Town Board Meeting
put it on we're off and running and Bridget are you all set okay should I proceed on well welcome everybody to the November 16th 2023 Webster Town board meeting of Allegiance PL of Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all Dolly can you take roll call please supervisor flarity here councilman Abbot here councilman kahill here councilwoman wi here count attorney janesse present okay and our first agenda item tonight is the open to the floor where each speaker is allowed up to five minutes to discuss anything to their heart's desire and I think we have one speaker tonight uh John fedu John if you'd like to take the podium good evening um I just wanted to talk a
little bit about uh what's going on with the Webster cable access Channel um I myself have been involved with the Webster cable channel for more than 40 years my church has been broadcasting on that channel for that entire time we started off once a month and for over 20 years we've been on every Sunday at noon and um I know there's no way of quantifying how many people are watching the service but I know from talking with Karen and talking with Mike before Karen that if our service is not on they get phone calls there are a lot of Shu inss and there are people at the nursing homes that don't have anything to do with technology they don't have a computer they don't have a smartphone they will not be able to go on in live stream to watch the services not just mine but all the other churches within the Webster area that are broadcast as well there are people that watch the town board meeting they may not have the internet they may
not have access to YouTube or link be able to get to the links using the computer so you're going to be miss those people are going to be missing out on the opportunity to view the like this meeting itself not to mention the Sunday services so I'm concerned that without the channel being open that there's going to be a portion of people that are going to be neglected they're going to be forgotten about I also realize that there are franchise fees that the town receives well if you don't broadcast Services those franchise fees are going to decrease significantly and I'm curious as to how that Revenue would be made up I know it's all part of the Town budget but if you lose say $400,000 where's that going to come from that's Revenue that you potentially could be losing by shutting down the station and I mean what I saw your your letter uh on the website and it said over the next period of time you'll be
Fielding calls or taking emails but my question is what period of time are you considering to receive this not to receive people's feedback and how many people is it going to take for the station to remain open thank you John thank you very much and um I I will say this I I I'm gonna answer John's question as best I can um this is a fluid situation and if you did read the letter uh you saw that we are analyzing right now whether we get one of our current employees with the proper credentials with the FTC or whatever to do programming on public access cable um the time that we will see how many people call in like you said Jen if people don't see the mass on Sunday from six churches then I expect on Monday morning or Sunday we will get barraged with calls I want to give it enough time to give people like yourself that watch it and are passionate about watching it enough time to contact
us how many people need to contact us to put taxpayer money back into it and I do appreciate the irony of separation of church and state here John is here on behalf of the town government broadcasting church it's interesting um I don't know how much time I think that certainly um we might have somebody who can program uh these shows within uh within a week and then we'll program we'll see but I will tell you this and I've seen this starting to proliferate around in the last couple of days the franchise fees that the town of Webster government receives from Spectrum cable have nothing to do with whether we have a spectrum Channel 1303 Public Access or not and the $400,000 that you referenced John that number annually has gone down by about 20% Over The Last 5 Years while 1303 has been on along with probably another 500 cable channels where people watch other shows this is the reality of cable TV in
2023 as we enter 2024 translation the number of subscribers in Webster to Spectrum cable is going down down down and that has nothing to do with the actions or lack of action of the town of Webster government that's just the open market so I want to make sure anybody who's watching this live which it is being broadcast live uh or is watching this on tape is made aware that the franchise fees that the town of Webster brings in will really have no direct relation to whether we start programming back 168 hours on channel 1303 Public Access or not because Spectrum still has their subscribers who have the other 500 channels in their basic package or their extended packages so thank you John and uh certainly we are going to be keeping a watchful eye on those phone calls that come in and those emails that come in and being sensitive to the people that don't have the other means of communication such as Facebook live or YouTube or the town website with internet to watch things like that so thank you uh next up is the uh last two board
meetings actually November 2nd um was a regular Town board meeting and last week November 9th was a town board Workshop uh I've gone over the minutes of both of those I make a motion that we approve the November 2nd Town board meeting minutes second supervisor flarity I councilman Abbott I councilman kahill I councilwoman wiim I and I make a motion that we approve the November 9th 2023 Workshop minutes second supervisor flarity I councilwoman wi I councilman kahill abstain councilman Adam I okay next up uh I know that Jenny did it yes I been look over the um bills and they all seem to be um in order so I make a motion to have B please second councilwoman wi I councilman kahill I councilman Abbot I supervisor flarity I and I went over the prepaid warrants as submitted by Paul Adams our Director of Finance and I make a motion we approve those second supervisor flare I councilwoman wi I councilman kahill I
councilman ABB I and I've reviewed the purchase orders is submitted by Paul Adams the Director of Finance and make a motion that we approve those second supervisor flare I councilman kahill I councilwoman wi I councilman Abbot I uh our next item up I did send an email out to uh the town board members earlier this morning I think Charlie and Paul and various people Josh artuso has been working on this with 600 uh Ridge Road um I'm going to make a motion in a second to table this but I just want to explain why I somewhat articulated in that email uh this would be serving a whine before it's time um I'm I have all the confidence in the world we will do this resolution on December 7th but there's a couple of things that have to fall into place number one and it's very good news the the County Legislature on Tuesday approved the the sale of 600 Ridge Road to the town of Webster for $1 um we don't have the deed structure in our possession yet and I know this is kind of boring uh to non legal title
people but the type of deed that we're getting from the county is going to make a difference on what type of title work and title insurance policy we get from Frontier so they can't really give us a price right now so we need to see that deep and by the way the second thing is the town Charlie as Town attorney you you can't Advocate that we sign as the buyer until such time that the oil spill Fund in the state or whatever signs the dec agreement guarantee that is basically the foundational to us taking this property on it's our I'll call it sling get out of jail for free on any remediation lawsuits or anything like that is that yes essentally that's correct okay so along with that explanation I make a motion that we table the resolution um number four until December 7th supervisor flare I councilman Abbot I councilman kahill I councilwoman w i okay now this one I cannot uh thank you uh I would move that we authorize the supervisor to sign the amendment amended article 9 energy performance contract between navitus and Webster on the wastewater treatment plant facility
second councilman Abbot I councilman kill I councilwoman w i supervisor flare I and that uh ties nicely up to the uh Workshop presentation that art Patron and and Dennis Klo did last week uh that kind of gave the background on that uh making this an easier thing to uh to approved tonight um now this one this is you know now this licensing I'm sorry this uh excavation fill permit um I don't know if you have to really get up and talk about this sir because uh I think the paperwork we has we have uh from the various department heads have uh support this is that what you see Bill and I agree reviewed the letter from Pat Stevens and he recommends that we authorize this uh fill permit to be exercised second is that a motion I think that was a motion Bill what do you think sure yeah okay uh councilman Abbot hi coun
councilwoman wi hi councilman kahill hi supervisor I you have a fill permit well you're approved for a fill permit Josh I think then he has to you got it great okay um well you know our rule I guess this is a bill I would move that we declare the following item for auction from the Webster Highway Department at Wacker plate tver asset tag number 2420 s councilman Abbott I councilwoman wi I councilman kahill I supervisor flarey hi and uh since Patty is not here this evening as I'll step in as I guess the pseudo liazon sewer I make a motion to declare the following items for recycling from the sewer department a boiler HB Smith from administration building has no tag probably was in h hieroglyphics art no so uh actually this great question so a couple things on here that don't have tags they were uh included when the building was built yeah uh and working with Paul we decided the big component we're going to at least get it uh on the record that we're assiting them recycling them out okay yeah and then an AC unit asset tag
number 0412 Makita drill asset tag number 0252 two Johnson Controls HVAC control panel that had no tag that's my motion second supervisor flarey I councilman kahill hi councilwoman W hi councilman AB hi Bill can can you believe it you got three meetings left and I'm getting good at this yep you know just in time for you to retire that's right you want me in January to go back to hour and a half meetings you won't care you know right well let's I doubt I'll be watching them that's oh we're going to make sure you're watching uh we'll do a quick Round Table art uh yes sir how things going honestly uh things are going uh pretty well uh as we've you know kept the board up to date we've had some uh our trials and tribulations with pump stations and uh so in the last couple weeks we've gotten equipment in Parts in we've got uh two of the three pump stations fully back online uh as of today the third one uh will be back online uh hopefully the week after Thanksgiving and our project is going well so uh we're preparing for winter uh trying to blush as much stuff as we can
while our truck runs and before the snow hits great Paul yes Tom uh we got some good news this week uh we received our uh Perma bill which is our the town's Workers Compensation Insurance uh provider and they told us that our exper experience rating has actually dropped from 0.9 to 740 and our premium is actually $24,000 less than it was last year so we got a decrease year to year and that's attributable to all the safety measures measures we take in the sewer and the highway plant um and throughout the town and we have a Safety Committee which is very active and proactive so we conduct our training we just got all our training uh sent to us about a week ago so it's uh it's paying off that's great Bill highway is still picking up leaves uh working overtime to do it I know they' made four trips on my street I'm not sure about all the other streets in town but on the west side of town they completed four four times fourth through you're a heavy place in town I still have three trees that the leaves haven't even turned from green to Yellow
that's unbelievable they oak trees no Norway Maples wow that's Charlie well you already brought it up uh looking forward to finally after all these years closing on 600 Ridge yeah and and it's funny because last week we had a meeting with several uh Town department heads and whatever and said hey uh be careful what you asked for now now we own this so what what are we going to do like in the first 45 days uh that we have it and we got a pretty good plan I was just going to say we we got a plan it's not like we're going into a blind dve um and I don't know if you have I was surprised how much contents are in that building unbelievable so that's going to be part of the plan is how we take care of those Contents I guess Jenny okay um like everyone who know that you know I'm Lan for the library and the museums and I would like everybody to support the museum and the uh Webster Library there's a lot of events going on especially we're heading into the holidays also I want to wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving and thank
you so much for all the support and everything you have done for us uh my family in the town God Bless America and God bless everyone thank you thank you Jenny Sharp Dress John kale today Gus and D my favorite suit place you look good well on a non Town business related issue I just want to wish all the deer hunters the best of luck on opening of gun season on Saturday please uh be safe out there and um enjoy the day that's great Dolly and the town clerk's uh T rece tax receivers office um we're preparing for the collection of 2024 Town and County taxes time flies well um that concludes the meeting uh Happy Thanksgiving we won't see you in this board meeting room again until December 7th or not we're Jed about that