Cupola To Be Saved…One of These Days
by Thaddeus Flint
The cupola from New Lebanon’s Union Free School building will be saved, it was reported at the Tuesday, July 11 Monthly Town Board meeting.
According to Councilman Kevin Smith, the New Lebanon Central School District has agreed to relinquish ownership of the sad little structure which now sits in the weeds where the National Historic Registered building once stood before it was demolished by the District to become a parking spot.
The cost to the Town, so far, will be $1.
“I will gladly pay it,” offered Smith.
The cupola will be moved to a temporary spot near the Highway Garage until its future can be better determined. It could be an expensive future. Town Supervisor Colleen Teal said at the June Board meeting that preservation of the structure might be as high as $40,000 and a historic restoration could run as much as $80,000.
New Lebanon’s basketball court in Shatford Park is also looking at a full restoration. The Board voted, with all in favor, to put the project out to bid for removal of the existing court, poles, hoops and fencing and then rebuilding. Bids are due August 2 and will be discussed at the following Board meeting on August 8. The current fence height will be raised a bit to six feet and the court colors will match that of the newly repaired tennis courts.
With all the updating of its recreation facilities the Town is engaged in, it will also be seeking to enlarge its Recreation Committee from five to seven members. While this might seem a simple process, New Lebanon found a way some years back to de-simplify it by requiring a local law to be enacted every time a committee size is changed.
The Town’s Attorney Dan Tuczinski advised the Board to at the same time simplify the process to avoid such “mishegoss” in the future. A public hearing for Proposed Local Law #3 of 2017 will be held five minutes before the start of the August Board meeting.
Words like “mishegoss” don’t come cheap, especially when they come from attorneys, New Lebanon is finding. At just past the halfway mark in the year, the Town has gone through much of its budget of $45,000 for legal fees. Already, that was over double the amount budgeted from 2016. And it’s still not enough. The Board agreed to move an additional $25,000 into the legal budget from unrestricted surplus. The reason for the big expenditures has been the Town’s recent crackdown on zoning violation as well as the drafting of new local laws and ordinances, like the sign law, the repeal of the junk yard law, a new solar law, and now increasing the recreation commission size.
The Supervisor, however, foresees less of a need for legal advice as the year comes to a close. “There is no additional legislation on our radar at the moment’ said Teal.
New Lebanon’s crackdown on zoning has also made a lot of extra work for the Town’s Zoning Enforcement Officer/Code Enforcement Officer Cissy Hernandez. In order to keep up the crackdown, the Board voted to hire Jeff Hattat, who is currently on the Zoning Board of Appeals, as a deputy CEO for $18 per hour for up to 10 hours a week. Once Hattat completes his training, that will go to $20 per hour.
There was some discussion on whether the Town should pay for Hattat’s hours while he is at training. All together it will cost around $2,600 in training hours. Attorney Tuczinski noted that the cost would most likely be worth it as “all municipalities are struggling to find good CEO’s.”
“In my opinion,” said Supervisor Teal, “its an expense well worth it.”
It was agreed then that Hattat’s training will be paid for, but if he has to repeat any courses it will be at his expense.
As one can’t be the Deputy CEO and a Zoning Board of Appeals member at the same time, Hattat was removed from that committee and his place is currently unfilled. Anyone interested in putting in long hours for no pay and even less public appreciation serving the remainder of Hattat’s five year term, which expires 12/31/2020, should submit a letter to the Town Clerk by August 4.
As New Lebanon works to spruce itself up, tree trimming crews working for NYSEG are “leaving the Town a mess,” said Supervisor Teal. Apparently the trimmers are allowed to leave “manageable” size pieces of wood behind in rural areas, but what some see as manageable others might find less so.
“To me a 30 plus inch diameter, eight foot piece of tree is not manageable,” said Teal who will be requesting meetings with the NYSEG forestry department.
“We are doing everything we can to clean up the Town,” said Teal, “and we don’t need them coming in and making it look like it’s been raped.”
Coordinating long term projects, such as the Town clean up, is made more of a struggle for elected officials when their terms are only two years. Currently in New Lebanon, the Town Supervisor, Town Clerk, Highway Superintendent and Tax Collector are all two year positions. Two years is a very short amount of time to get much done, and the Town is now leaning toward looking at possibly moving to four year terms for some or all of these positions.
Term changes would be voted on by the residents of the Town, and should a change be enacted, it most likely would happen in 2019 or later.
“We are in the preliminary steps of this,” said Teal, noting that New Lebanon’s Town Clerk position is the only one left in Columbia County with a two year term “It will ultimately be up to you.”