by Alex Brooks
The Petersburgh Town Board began its meeting June 20 with a discussion with Planning Board Chairman Dave Miller about the Town’s inventory of Town roads. He focused on four roads that the Town no longer maintains but have never been formally discontinued as Town roads. These are Tifft Road, White Road, Spencer Hollow Road and Reynolds Road.
Supervisor Peter Schaaphok said he is all for bringing the road inventory up to date, but he wanted to make sure that abandoning these roads would not landlock any property. Miller agreed to talk with some of the affected landowners and research right of way issues and then report back to the Board.
The total mileage of the four roads is under two miles, which is just under 6% of the Town’s road inventory of 35.5 miles.
Miller also reported that Planning Board Attorney Denis King is one third to one half of the way through rewriting the Town subdivision regulations.
Truck Bids
Bids were opened for the two trucks that the Town wants to sell, a 1991 International dump truck and a Chevrolet 4×4 pickup truck, both with plows. The high bidder for both was Village Truck Sales of Cheshire, MA, which bid $2,390 for the dump truck and $690 for the pickup truck. Highway Superintendent Ray Harrison said he thought the Town should reject all the bids as too low. The Board decided to accept the bid for the pickup truck but to reject all bids for the International dump truck and seek to sell it for more money. Harrison said it’s worth at least $5,000.
Town Park
The Town has received a letter from the insurance inspector who cited hazardous conditions at the Town Park last month. He said the broken circular slide needs to be removed, a protective covering put down under the play area and the S hooks on the swings replaced. All pressure-treated lumber has to be painted once a year. Some of the benches were washed away by high water this spring and their 4×4 bases left sticking out of the ground need to be removed. The plan is to have the highway department take care of those things and then re-open the park.
Water District Issues
The owner of one of the houses at the end of Depot Road said his water pipe has been broken since April and he has no water. Someone left him a note saying it was his responsibility to get it fixed, but he said the pipe is in the middle of the road, so he as a private citizen can’t dig it up. The general theory is that the section of pipe from the shutoff to the house is the responsibility of the homeowner, but in this case it is complicated by the shutoff not being on the homeowner’s property. There was a discussion about whether the piece of road it is under is a Town road or a driveway, and why the shutoff is so far from the property it serves. Bill Seel cut through the murky question of who is responsible by saying it has to be fixed in any case, so let’s have the Water Superintendent call in a contractor to fix it. Supervisor Schaaphok agreed but told the homeowner that some of the cost may be charged back to him.
Schaaphok also said he had reviewed the Water District’s finances and found that with the new rates, the District is taking in more than it is spending, but, he said, it doesn’t have any kind of a rainy day fund, so if something expensive goes wrong, the District would not be able to cover it. He suggested that the rates should be raised again. Joe Dunlop said there would be a lot of opposition to that, since rates were just raised recently. Schaaphok suggested that a letter about Water District finances should be sent to the users, to be followed by a meeting of the Water District users to discuss whether rates need to be raised again.
Youth Program
Supervisor Schaaphok said the Youth Program overspent its budget last year, and he plans to meet with Youth Program Director Cindy Mars to plan this year’s expenditures and make sure it doesn’t happen again. He also said the County’s payment to the Town for Youth programming this year was a few hundred dollars more than expected so there is a little more money available than the $8,000 originally budgeted.
On the subject of the Youth Program, Amy Manchester said she thought the jobs as program counselors should be offered publicly so all the young people in town would have an opportunity to apply for them. Bill Seel said he agreed but thought it might be too late to do that for this year.
Broken Wheel Bridge
Highway Superintendent Ray Harrison said a representative of the Federal Highway Administration had come to him asking what his highest priority is in the area of bridge replacement and he told him the bridge over the Little Hoosic River that goes to Broken Wheel Campground. A grant to the Town for replacement of that bridge is now in the works. It will be an expensive project, and it won’t happen quickly, but the cost to the Town will be very low. The total estimated cost of the project was not in the letter that Schaaphok was reading from, but Harrison said he thought it was about $780,000. Of this, the Federal government will pay 80%, the NY State Dept. of Transportation will pay 15%, and the Town will pay 5%. The expected timeline of the project calls for construction to start in 2014.
Gradall
Bill Seel asked if any progress had been made on repairing the Gradall. Harrison said no, it is still parked in the yard and he has not done any work on it. Harrison said he rented a track hoe this month from Abele for $750 for 40 hours and did some culverts and ditching. Seel said that sounds like a better deal than trying to keep the Gradall going and suggested that the Town take steps to try to sell the Gradall.
July Meeting Date Change
Because there will be a Taconic Valley Historical Society program on the Veterans Memorial Hall on the third Monday in July, the Town Board agreed to move its meeting to Wednesday, July 20, at 7 pm so the two meetings would not conflict.