-up for the Ring Central um uh conversion. Um initially we were quoted that it was going to remain the same. Paul and I crunched numbers and came up with the correct figure, I think. Um, so that is a large increase, but should be uh remain at the same increase that the town sees from now on. Um, the copier lease is flat, so that's a $3,000 fee, and that's one of our money makers that you'll see in the revenue. Um, so that pays for itself. Uh, credit card and usage fees. I I'm actually expecting this to eventually go down um as we've declined uh or decreased our fines and fees. Um but we haven't seen that actual decrease yet. So we're still seeing uh revenue coming in. And we were also able to move to a new more modern system. Um if you've been in the library recently, we have Clover, so you can tap to pay, you can Apple Pay. um don't think you don't think we do to

blooms, but um uh but we've seen a decrease on our overall fees as a result, which has been great. Um membership and notices, uh we're uh keeping that flat. Um that's primarily our uh membership in the New York Library Association. Um next one's the big one. Um, our building rent is staying flat this year, but um, common area charges and taxes went up uh, 7.3% this year. Um, they were flat last year. Um, this is kind of their cycle. They usually are flat for a year or two and then we see a chunk of an increase. Um, so that's what's listed there. Postage, a modest increase here. um building service contracts, um aging materials, aging equipment, uh costs more to repair. Um so we're seeing an increase there. Uh we are hoping that some of this will come down next year as uh the library is getting a new roof. Um the landlord has put a new roof on the one building in the plaza. They're did a partial roof replacement over the library earlier this year. Uh, and I believe the rest of the roof will be replaced um by the end of uh hopefully by the end of September. Um, they're scheduled right now to schedule at the

end of August to start construction or demo, excuse me. Um, rentals and repair. Same thing here. As we need to rent equipment to dry the library out or get a wall patched up, things like that. Um, that's what we're budgeting for in that line. Our Monroe County Library System cost shares are going up. They were flat actually. I think they received a reduction in 2024 um and 2023 as well. Um we are seeing an increase there. Um there's a couple of reasons for that. Um the biggest one is um up until now uh Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation offered access to um Office 365 to libraries for free. Um this year uh they ended that program. So, um, at the end of this year, libraries will have to pay, uh, basically an educator's rate. So, it's still at a discount and we still find consorcia that we can work through to bring it down. Um, but the system pays that. Um, and as you may know, my library uh, web email address, if you and I have exchanged emails, is different from the town's domain, and that's because we're on the county system. Okay. Um, subscriptions,

um, subscriptions go up every year. We do our best to control cost, but we're seeing a small increase in that one. Uh library materials, that line. Again, this is books, DVDs, that kind of thing. Um as we are trying to catch up with our peers, as I believed I, uh presented to this board two, three years ago now, um we're I'm trying to do a slow um iterative march to catch us up with our peers. In 2022, when I started here, we were at 100,000 and our peers were at $200,000. Um, and that played out on a per capita basis as well. Um, so I'm slowly trying to add $10,000 a year until we hit that $200,000 mark. Obviously, their budgets will have shifted, but I'm trying to play a little catch-up so we're not borrowing so heavily from those other libraries. And what that equates to for the taxpayers is shorter weight times for books that they want. Um, library databases, uh, database costs go up every year just like any other subscription. Um we are seeing a rather large increase for a couple of our vendors who are for lack of a better word sole source. Um cleaning supply maintenance, we keep negotiating to try and keep that flat. Um same with our office supplies. As a

note, our office supply line is also the supply line where um the books get their stickers and their myar covers and all that stuff. So if you're saying how much can a library spend on paper clips, it's not just paper clips. It's also all the ancillary stuff that goes around a book or a DVD to to get it out. The magnetic swipe things, all that stuff. Um natural gas, back to where I was a little bit ago. Um we're just expecting the normal increase from RG& that they've published and was um approved by the state. Um electric uh we have seen some serious savings. Um, I'm being I think I think you couned me, Paul, to be a little more conservative, but we're seeing a good amount of savings off that LED conversion we did. Um, uh, I know, uh, Terry had started it before I started at the library, but we finished it, um, primarily with funds from, um, Assemblyman Mangalow, um, uh, through, uh, what used to be known as Bullet. Um, that's been a really, really good cost savings for us. We're also able to capitalize on rebates that I believe are being sunset. So, we are able to take some of that and put it back into the library as well. So, that's been a really really nice uh project for us. Um and then water. We're just trying to

budget to actual there. The more people we get in the B building, the more water we use.

Want me to talk about retirement?

I would love that. Thank you, Paul.

You see a very large increase to retirement. uh for the first time in I don't know how long I we uh Kelsey and I who handles our payroll for the town and some HR duties took a hard look at uh all employees in the town and which of those employees participate in the retirement system. So basically I did a reallocation across all the funds and library was found to be quite a bit short. Um, so I think prior year budgets were understated. So I wanted to rightsize it this year and uh it's kind of a double whammy because retirement costs have gone up substantially also in the past 2 years. So that's built in there too. And the other line that's gone up quite a bit is the medical insurance for the employees. Um once again uh I think you just have more people participating at uh with with more premiums and the rates are up of course about I build in about a 12% increase. So those are the big changes in the benefit side. Thanks Paul.

Uh scrolling right down to revenue. Um printing be remains a money maker for us. I know we'll reach an inflection point at some point in the future when demand for paper goes down, but we're not there yet. Um, I continue to estimate less than actual because I don't know when that's going to happen. Um, but I would expect we've we're on track to make more than $12,000 this year. Um, so I would expect that in 2026 we'll probably do that again. Um, it'll change. I don't know when. Um, but we're not there yet. And I think it's partially because we have a lot of people who come in who have internet access at home, who have computers at home, who have smartphones, who don't have printers, and don't see the point in keeping them anymore. So, we've got a lot of people who come in who otherwise have every mean able to go over and print themselves, but decide to use the library. So, that's been a nice um uh source of revenue for us.

It's the cost of ink.

What's that?

It's the cost of ink.

Oh, well. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we're paying, too.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, AB. I mean, 100%. And it doesn't help that those things are cheaper to replace than it is to refill.

It's saying, right?

It is. Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, library card replacement fees. We're we're keeping this uh same. And this is money in, money out. Um, you know, we buy the cards from the Mur County Library System and then we pass that on directly. And these are just replacement fees. If you're coming in as a new user, a new patron, you get your library card. If you need a new one, we charge you for the plastic we got to buy for that. Um, billing replacement for lost books. Um, this is pretty low, not actual cost of the books that we receive. Um, we do encourage people to try and find like uh replacements uh where possible because they can usually find them cheaper than we need to charge them. Um, so this is a this isn't really I I wouldn't really consider this revenue, but it is money we take in. Um there is a loss that's behind this figure though. Um interest in earnings. Um again Paul has counseledled me to be uh conservative here. Yeah.

But we

we've done a good job building that fund balance um in anticipation of what comes next for the library.

Um but we have seen um a nice nice earnings on that um fun.

We are doing well with interest earnings. Rates are right around 4% still. um unclassified revenue. Um the staff and I work to try and find little things here and there. So um uh the friends in the foundation of the Webster Public Library independently um helped support new programs. Sometimes this is money-making programs. Um years ago they funded uh the seed money for a coffee program. So you can come in, you give us a dollar, we give you a K cup and a cup for coffee. um that was all self-funded. I wanted to reflect that in our budget because it's not funded by private funds anymore. Um it's funded by itself and it really is a service that I think our residents have grown accustomed to. Um so that's what you know we're trying to find little places where we can recoup some of that revenue and reflect it in the budget. So, um it's small potatoes um because generally speaking, libraries don't sell things. Um but we will continue to try and find uh areas where we can, you know, um

operationalize some of those programs that have long been offered. Um and then state aid. Um through the advocacy through the New York Library Association, um the state is expecting an increase in state aid. We don't see a ton of money from that. U most of the state aid that comes from the state goes to operate library systems that help support us. Um but that is uh reflected there. Any questions?

Um wait first I would like to thank you Adam. I mean we have a lot of uh positive for our library and again I'm honored to be the lison for library. Um, I know you're doing a wonderful job, try to conservatively, you know, um, res save the taxpayer money and everything else, but then give the community everything that they, you know, looking for for the library. So, and I thank you for that and everyone that work at the library as well.

Thanks, J.

John Adam, how are you?

Good, thanks.

Thanks for your presentation tonight. So when I go through these budgets, I will look at the 2024 budget and I'll compare that to the 2024 actuals.

Mhm.

And when I look at the U building rental expense in 2024 budget was 264,000. The actual was 19,720 which is a significant delta. And I know you had mentioned earlier that the rental fluctuates and I wonder if you could just give a more a little more detail on that.

I think that's a question for me.

Yeah, cuz I think that's when we separated. It was 2024 when we separated them, right?

Yeah, we separated. But I think you're you're saying it's very small rent even though we budgeted much higher.

Correct.

Because it has to Gazsby uh 87 requires us to reclassify rental payments that are handled through a lease to debt service. Uh so this is an entry which occurs toward the end of the year which basically skews the the actual expense account uh ends up in debt service. I've continued to budget it as rent expense rather than lease principal and interest payments because I think that's more confusing.

Does the same hold the budgeting charges?

I think the budget makes sense doing it that way but when you compare to the actuals it looks way off.

Yeah,

you're right. Could you repeat your second question, John? I couldn't.

Does that pertain to the uh the building common charges also because 2024 budget was 211,000. The actual was 123,000.

That must that must have been the same, right?

For CA for the CAM

for the CAM and CAM was also affected by that for that same reason.

The only other question I had was the library materials.

Mhm.

Yep. The actual in 2024 was 108,000

and you're budgeting 140,000. I know you had mentioned something about your peers.

Yep.

Budgeting 200,000.

Who who are your peers? Your your

those are the other suburban libraries. So those are uh the suburban libraries in Monroe County that have over 40,000 excuse me 30,000 residents. Um so I think Pittsburgh just peaked that. Um so the 2020 census was the last you know chapter where there was a change. Um, so Greece, uh, not Henrietta, even though they act like, not act like it, but perform like it. Uh, but it's, uh, Greece, Fairport, Pittsburgh, Penfield, everybody, all the big towns except for the city of Rochester that's kind of in a class of its own.

So, this is just for you to order more books or

Yep. Yep. Exactly. Right. So, um, we're in a collective system, right? we all borrow from each other. Um, our peers actually every single one of them was at 200,000. Um, or or higher. Um, and I think in the presentation I g gave we were at 110,000 that year or 100,000. Um, I'd like to get up there. Um, one of the things that a lower I call it collections. It's not I know Tommy you hate that word but the lower the fewer materials we have the harder we have to lean on the other libraries in Monroe County and while that's a net gain for us in terms of the volume the wait time then increases because all Webster materials go to Webster patrons first um what I mean by that is let's say the next John Gisham comes out right um everybody wants to read it um a Webster copy there's like you know 300 people on the holds Um there might be a person from Greece, a person from Paraport, a person from Ogden, um and then a person from Webster. Our book skips that and goes to the Webster patron first. So the fewer Webster books we have, the heavier we have to lean on those other libraries and the longer Webster patrons have to wait.

Um

we send our do I'm just I'm confused. So if we have six Gisham books

Mhm.

and we only have two Webster residents on the list, we will send the remaining four to other outside municipalities.

Yeah. Well, other libraries in Monroe County. Yes.

I did not realize that.

Yeah. Libraries let you borrow books from other libraries that you go to and they don't have. If they don't have what you need, they'll find it and bring it to your library so you don't have to drive to Ogden.

Yeah. Nice.

That's why it's like

now it all makes sense. Thank you.

Oh, yeah. No problem. Yeah, we do 5day delivery service. Um and uh those trucks run actually our the line item automation I it's called that, but at the Monroe County Library System, our membership in that system, that's what that line one of the things that line item helps support.

Great. Question. I did not know that.

Thank you.

Do we deliver or is that hand the Monro County level?

We give it. So we send and receive books every single weekday. um out of our well our front front area. Um they come by every day and take books away from us and then and we also ex receive returns from other libraries. Um so um if like when Xerox was uh much larger, a lot of people outside of Webster would use the Webster public library because they worked here and it was convenient. Um and so we saw a big volume of returns to other libraries as well.

Thank you so much.

Yeah. I just have a question, but my question is more geared towards Paul. I think the cleaning I noticed the cleaning went up pretty significantly in the sewer department and last year it went up pretty significantly again because there's more buildings and again this year um I see libraries flat which is great but there's a lot of cre cleaning expenses and like we did with the garbage and consolidating is there an opportunity to look at a consolidation of cleaning contracts centrally? Well, they're they're not part of our cleaning contract.

Yeah. And we don't have a contract. We actually have staff on on staff that we've um most two u we shouldn't say that, but we have cleaning staff on hand. And so this particular cleaning supplies and maintenance is literally just the supplies it takes to clean the library.

I see. Well, I guess then for not the library and everything else.

Yeah, I I think it's time to uh take a look at that.

I think that would be great. And I know Tom and I have talked about some of the staffing strategies that we've used internally that the town may be interested in. It's I mean I think looking at it as a town is probably the best cuz I know um uh the waste contract um I was pleasantly surprised when I saw what my um monthly was going to change too. So

we're falling a little bit behind. I will say that uh one of the first things we did in 2021 was we looked at seven different cleaning contracts. uh we consolidated into one. I think we saved 90 to $100,000 a year from that. Uh at that time I asked Harry uh Bennett uh who was the library uh director, do you want to join in this because they're under uh New York State Scholastic rules. They don't have to go along with us. And they and she decided no, we want to have our W2 person clean. And so they opted out. Now, where we're at four or 5 years later, whether it's worthy to put an RFP out, possibly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've had 5 years go by. It might be interesting to test it out again. And I've never had the chance to ask you, Adam, do you want to participate in this or do you want to keep going with your own?

I got to say, our our cleaning staff, believe it or not, are part of the uh fixture in the morning for a lot of the patrons and residents, I should say. I

So, um I don't know. They've they've been doing a pretty bangup job over there. So,

they do

never a question of the quality of the work.

I think the question is more about the cost.

Yep. Absolutely.

So, do you track that cost your WT people that are doing the cleaning? I see you track the supplies, but you track the hours that they spend on cleaning the cost.

So, we report all of our hours just like every other town employee. So, they're immunist along with the rest of us. So, we can do hourly costs if they wanted. Are they full-time?

No, we don't have it's all We have uh three part-time cleaners and two part-time um we classified them as maintenance mechanics who do kind of our our handy guys.

All right. Thank you.

Thanks, Adam. Hope you feel better.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Adam.

Yeah. Thank you.

All right. Well, we lost five minutes, so uh let's see if uh

let's see if Keith and Josh can get us back in the swing of things. Sorry, guys. So, like we do every year, because our community development and engineering budgets are essentially intertwined, uh Keith and I will be alternating um and presenting portions of our respective budgets. Thanks, Josh. With that, I'll start us off with the uh the building maintenance. Uh this is sort of the facilities manager position of the town engineer here. Um and we'll I'll just hit on some of our our our high points here of um

increases or decreases. So, the first one is capital improvements. um we kind of tracked to last year's um actuals and and what we had occurred and so and found that that did not meet that $200,000 level. So, we've chosen to reduce that. We do have a couple of things that are on the horizon. Um one may be a generator replacement for the town hall. It may actually um include adding a generator for the town court building. Um and we may be um on the hook for some uh air handling unit replacements. One on the town hall and potentially one at the town court here. Last year, we had identified a um a potential to do a facil sort of a townwide building facilities assessment that sort of uh got uh not that did not get completed um in some ways because of the uh just sheer lack of manpower and bandwidth to to take that on. Um, and we may look to uh redo that here in in some upcoming years, but we don't anticipate

doing that in 2026. I think at this point I've got enough background about some of our buildings here to uh to to move forward and and understand what we need to do in the immediate future. So, we are we eliminated that from our budget. um some increases in maintenance. Just these are sort of the emergency things that come up or the um the sky is falling moments. This is if we have to replace a compressor unit or uh toilets or whatever here between the town hall and town court. So that's uh that's sort of a a guesstimate if you will of what we think we might need for for ongoing maintenance. Um town cleaning services, our contract is up. I believe at the end of this year um and we are looking to go out to an RFP. We did look at previous um bids that came in when this was first uh awarded um and noted that the next low bid, if you will, or the next bid on that the list was considerably higher by about $9,000. So we identified at least that much um as a potential going into 2026.

And then finally um within this first category here of building maintenance is a telephone service. And I would have to actually acquies to Paul on that because it's not a a dollar value that that I identify.

Yeah, we have seen some pretty sizable increases. uh the bill gets split with the u the general park town and time w fund. So we just adjusted it to what we've seen actually. Thanks. All things being equal within that building maintenance uh you'll see that we do have a uh we do have a reduction from about 492,000 to 318 for 2026. Okay. The fire marshall's office. Um we we did a slight increase uh in the over timeline. These are for uh call outs on after business hours and on weekends when the fire marshals are called uh for various reasons to to sites. Um and we

base the increase on uh the frequency we've been seeing uh this current budget year. Um the salaries are pretty much set by the collective bargaining agreements. Uh there was a slight increase in computer equipment and licensing. Um the capital purchase vehicle accessories, we've eliminated that. Uh that was a one-time cost. associated with outfitting uh one of our new leased vehicles. Uh so that will not be a recurring expense. Um vehicle operating lease expenses are remaining flat as we've we've replaced uh the vehicles in this particular unit. um the training and seminars. I actually uh since sitting down with Paul and doing the first draft of the budget uh was able to sharpen um my pencil and we're actually able to decrease um the training in seminar down to a thousand. Um the the course that the fire marshals took in Syracuse is no longer uh being offered. So now they are taking advantage of another opportunity

that is local and more affordable. Um supplies are remaining flat and um we actually um have reduced the auto maintenance. This could actually be reduced even further due to the vehicles being essentially brand new. Um, so we can actually drop that down to 500 to cover just basic oil changes and tire rotations. Um, and then there's a slight drop in the um, fuel costs. Uh, so pretty much uh, year-over-year um, pretty steady. Uh I don't anticipate a reduction in the revenue line for fire inspection fees. I'm not quite sure why that was reduced.

Uh we that's about what we're tracking actually. So

okay

I put in the amount that matched actual history.

Okay. Um so the way that our our billing works um we do send out the invoices quarterly. So there tends to be a a lag time from when we send out the invoices to when we receive uh the revenue. Um but it regardless we do anticipate it to to remain roughly in line with uh this current year. And then in terms of uh the conservation board, um nothing really uh drastically changing here. I believe there's just a slight cost of living adjustment for their stipens. Okay. Public works. This is the category that town engineering primarily finances a lot of their their efforts out of. Um again I'll I'll talk through um some of the changes that we have direct effect

on as well as you know where we see significant increases or decreases and there are primarily four of them here. First, I'll start off with um full-time employees um B1490.10111. Uh this represents um I believe both the um cost of living increases, step increases as well as the um addition of a uh half FTE. Uh we are proposing to um in this year's budget to have an engineering technician, hire an engineering technician. We did have um a position open that was for a part-time construction inspector. Um we'd like to no longer fill that position and fill that with actually a um full-time engineering technician. Uh the next one um again here is some the town hall uh cleaning. This is similar to what we talked about in under the facility maintenance lines. Um there will we anticipate a fairly significant jump there. Um moving down into

conferences which is 40140. Both Josh and I anticipate attending um a number of conferences uh in 2026 that we've not had the availability or the ability to attend in 2025. I can identify um uh a local um Institute of Transportation Air Engineers conference, a Rochester Engineering Society conference um as well as an APWA conference. All of those conferences um include continuing education credits um that I am required to maintain to maintain my PE PE license as well. And then finally um there's a significant jump um in item 40278 which is engineering um and surveying services. Uh and this was a miss. Um, this $5,000 was a miss as of last year. Um, we it it did not get properly budgeted. Um, and we are but we are tracking fees um that are in the neighborhood of of probably

$100,000. I don't know that it will be that much, but it certainly is um a line item that we need to maintain at some significance to take care of areas of expertise that neither I nor uh Mark, our assistant engineer, um have

you say that's for surveying.

What's that?

What was that for? The $100,000. That would be for any types of outside services, engineering fees, external engineering fees, or if we need to have surveyors come on for um specific needs that are related either to plan review or capital projects that we're maybe undertaking. Um it it's a it's a catchall for for those. Thanks. Um,

I will let we are looking at a a slight increase. Well, not a slight about $100,000 increase in that category year-over-year. Okay. uh building department. We have one part-time employee uh building clerk um who is actually retired uh and works approximately 30 hours a week. Um we've kept the overtime relatively uh stable year-over-year. Um the building inspector and assisted building inspector salaries are um again governed by the collective bargaining agreements. Um as is the code enforcement officer. Uh computer equipment and licensing again remaining pretty flat. um professional services. Now, this this we budgeted um you may see a pretty substantial increase um much like Keith described. Uh this was budgeted for a

specific purpose, but it was utilized over the course of I maybe even 2024 at the beginning of the Fairlife project. Um so we are anticipating um continued support uh early in 2026 based on um the schedule of of construction for that project. Um I think Paul had been utilizing this line for that. Um but when we originally budgeted it um it was intended for another purpose. That's that's why there's such a significant delta there. Um the professional services for code enforcement um that was eliminated in error in the current budget. Um, so we're putting that back in uh for 2026 and that is to serve um official notices associated with code enforcement where our uh town employee is unable to to reach them or if it's an out of town situation. Um town code compliance uh we're keeping flat uh same as this current budget

year. That's where we utilize a third-party uh vendor to uh perform work that uh on on properties that are not code compliant. We then uh invoice that homeowner and if they fail to pay um the cost of that service gets added to their tax bill. Uh office supplies again uh pretty flat. um slight increase in dues and conferences uh for the building department and a slight reduction in fuel expenses. I should probably point out that uh just above here on the public works section you'll see inspection and engineering fees 450,25 dropping to 40,26 basically dropping us back to what we normally would collect. Uh the 450 was basic for the most part came from uh Fairlife. Uh they paid us uh about a million half dollars for various fees um which was amvertised over 2023, 2024 and

uh to match the progress of the project. So 25 is the last year for that. So that's why you're seeing a big drop in revenue. But but that revenue is what's funded a lot of these professional services which were needed to help us get through that project.

Thanks Paul.

But now that we don't have those revenues coming in and we still have those high professional services.

Well, we didn't spend all the revenue. So

Okay.

There's still surplus funds. Plenty of surplus funds. So, is there still Fairlife um associated project fees or or plan reviews that require that level of expertise outside of the departments that would typically do that?

Uh in short, yes. um with it being a design build project and even though they've made significant progress, believe it or not, they're still making design changes currently. Um so we are still utilizing our third party consulting firm to aid in the plan review of each revision that we get and we anticipate that continuing through the remainder of this year and early into next year.

Thank you. um zoning board of appeals. Uh the only real change here that you'll notice um is a basically a swap that reflects um a change to our current uh Demarco Taylor law firm rather than the previous W2 uh employee which was reflected in 25. So that's why the uh those two lines uh are basically indicating a switch of sorts. The same for planning.

Um and then in this section uh master plan expenses. So in 2025 we had budgeted 150,000. Um because this is a multi-year project that will span into next year, we're reflecting uh a $50,000 expense associated with those costs. Uh but again, u the grant funds we did receive will offset that expense. On the benefits side, we saw a pretty good increase uh to the retirement contributions. And some of that's due to increased rates and also the reallocation across all the funds. Uh the medical insurance for employees up substantially. Uh basically I I found that that one wasn't being allocated properly either. So I had to rightsize it. Um so it's not all due to increases in employees or to rate increases. Although there is also a 12% rate increase baked in there as well. Uh and then the retirees insurance that's up about 22,000 and uh as I stated earlier there have been large increases to the

Medicare supplemental plans. Uh the premiums have gone up um almost 100% over two years, believe it or not. Uh we had like an 80% increase uh from 24 to 25 and now we'll probably be looking at maybe another 20%. So

at some point do you look at sharing some of the cost increases? Is is is there something different with municipal government versus the commercial sector? I'm the newest one here, but like I know even my husband works for the post office and his costs go up every single year. Are we absorbing 100% of the increases in the budget? Uh it depends on whatever union contract uh the employee retired under. That drives how the medical insurance is covered for the remainder of their lives. But yeah, many pay a percent, but that percent is a fixed percent, not a fixed amount, but a fixed percent over their life.

I see.

Yep. And uh those supplemental plans have gone up quite a bit because of uh congressional changes and the Medicare law uh pushing more of the cost toward the insurance companies. Basically, they're covering less, so it has to be picked up by the insurance companies, which caused the huge spike in premiums.

Yeah,

it's tough. And those increases actually happened last year, but then the federal government government put money towards that so that we wouldn't see those huge increases last year. Is that correct?

Pardon?

I said that that increase happened last year. Yeah.

But the federal government came out with some program to put money towards it so that we wouldn't see those huge increases last year.

Uh they pushed it till after the election.

Yes. Thank you.

Yeah. So you wouldn't actually see it till January of 25.

Correct. and when it was actually effective in like September of 24.

Mhm.

That's just the truth.

Are all these provisional or um position or is it you know appointed position for all the employees that you have in your department?

In my department currently?

Yes. Currently I there is one provisional employee of the two Mark and I make up Mark Stein and I make up the department of engineering at this point and of that Mark is still provisional. He has yet to take his uh his exam.

Take the what?

His exam has not been scheduled yet.

Okay. Thank you. That it. I like it. Any other questions or comments?

Yeah.

All right.

Okay. You got us back on track, guys.

And we're going to be hearing from you in a little bit. Right after Pat presents, you guys are back up

doing a workshop presentations tonight. So, all right. Well, our last department head presentation of 2026 uh tender budget is Pat Stevens, our highway superintendent. Thank you. Good evening.

Good evening.

Try to make this brief, but it's a little tough.

A lot of lines

with this budget. There's a lot of lines. uh a lot of moving parts that we analyze every year throughout the year, but um got a few notes on a few different things. So, uh general fund townwide uh is where we're starting here. Um so, most of the items you'll see in here, the first couple lines are salaries for employees. Those are aligned with pre-established uh increases, whether it's per uh white collar contracts or uh salary matrix for appointed employees such as myself. Um so those are possible increases. They are merit-based increases but they are uh always a potential. So we budget for them. Um in the area of part-time employees that's the first uh big shift that you see there. That is actually a shift in how we look at it. So we had this line and we said uh okay we're putting a small amount for part-time employee in here but we actually have a bigger dollar value for part-time employee. And the way it was distributed before was across different operations. So, we had a portion of part-time employees in in snow and ice, which is winter dispatchers, things of that nature. Uh, we had a portion, I believe, in leaves. Uh, and then possibly in general road repairs, some different areas where there's labor lines. Um, and

we kind of said, well, if we're going to have this line, we might as well make it all inclusive of all part-time employees. So, that's what we did. So, what you'll see throughout the rest of the labor lines is a slight decrease, even though their their contracts also require an increase. And that is where the roughly $73,000 uh increase in that part-time employee comes from. So it's not an actual increase in number of employees. It's just a redistribution of our total labor c cost across the department into part-time. So if you look at this part-time now line, it shows what's being spent on all part-time employees before it was distributed amongst the different operations where those employees would work. Either way works. Uh we just felt that this was a better way to represent this line um on labor lines. Just a quick general because they do shift around. They all have increase covered by some of the union contracts. Uh but the way they're distributed into the different funds and lines of this budget is we take the total number of people that we have uh possible increases for the year and we get a total number and then we utilize pass information on how much time is spent on each service within here whether it's snow and ice leaves general road repair all of those and then we assign a percentage to that total. So all of the labor that's in here represents the

total number of employees that we need and we're budgeted for and then the distribution of it. We uh try to align with any averages that we have over the course of 3 years and things of that nature. So that will apply for every labor line you see throughout uh the highway ccentric budget here. Um so continuing to move down through the lines, the other thing you'll see in this section of the general is some adjustments that are driven by the new building and the new facility. Um the general improvements line has gone down quite drastically over $40,000. That's because a brand new building should not need uh nearly as much general improvements as the previous facility. Uh you move along down to capital improvements for the building. Same story there was 15,000 now it's 2500. Uh that is because we shouldn't have to have a as much as many capital improvements on the building and the facility. Uh we actually had a decrease in security monitoring. Currently using a different security monitoring uh company than we have in the past. It uh kind of came along with the new building. We get a year of service and their service for monitoring uh all of the security and fire for that building is actually less than we had seen in the other facility. So that's interesting given some of the other per square foot costs for maintenance are going to go up. We'll see those uh a little bit

lower down. Uh payroll time attendance system. Uh we are working toward a digital a more digital form that aligns with our time clock uh converted back to a digital time clock. With that uh we're working on some different modules to have uh time off and acral time uh submitted electronically. So there's some fees associated in 2026 for that. That's where that line uh popped up for the 4,000. Uh moving down other significant changes you'll see cleaning has gone up uh significantly more than double. Um, so we were cleaning a certain square foot of space. Now we have a new facility where we are cleaning in a similar way a much larger space. The space for 50 people, not the space for 18 where the 50 people were working out of. So there's an increase there. However, this cost and service is associated with the townwide cleaning contract. So any review or RFPs we put out about that and any increases we see could be this would be affected by anything we do with that. I heard that question come up earlier. Um then moving along down, we have some increases in utilities year-over-year. Um that's twofold. Uh one is the new the size of the new building, the 82,000 ft² versus the roughly 25,000 ft² that it uh replaced. Uh it's also because the old

building hasn't been demolished yet. Uh we saw some costs last year associated with keeping certain services, heat, and water in that building. Um and that hasn't quite stopped. Uh obviously coming up this fall we'll be talking about Salt Barn. Um that project has the demolition of the old building included. Once the old building is demolished, I think these will adjust down slightly year-over-year, but as long as the old existing building is in place, there will be some semblance of overrun in that. So that's also included in some of these uh large increases, but it's primarily driven just by the size of the space uh that it that we created uh versus what we had before uh which was needed to house our fleet. Um and that's that's the majority there. So overall the this section is is up um you know 90 or so thousand but most of that is a shift in labor onto the one line the 73 portion of it more so than uh than any actual major increases. Uh moving on to the next one we have street lighting and signals. Um you'll see the first line here is an example of what I was talking about. uh you're going to see a trend down of a couple thousand on this labor line. That's a

part of that $73,000 that was sipped into part-time. There was a portion of this that was part-time labor that's now been taken out because in general that should increase by the percentage percentages outlined in the union contracts. Uh but in this case, it's going down. The only reason it's going down is because of that shift to the other section. Um the rest of the items in that section are general increases. Uh the road striping is done by Monroe County as is the intersection lighting, the last line of there. Uh their costs continue to go up just like a lot of our services. So as we procure those services from them for those things, uh they tend to go up by a certain percentage year-over-year, which is what we project to happen next year. Uh off-road drainage, uh we had a shift in labor there as well. That was based on the running average. uh we were able to take a pretty hard look with with Paul and ourselves this year at a few of our running averages for uh labor and in addition to the part-time shift there were a few areas we were seeing we were expending more labor uh on certain services. So with the the adjustment there from 38,000 to 70,000 just reflects what we've needed uh for this section in the past uh 3 to 5 years. Um and then that next section for debt service is

yeah next is uh debt service which reflects the estimated amount of principle and interest on our bonds dissipation note which we just sold on Tuesday. Um actually you said this number is going to come in less than that now. Uh this was done prior to us knowing the actual figure. So I'll make that adjustment in the next few days. The borrowing is around 24 million. Uh that's to pay for the first part of the project and also the upcoming salt barn and the truck wash station. So anticipating that happening ready for that if uh if we get there which is still the plan. Uh so now we jump into highway fund the townwide um townwide highway. First section there is equipment. Very very large section. uh we have a lot of uh labor in that section uh which you'll see again went down slightly here which it doesn't happen per contract that is really a shift or redistribution of the total number of employees to various different areas that you'll see. So that's the only reason that's going down uh as you see a little bit less effort needed here year-over-year. So we made a minor adjustment uh there.

um moving down through Chips's purchases. Um that gets directly tied to a piece of equipment. Uh this year it's actually a portion of a of a truck that we associated there. Uh but we're planning to spend that much CHIPS funding. You'll see the offsetting revenue line for that in the revenue section for here. Uh so it aligns directly. That's where we're trying to we will utilize uh state funding in the form of chips to purchase a piece of equipment that's centric to that work. Um then we move on to uh the biggest line in here. The rest of them are are kind of in line and then we move to purchase of equipment. Uh this year that line is up. Uh the pieces of equipment that we purchase are of big enough value that if there is any fluctuation in this line. It's not small which basically means you can't um have the pieces of equipment you can unless there's a big jump or not. the the reason this line needs to be kept healthy and and and I continue to to go after it is to get into a a different cycle, a cycle that drives down maintenance. And we are able to realize that this year when we get down to the maintenance line, that line has come down uh roughly $100,000. That's a result of some of our equipment starting to get um newer. So, trying to drive that maintenance cost down and cut down on breakdown time, cut down on

equipment, just uh repairs that we're doing. Um, it's there's a drastic improvements that can be made. We're now able to get like a 7-year full warranty on our new trucks, which means the cost of operation of our large trucks, our large fleet trucks that are doing the plowing and the hauling uh in the first 10 years versus the second 10 years is drastic. Uh, 5 to 10 times as much year-over-year if you're able to utilize them for those first 10 years. Uh so far here between supply chain issues and just the size of our fleet, I've yet to be able to sell a used piece of equipment and large fleet truck that was less than 20 years old. Uh so our average is one of the highest in in Monroe County uh as far as total age of trucks. Um so I continue to push for this line. This line is extremely important. Um, we'll see this year a slight decrease in maintenance costs, which is what really what I was hoping to track. The other line that will change over time as we're able to rotate the vehicles out in a better pattern will be the resale. Right now, our resale line is extremely small. Uh, a 20-year-old truck, although it costs over $300,000 to replace now, is still barely worth $20,000.

Uh when you when you bring that down and and you get that up over $100,000, the net year-over-year cost of the of the piece of equipment to replace is significant. Uh Paul has it down there. Right now we're projecting 25 to last year 16,000 the f this coming year. Um and it's really honestly if it's a six wheeler and a 10-heeler, they usually go for $8,000. We've seen that at auction. Uh, so there's a really serious discrepancy in resale value when you go from a 10-y old truck to a 20- year old truck. Um, as well as downtime, just the amount of hours that it spends down, the the probability that it's going to break down during a snow and ice operation. Some of these times when these vehicles can't go down, we maintain them to the highest ability possible, but um, a 20-year-old truck is still a little bit of a liability. We really need to get that down. 15 10 would be ideal but even if we got to an average age of 15 years uh we would we'd be in a much better place. So uh primarily uh that line the the 1,110,000 is three additional trucks. Uh as we were going through this and discussing these lines I mentioned my goal was to replace two trucks a year. We currently have 24 full-size trucks. That would get us into a 12-ear rotation. Unfortunately, um, for a lot of

different reasons, supply chain legislation, um, I have not achieved two trucks per year. So, I've been here 4 years and we've only gotten six trucks. We should have eight in hand right now. We don't. Um, that's not budgetary a budgetary issue. It's it's just the truck market and and the type of truck we're getting. So, it's continues to be a challenge, but uh we put a lot of time and a lot of thought and I'm continuing to do a lot of analysis in this line to make sure my approach to this holds true because it's massive amount of money and it needs to yield long-term savings. I very strongly believe it will uh and it's starting to show that it trending that way and it will, but uh we will continue to monitor it, but that is the reason for the larger value in that line this year. Um, we go down through to uh vehicle operating lease expense. So, the vehicle lease program that we have is our our pickups, our Foreman's vehicles primarily, and a couple of our shop vehicles. Uh, we continue to try to exercise the same program with those. We want to be rotating them out in a way that the resale value is very high, uh, which minimizes our year-over-year cost and time to spend on maintenance. Um, so that line is going up to facilitate more vehicles going into it and possibly um buying out and and eliminating some of

the fees from that program, but primarily just putting more vehicles into it that just haven't come up in rotation yet. Um, that'll be one of the first times we rotate a vehicle out in 5 years, less than 80,000 mi. And that's the that's the sweet spot for the resale. You still get more than 50% of the cost of the vehicle back if you're able to get it um switched out. in that time frame. So that should drive this line down uh in long term. Those are the big lines in there. Uh so if you go down to the equipment repair and maintenance, uh Paul already kind of jumped there, but you'll see that that is again down almost $100,000 year-over-year. Uh we were able to track that for the last 3 years, and uh we haven't fully utilized it. Haven't needed to fully utilize it. So we're not going to budget for it next year. We hope that that is a sign of everything I've just talked about that um the the vehicles that we have replaced and renewed are not needing as many big repairs and therefore our cost is going down significantly already. Um then we kind of go down to the revenue section. Um you'll see the snow and ice mineral county, snow and ice New York State. Um those are revenues that go against the large snow and ice cost. You'll see um in the next section for uh

maintaining their roads for snow and ice. Uh Monroe County, other governments. This is the equipment portion of the highway work that we do. Uh we charge them rental fees for our trucks and every piece of equipment you see out there on the roads. Uh we're currently actually out of town unfortunately doing a county road. Um, fortunately and unfortunately, we're happy to have the revenue work, but we always want to focus on the county roads that are in town first. This year, there wasn't a lot of county road work within Webster. So, um, in order to keep these revenue lines in check, uh, we were out of town, so we're down in, uh, Penfield and Parington right now on Baird Road doing some work. Uh, so all the equipment you see there generates the revenue in these lines. We expect it to be similar next year, um, as it was this year. um sale of equipment. Like we said, we want that line to go up. It should significantly go up once we get into the better cycle of rotating our vehicles out um earlier. Right now, between supply chain issues on trucks, uh I haven't uh done any planning for that line to go up yet. I hope to realize some of it and then, you know, have some averages in order to support uh an annual projection of that to go up. Um, so the last line in the revenue is that CHIPS line. So you'll see the CHIPS consolidated highway. That one directly correlates to the CHIPS expense line um,

higher up in the section. It's the exact same value. It represents that we're getting the revenue from the CHIPS funding in New York State to pay for the piece of equipment. And then we're back to debt service again and employee benefits.

Debt service. We're just uh paying down some equipment that was financed a few years back. Uh so there's about two more years to go on that employee benefits are pretty for this fund are pretty flat year to year. So there's not much to speak of overall probably, I should mention the fund transfer, there's a transfer of 550,000 that actually comes from the highway parttime fund and 50,000 from the the special drainage district and that is to those two funds utilize the equipment that's owned by the highway townwide fund. So it's only right that they compensate the townwide fund for the use of that equipment. So it's it's basically an inner fund management fee to handle the cost of the equipment usage.

Yep. It that makes a lot of sense. It it what allows the that dollar value to be a little bit higher, but it makes sense because we use the equipment on all of these funds, but we have to pay for it only out of one, right?

Um so that's the the key to those transfers. It's a huge help. Uh it's a been a big thing the last few years. So jump to part town. Park town fund.

All right. So the next uh is a different fund. It's our part town highway part town fund. Uh the first section in there is general road repairs. Um the one of the bigger things you'll see there is employee compensation shift. So the biggest shift and when I say shift it means that um some of these dollars were allocated in different areas and you'll see some go up and some go down. So with general road repairs and then the permanent improvement section which is next. Uh we historically paid for the permanent improvement sections which would be our capital projects throughout town full reconstruction of roads um with town dollars and we used uh the chips funding uh primarily for general road repairs. Um I think I said that right. Either that it's backwards. But uh in the past few years they've started to shift what you can use the CHIPS funding for. Uh and one of the provisions was that you can only use it on a road for every 10 years. So we've started to make the shift to use CHIPS funding. The the line Paul has highlighted there for our permanent improvements which we are never on a road where we do a significant capital improvement within 10 years. Our capital improvements should last 20 to 30 years uh full life expectancy for a bigger reconstruction.

So, we're utilizing the CHIPS funds for that so we don't come up against uh their barriers of using CHIPS funds on the same road within 10 years. So, you'll see a significant increase in the CHIPS line of the permanent improvements. Um, and then the the dollars that come from the the taxes and the town money are going to be used on general road repairs, which is primarily our uh preventative maintenance program, which is chip seal. So, chip seal ends up in the uh general road repairs. We're going to use town funds to pay for more of that and use our CHIPS funding from the state to pay for the permanent improvements. So, that represents most of the fluctuation that you'll see in here other than the annual u cost increases and um and things of that nature that go along with our salaries. Um it's a little confusing but in general it is a shift from from one task to another. Uh then we move into the other services uh which has overtime pay. We saw some of those go down slightly. That was a result of the averages that we looked at. We were seeing that year-over-year the averages uh weren't being utilized. So we we took them down by a few thousand each. Uh leaf collection. Uh there's some shift in pay there. We weren't seeing uh the money being

utilized for overtime. We're able to use see it in the regular wages, regular time, which is good. It means that our scheduling and our uh logistics on it is good for avoiding overtime. So, we shifted some funds there. So, a decrease in overtime and an increase in regular wages um for that section to cover what we're seeing year-over-year. Overall for the section, not a significant change. Uh snow removal um there there's a few contractual things with that. No significant changes year-over-year. Uh we're seeing a little bit of um I think with the lighter years other than this past year, the years previous uh the Monroe County is based on a three-year average. There's some different things with that that causes some of these to go down. Certainly no less roads to plow. I promise you that. But um just some adjustments in what we're seeing for averages. Um snow and ice we bumped up uh slightly. It's a very difficult year for uh ice materials. So salt and deicing material the last line there uh we continue to see those prices go up and then this past year with the shortage uh there was a lot of fluctuation there. So we want to make sure to keep that line healthy so that we have as much material on hand as we can store. Hopefully we'll be able to store more very soon when we get the upsized barn. Uh services for other

governments. Um you have the compensation county roads. These are actually pretty tightly tied to the revenue lines. uh you'll see uh at the end of this section. So they represent um the expense that we put toward uh some of our revenue generating work uh work for the county um whether it's overtime burds or brush uh do the next section retire or um employee benefits we do see a pretty good increase in retirement contribution uh which as I said was a reallocation and also higher rates we've been seeing uh medical insurance uh for employees uh that actually was budgeted generously from previous years. So you're actually seeing a decrease in that budget line even though there is about a 12% increase baked in there uh when to the actual expenses. Retirey expenses for medical insurance uh that's up 50,000 which is substantial increase as I explained earlier. Uh that's what we've been seeing across the board. Um, so overall employee benefits are up about 57,000 which in aggregate not too bad. Uh, this fund does benefit from sales

tax revenue. Uh, within this budget, I've actually shifted some of the revenue to the general town fund. So, you're seeing a big decrease right here. Um, and the the goal is actually to reduce the part-time tax rates to zero through the utilization of sales tax revenue and appropriate fund balance. And here are some of the other revenue.

Yeah, the other revenues are the services that we talked about earlier. There's expense lines in there to represent them. But um essentially in order to remove snow and ice from the whole town and and do a lot of these services across the whole town, there's an expenditure for the total and then these revenues all offset that. Uh so these represent the services we provide uh for the state and county and this there's a pretty good chunk um in there for both sections. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue which uh really helps the the overall budget. Uh there's also the chips line in there under revenue which is reflected directly in the uh permanent improvements. Now there's a permanent improvement expense for $450. That's what we plan to get reimbured for on chips. Uh so that section is there. Yep.

Then we get into the transfers.

Here's the other side of the $500,000 transfer that goes over to the highway park town fund that we spoke of a few minutes ago.

I think that leaves the drainage.

That leaves drainage. So uh drainage again we looked at some averages and different things. So the the trickiest part about this one is that there is a large need within the community. We get a lot of drainage calls. We have a lot of drainage jobs. Our backlog in completing drainage jobs is still very long. Um I say 3 years that's because that can be in certain situations depending on the priority of the situation. Some of the maintenance type items still takes us that long to get there. But at the same time, we weren't utilizing this um in the labor in this year-over-year. So, we're going to bring it down. So, a lot of the adjustments here are coming down to match year's averages. Uh but we do have a lot of need. And as this fund stands on its own and starts to have balance and and we're able to get staff and equipment in line, uh it it likely will go back up uh in cost just because there's still a lot of need. uh for 2026, I wasn't feeling confident that we'd be able to fully utilize the averages that we had seen,

so we decreased it, which will result in a uh decreased rate on on the tax bill for our residents, which is very good. Um but uh as soon as we are able to um get things organized, it's likely that that uh annual fee will go back up so that we can complete more of this work and get caught up on our backlog. uh employee benefits. Um actually I right sized a couple of these accounts uh based on the historical uh spend of uh labor dollars. Uh so they budgeted a little high so I just corrected those mainly for the retirement and for the medical insurance. Um and here's the the 50,000 which being transferred over the highway Tomwide fund for equipment use. And there's just a few revenues. Interest is the biggest one. It's actually coming down to about a $35 rate right now, which was 39 last year. So, it's a decrease even though

in the future, I would expect it'll go up.

Yep. Like I said, for drainage work,

there's significant need. Uh there's a material lines in the line in there that we've we put up a little bit. Uh there are some of these areas where we can utilize services services from thirdparty contractors to do things like pipelining. Um so we anticipate doing as much of that as possible. Um if we can't perform everything ourselves, we'll have to start to work toward that which is good because there will be areas in town that need that. That's our last section. I took an extremely long amount.

Hey, you're right on time.

Am I?

Not bad.

Thought I only had 15 minutes.

Thanks Pat.

Thanks. Any questions?

No, I said this just a statement and I said the same thing last year that I genuinely appreciate your strategic approach to budgeting for the highway department. It would be very easy to just not invest in new equipment and always be focused on patching and patching. And we learned from the sewage wastewater treatment plant and and other large projects in the town that that's not a very effective way in the long run from a cost perspective. So the the work you're doing there is just I think really benchmark um the the thought in the truck rotation the the thoughtfulness in how you're leveraging chip seal to get the most out of that by I think I I wrote that down. So you're using the chip seal for some of the longer run projects so you don't run into the 10-year issue. I I I think you're doing a fantastic job. Thank you. Thanks, Ben. Jenny,

thank you,

John. Good.

Good. Patty,

no questions. Thank you, Pat.

All right. Um,

thanks, Brad.

Josh, you're back up, aren't you? We're done with budget. Now we're into, I guess, like what we'd call a normal workshop with the two agenda items tonight. Um, there'll be somewhat speed dating because we have our regular town board meeting is scheduled to start at 7. So, I'm sure everybody who's been here since 4:30 or prior would like to have a couple minutes in between the meetings to grab a cup water or something. So, we'll see how we make out of that. So without any further ado, uh Josh Artuso, our director of community development, will discuss and present the Ronda Quake Bay Technical Staff IMA that is expiring this year. And as you're sitting down, T Josh, it's funny how things come full circle. uh Kathy Thomas um who was the town supervisor through the '9s and uh I think in the early 2000s um and unfortunately she passed away within the last few years. Um, she was

very good friends with my father-in-law and my father-in-law, Bill Dylan, they became friends when he was the town supervisor in Rhonda Quake and is it Channing Filbrick in Penfield was a supervisor at the back in the '9s. They all had to get together around quite Penfield and and Webster because that's when this started, isn't it Josh?

Yes. this this this IMA between the three towns that all abut the Arandcoite Bay I guess prior to the mid90s they didn't have any agreement like this

correct

the way I understand it and as the supervisors and the county got together uh it forged some friendships between the Webster supervisor Randquay and Penfield supervisor so go right ahead now 30 years later

cool almost already done.

Oh, I thought I bought you enough time.

Thank you.

No problem.

Okay, I promise to be quick. This is what I like to call uh pretty lowhanging fruit and uh just uh happy to be going over this tonight. So, let me pull up the slideshow here. And so yeah, the topic is uh renewing the intermunicipal agreement uh between the town of Webster and the other municipalities and county that abut the bay. Um so a little bit of background um there's really two committees. the around quite bay coordinating committee. Um this was established in 1985 as an advisory committee uh through an intermunicipal agreement between the three towns that surround the bay uh Webster, Arando and Penfield as well as Monroe County Planning and Development. Um so the purpose of the I uh BCC uh is to coordinate among various levels of government that have an interest in the bay um all levels of public and

private use of the area and to develop recommend and monitor related policies. Um so the around quite bait technical staff is a subcommittee um that the membership is made up of uh my counterparts at the town of Arand quite and Penfield as well as a staff member from Monroe County Planning and Development. Uh there's also a representative from the New York State uh Department of Environmental Conservation and the Monroe County Soil and Water uh Conservation District. Uh so we meet monthly. Uh it was really created uh to uh establish a line of communications amongst the towns uh particularly around uh proposed development projects along the bay that had the potential to impact uh other communities. Um so common activities that we discuss at our monthly meetings um whenever there's a proposed uh break wall uh installation or repair uh installation of permanent docks, moorings and construction of boat houses.

Uh alterations and additions to existing structures that are uh pretty much adjacent to the the to the shoreline. uh anything really within 300 ft. Uh we also talk about um excavation, dredging, filling, any projects that would uh include any of those activities adjacent to the bay. Uh boater activities uh and engagement with the local marina owners. Uh we we do have attendance by some of the marina owners and they are able to provide us with um information on uh boating demands, water levels, uh things of that nature. Um regulatory signage in the bay such as speed limit signs and no wake zones. And then of course uh protection and preservation of the wood lots and steep slopes that are adjacent to the bay. Um part of this committee's charge is to periodically update the Arandcoy Bay Harbor Management Plan um with relevant policies which we're actually uh we have completed a draft of that update and it

is with uh New York State under review. We do meet uh every month on the third Thursday of the month. Uh the town of Penfield hosts these meetings uh at their town hall and they also offer a virtual option for those that can't attend in person. Um so the crux of tonight is basically to allow uh the supervisor to renew uh this intermunicipal agreement. Uh on the left side of the screen you see the resolution from 10 years ago back in 2015. Um and then on the right side of the screen is about a six or seven page document which is a draft of the that intermunicipal agreement. The only substantive change this time around is that the the county law department um has indicated that they don't think uh the term of 10 years is is actually legal. So, they've made a slight uh provision that allows for it to expire in 5 years with the option to have the supervisor sign to renew for another 5 years. So um the IMA will

technically not be for the next 10 years but again it has that added sunset provision uh that would allow the supervisor to renew it at that time without having to go through um this process. Uh and then any resolution that this board and Penfield and Arandcoy pass, um we we have to provide those resolutions because this will be going before the Monroe County Legislature uh at their September meeting. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions or hear any comments that anyone may have.

Thank you, Josh. And just so everybody knows, well, if people have questions and comments, I just wanted to know at the 7:00 board meeting, resolution number uh six is the resolution authorizes supervisor to renew a tenure in a municipal agreement with Monro County through 2035 town's participation in the Randquay Bay coordinating and technical staff committees. So that presentation kind of educate the board on the past, present, future. Um, so does anybody have any questions on that because I I would come back to that at the regular board meeting?

I do not

I don't have any questions. I think it's good that there's collaboration between the towns that all abut the area and it's important to have um a unified approach in how the waterfront is developed and managed. I I don't have any questions about the IMA per se, and I don't know if we want to answer this question now or when we get to the resolution, but considering what Josh just told us about the 10-year, do we want that resolution to say to state through 2035?

Uh should be five years

because that's what that's how it's read.

Yeah. The agenda item says that um perhaps we do 2030 augmented.

Yes.

Uh got it.

That's a good point. um you just gave the symptom I don't want to call it the symptom of the overhaul disease when we moved to putting in the Webster Herald and on the website and social media platforms our board agendas eight calendar days ahead of the board meeting. It means that that we have to send in these agenda items I think 10 days before like Monday. Uh, and so as things kind of go on and on and on, sometimes Kim and I miss the actual agenda item uh, description. No problem.

And it can vary from what the actual

clarify. So, thanks.

All right. Well, that moves us on to Keith Mortimer. A presentation about a proposed 500 ft sidewalk on Lake Road from Bay Road to Sandbar Park. You're up, Keith. Someone's tossing in this chair.

All right. Good evening. Uh so tonight's presentation um is actually in conjunction with another board resolution that's in front of the board members tonight. Um and this is to enter into an IMA with Monroe County Department of Transportation. um in uh in association with a new section of uh sidewalk along Lake Road. Um just a little bit of a understanding of where we're at. Bay Road um tease into Lake um and then to the west um or to the left of your screen um is the Sandbar Park, the new Sandbar Park. So, I think it's interesting to point out that back when the Sandbar Park uh presentations and design were being pulled together that this connection to Bay Road was always um envisioned. Uh and to that end, we um would like to acknowledge that uh we have gone forward with applying for a grant um for the design and permitting of phases of the these next phases of Sandbar Park. And included in that grant um is actually the design fees as well for the sidewalk

itself. Um some technicalities or technical items about this. Um again um it is a it would be a 10 to 10t wide um concrete sidewalk. Um this would connect up to some existing um sidewalk sections that are already out there. Uh it would it would make our connection directly from Sandbar Park to um Bay Bay Road where um the county is proposing to do a road diet um and increase the uh decrease travel lanes and increase um shoulders for pedestrian accommodations. kind of about this project. It's a little more um a little more complicated than just standard putting down some concrete. Um uh it's uh again it's 10 foot wide and we would typically propose 5 foot, but it might be actually used as more of a multi-use type of of facility. Um there is the need for a retaining wall. We're not quite sure exactly how tall that has to be, but um there is some steep slopes that we may have to retain. Uh some guide rail relocation

and we also have some storm water facilities that would need to be modified or extended. Um the nice thing about this project is is we have a lot of rightway out there. So we don't need to take any rightway and we don't need any easements to make any of this work occur. project costs um all in um based on that concept that was in front of you. We're in the neighborhood of $291,000. That includes 229,000 for the actual construction includes a 20% contingency and 61,000 for design and other costs associated with Seeker and um what we call soft costs. So, the IMA um that's going to be before you um tonight is actually in association with the cost sharing assistance that the Monroe County Department of Transportation has. It's called the Monroe County U Municipal Sidewalk Funding Program. They have some criteria that we have to meet, which we do meet um for our project. Um it's got to be a new concrete sidewalk. Um, it's got to be located on a county road, which we are. And there is a 50% the funding is a

50% reimbursement of all of the construction costs. Um, I just pulled an excerpt out of there um for everyone's reference. You don't need to read through it all, but they do it is a complete coverage of of pretty much all construction costs. What is not covered is design, right, acquisition, permitting, insurance, seeker, etc. As I mentioned, um we have gone forward and and um asked for those costs um as part of a grant in association with phase two and three of Sandbar Park. So what does that mean for the town from a a dollar perspective? Um well, there's really two scenarios. The first scenario is if we receive our grant um for the Sandbar Park which covers our um design fees, our contribution would be around $114, $115,000. That's 50% of the $229,000 construction estimate at this point. Scenario two would be um not receiving the not being awarded the grant for those design fees. And that um would mean that we'd have to roll those costs

up into our contribution which would bring us around 175 176 um,000. So the proposed estimated intermunicipal agreement with Monroe uh county DOT um is the 114 115,000 rounded for good measure. Um our only um outlier there is whether the design fees are covered or not. And with that questions, comments?

Yes. Can you go back to the original the slide that has the picture of the sidewalk on there, please?

Uh, yep. What's What does it What's the square footage or linear footage of the sidewalk? So, at this point, we're looking at Let me go back to the present. We're estimating somewhere between 4 and 500 linear feet. Um, that's to be yet to be determined. It just depends on how we tie in, how far in we have to tie in, and actually how far around that curve to Bay Road that we would we need to take it.

So, this has to be handicap compliant, right? So, the sidewalks got to be like, was that 5T now? 5T wide or six?

I believe

I think

the minimum the minimum is five,

right?

The minimum is five. We we are tying we have 10 only because we're tying into an existing 10- foot wide um sidewalk that leads to Sandbar Park. And we also come probably will realize just based on the road diet that's going to occur out there with Bay Road that it may become more multi-use with uh that's a widesp where where you where we think the where that sidewalk will come into where we're we applied CFA for this design of the phase two and phase two is right there on that screen. And this this would bring a 7ft shoulder on uh Bay Road from Clem down to uh Lake and then this 4 to 500T sidewalk that would abut into the Sandbar Park gravel walk path whatever.

Um so that was the kind of planning aspect of it. I will say that uh Frank Chardy and Mark John's, the two uh county legislators who represent Webster, uh reached out to some key town officials back in July of last year and said, "We really want you to apply for this county sidewalk 50% of construction grant." And we have been looking at different county roads, which Lake Road is one. And this is uh this is the best uh option, especially in the totality of the Bay Road diet and the uh ways that we're trying to get people into Sandbar Park besides just cars. Uh so it's a it kind of serves about you kill about nine birds with one stone.

You really do. And the other nice part about this is is we're able to layer our grant um potential award for a grant including our design fees into this as well.

Who's doing the sidewalk design? Is it the same engineering group that worked on the uh Sandbar Park?

Uh it's the MRB group who is doing this the sidewalk.

Okay. Any other questions or comments?

Well, if if 10 is pretty wide, the wide sidewalk you're looking at,

is it possible to make it more affordable by doing a normal 5-ft sidewalk and then when you get to the end feathering it out to like attach to the other 10t connection? Certainly

just an opportunity to look at another way to have that sidewalk and potentially save a little money and still have that walkway.

You're going to save a lot of money because it's you pay by the square foot.

What What are their engineering fees for this key sidewalk? Um soft all the soft co all soft costs in um was 613

and the estimate that you have is that that's the proposal and it's actually the the number or is it that's going to be you know different number come once we

estimated fee at this point.

Yeah because it it's always like we have surprises. Is there like a cushion or like an emergency or something in there so that we

It's our best understanding of the fee at this moment. Yes.

So MRB is not the same engineering company that did the Sandbar Park. Correct. Or is this is this is different?

I I'm not sure. Was Mr. uh was Paso the design?

Paso and Bayer

and Bayer were the design team for Sandbar Park. What do you think of this, Paul? Do we have a budget that set aside for this project?

You,

Paul.

Yeah, that's thing. Yeah,

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I'm so sorry.

No, no. I'm saying that, you know, with the town we we set aside a budget or something, you know, for this project

so that not going to like

determine how it's going to be fun.

Is that microphone not on?

Does not seem to be.

No, it's not.

Okay.

Is is there one over there that uh and as Paul moves over there? Um,

thank you.

The we had to Oh, go ahead, Paul.

It would have to be funded as a capital project and we have to determine the funding source whether we borrow the funds or um it would come from general fund. So, it could come from general fun.

I still can't. Can you get that microphone closer to you? Get another microphone, please.

All right, let's try it for the third time.

There we go. That's better. There we go. There we go. uh we uh it would have to be a capital project and we would have to uh determine the funding source for their project which could be general fund townwide. Uh there are surplus funds there that could be used or or possibly it could be rolled into the the bond participation note for the Sandbar Park if we'd have to take a look at that.

Thank you Paul. So, I think it it's it's critical to kind of because I can see and these are great questions because Sandbar Park, this sidewalk technically is not in Sandbar Park. It's a connector that gets you right to the edge of Sandbar Park.

So, we checked with CFA leading up to July 31st because our main grant that we were going for was parks and wreck for the design and engineering of phase 2 education center and phase 3 walkway along the lake. So we were told by the state that the best way to get awarded on that was to not because we got turned down in 24 for the whole kitten kaboodleoodle on phase 2 construction and design and engineering. When we did the posttop or uh you know they they sit down with us and say well what can we do to make us win? Uh Josh in more words or less they said listen the state loves this project. It's a beautiful park. They love coming up the dignitaries and cutting ribbons. What you're going to want to do at 2025 CFA is apply for design and engineering of both phase 2 education center and phase three the walkway. Okay. We said okay we'll do that. And then all of a

sudden as we had the Bayro diet coming into play, jumping into the frame was gez if we could get that county sidewalk which uh Frank Chardy and uh Mark John's have been on us for the last year saying come on man there's there's $10 million and all the other towns are using it but here we are. We go to county legislator meetings and we're not using it. And I said well great this is the perfect project to use it on. And to the best of my knowledge, if we sign this IMA tonight, uh it's almost a it's a fatal comple. We're going to get 50% of the construction cost, but the engineering and design cost when we said, "Wait a minute, we'd like to see if we can get that within the grant on the CFA." and we went to the state and said, "Listen, this sidewalk is not in Sandbar Park, but it connects to the the pathway that is into phase 2. Would you consider that within our application for the engineering and design of phase 2 and phase 3?" And to my pleasant surprise, they said yes. Now, we had a deadline to get the certain things you need to put together by July 31st. And because MRB is on the

town's contract, it retained as our engineering firm. And we talked to Paul because this is a professional service, we don't have a lot of time here. We have to submit with this application the design and some of the stuff and whatever. And so MRB basically jumped into that and we were able to apply by July 31st and we'll find out in December if we got awarded on the design and engineering of phase 2 and phase 3 and this sidewalk. In parallel, we want to go to the county to get this what we think is almost a rubber stamp approval of half the construction cost. And if we do that, then you can see that a project that's around 300,000 and it could be, you know, uh, redesigned to five foot and feathering and all that stuff. As you can see on this picture, the second picture, and and you know, Keith, I I don't blame it. You have a picture of Bay Road as it is right now, four lanes with a 3-FFT uh uh what do you call it? Shoulder. That's going to be a three lane with a 7ft shoulder. So, we're going to have to work with MC DOT to figure out on Lake Road and on Bay Road,

how does this sidewalk curl around to match up with the 7ft shoulder? And that's why they have 400 to 500 ft cuz it's very hard to tell right now when those things are still up in the air. I'll take a deep breath. Does that help explain a little bit about where we're at on this? Did you say and I apologize for asking this question if you've already explained it, but you had mentioned something about MRB. We used MRB specifically because because the town's they're under contract with the town.

So, here's what happened. Uh back in I think July of 2023, uh Mary Harrington uh and her family moves south. Well, prior to that, Mary and Josh had said, "Look, you know, we got certain things going on in town that we should get an engineering fear, engineering firm on retainer to do certain overflow projects and things like that. This was before we had any idea, and this certainly wasn't because Mary was leaving, but we did a resolution, I'm going to say circa February of 2023 to get them on retainer. And because we did that, we got a preferential billing rate and all that, not because it opened contract. Now, when Mary left, thank goodness we had that because then we had them do the town engineer. They stepped into the position of town engineer and we didn't really have to do too much more resolutions cuz we had already 5 months ago made them on retainer with us. We then spent however months looking for a new town engineer. In May of 2024, we hired Kate. And if you take a look at how much we've spent with MRB, uh, between when Mary was gone and when he showed up, it was a significant amount of money. They were our town engineer.

And really over the last 14- 15 months, and I bird dog this sometimes to Keith's detriment or gritten and Paul. I want to see the billing every month because I want to see how MRB is less and less and less because we have W2 engineering staff. that up.

So, and I don't mean to belabor this.

No, keep going.

Cuz you talk about bird dogging.

When we start late, you guys wall blame Councilman Ko, right?

He's he talked a lot longer.

So, because they're under retainer, I assume assume they're still under retainer. So, we are going directly to them rather than trying to compare an other engineering firm's cost. Not specifically for this project. I'm just talking about projects going forward and if it's inappropriate to bring this time at this time, I apologize because we had a timing issue, John.

There is a project that I looked at

Yep.

similar to what we were going to do

and their engineering costs were half of what MRB's engineering cost proposed,

which is why going forward, I'm just asking the question, is that something we should consider putting RFPs out there?

And I'm going to say it again. We found ourselves, we got an opportunity here. The state said we can put it into the grant application. The deadline is July 31st. We're like, we can go and do, you know, bids and all this stuff. By the time we go through all that process, the opportunity is gone.

I totally understand. This is an outlier. I'm talking about going forward on project.

Oh, without a doubt. Without a doubt. No. And Paul, we talk about that all the time in the procurement policy. Uh I think we do a pretty good job of uh making sure that we uh don't just spend the taxpayers dollars uh flippantly. And I want to make this very clear. This is all constructed as everybody's coming in now at the end of the workshop that I hate to put it this way. If the engineering and design cost is 47,000 versus 61,000, if we get the CFA grant, this sounds terrible. We're not paying for it. The grant is paying the engineering and design cost. Now, I don't want to waste your state tax dollars, but when we looked at this with only a month to go until the July 31st deadline, we didn't really have a lot of time to go out there and see if we can horse trade and do bids and get in front of the board and put out something to uh three or four engineering firms to bid on this. And I certainly think and Keith, you and uh Pat I know because sidewalks and what we did up on Ridge Road a couple years ago with the federal grant the because of the complexity of this design because of culverts and this and that. You guys had said to me that's not out out of line.

So thank you very much Keith. Uh we went a little bit over. It's 7:02. That is the end of the workshop. We're going to start the regular board