City Council

Village of South Blooming Grove SPECIAL MEETING Thursday July 29, 2021 8:00 P.M.  Call to order o Mayor Kalaj called to order the Village Board Special Meeting at 8:39 p.m. on July 29, 2021 at the South Blooming Grove Village Hall located at 811 State Route 208, within the Village of South Blooming Grove, and having a mailing address of Monroe, New York.  Roll call The following persons were present: o George Kalaj- Mayor o Abraham Weiss – Deputy Mayor o Asher Guttman – Trustee o Yitzchok Feldman – Trustee o Zalmon Rosner – Trustee o Alfred Fusco – Village Engineer o Scott B. Ugell, Esq. – Village Attorney o Kerry Dougherty – Village Clerk  Mayor’s Comments: o The Mayor advised that the Red Cross will be offering education on fire prevention and smoke detectors. You can sign up at Village Hall or at the villageofsouthbloominggrove.com website to schedule an appointment. o The Mayor congratulated Mr. Guttman for his new addition to the family, a baby girl. o There are two new employees to the Village, Isaac Ekstein and Joel Stern are officially employees of the Village. They have been approved by Orange County Human Resources. Welcome aboard. o Engineer Fusco advised that he has been evaluating the utilities, water and sewer since he first came to the village. Currently there is not a water grant available in any substance, but there is a grant available for sanitary sewer upgrade. It is due tomorrow, the Governor has put forward $65 Million Dollars for a consolidated funding application, which is due at 4pm tomorrow. He has been working on it for about 4 weeks because it takes an exhaustive engineer report to put it together because it has to be real, not just we want money. As you all know that we are utilizing Orange County Sewer District Number 1 for sewage treatment, but we have a collection agency, we have a pump station, we have a lot of manholes and all of these need repair. We have an allocation of 484,000 gallons a day from the County, we are currently using approximately 300,000 gallons, which gives us a surplus of 184,000 give or take. This changes due to the weather, because when you have a lot of rain the water goes into the ground and it finds itself into cracks in the sewer main and man holes. In some instances, certain rains will double it so instead of having extra availability of 184,000 gallons, you may only have availability of 84,000 during that small period. However, there are means to get that out of the system, one is an infiltration inflow study, which is the first thing you do in order to determine which areas have the worst 1  Village of South Blooming Grove SPECIAL MEETING Thursday July 29, 2021 8:00 P.M. infiltration of inflow. You isolate that area and do another study and determine what to do with that area, a sewer system evaluation survey. In some cases, one is good and you don’t need to improve and another area is okay. You can realign the pipes which is a lot cheaper than replacing. In other area they may be so bad you have to replace pipes. In addition to that you want to expand the sewer capabilities outside of where the existing lines go, to take care of failed septic systems. We have had several of them in the last months where septic systems have failed and we want to run sewers to that area. Also, the pump station that we have now is functional but we have received complaints from the Orange County Department of environmental protection that they want us to upgrade it and put ozone into the system and they are also asking Chester and the Moodna Basin to do the same thing. There is a proposal before the Mayor to do a PILOT study for $7,500.00 and for somebody to come in an evaluate it and the cost will probably be $70,000 eventually. This money is available now in the grant application where 25% would be the grant and the balance would be a low interest loan. This is an opportunity for the Village to get some state monies here to upgrade their sanitary services. We have not forgotten the water and are promised that in the Fall there is going to be an even bigger water project and we will apply for that as well. This evening he has prepared resolutions to allow us to submit this application tomorrow.  Correspondence: o July 21, 2021 Budget Transfer Memo from Village Treasurer  Business o Resolution No. (071) - Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove authorizing the Mayor to enter into a contract to provide electric utility services to the village. Motion to accept by Trustee Rosner, seconded by Mayor Kalaj. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner. o Resolution No. (072) - Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove as lead agency declaring negative declaration regarding Local Law #1 of 2021 Zoning Amendment – chapter 235. Motion to accept by Trustee Feldman, seconded by Mayor Kalaj. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner. o Resolution No. (073) - Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove adopting Local Law changes as modified with regard to Chapter 235. Motion to accept by Trustee Feldman, seconded by Mayor Kalaj. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner. o Resolution No. (074) - Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove intent to be lead agency for SEQRA review of the village sewer system rehabilitation. Motion to accept by Mayor Kalaj, seconded by Deputy Mayor Weiss. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner. o Resolution No. (075) - Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove as lead agency declaring negative declaration after determining that the project with regard to submission for NYSEFC will not result in any significant impact to the environment. Motion to 2  Village of South Blooming Grove SPECIAL MEETING Thursday July 29, 2021 8:00 P.M. accept Mayor Kalaj, seconded by Deputy Mayor Weiss. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner. o Resolution No. (076) - Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove authorizing submission of grant documents for wastewater treatment system improvements. Motion to accept Trustee Rosner, seconded by Mayor Kalaj. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner. o Resolution No. (077) - Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove appointing Isaac Ekstein, Legislative Aide and Joel Stern, Confidential Assistant to the Mayor as employees of the Village of South Blooming Grove. Motion to accept by Mayor Kalaj, seconded by Trustee Feldman. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner. o Resolution No. (078) - Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove authorizing the Mayor to purchase a mower from Newburgh Power Equipment. Motion to accept by Trustee Guttman, seconded by Mayor Kalaj. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner. o Resolution No. (079) – Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove setting a public hearing regarding extending term limits for the Village Board, on September 13, 2021 at 8:01 p.m. Motion to accept by Trustee Guttman, seconded by Mayor Kalaj. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner.  Abstract o Motion to adopt the Abstract by Mayor Kalaj, seconded by Trustee Rosner. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner.  Trustee Comments o Trustee Feldman thanked the Mayor, Engineer Fusco and Attorney Ugell for taking the effort to have the new law passed. o Trustee Guttman has been reviewing information provided from NYCOM and he would like the village to move forward in extending the term limits of the Board Members from two (2) years to four (4) years. He feels that longer terms would allow more commitment and would be beneficial. Trustee Guttman made a motion to set a public hearing on September 13, 2021, at 8:01 p.m. regarding extending term limits, seconded by Mayor Kalaj. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner. o  Adjournment o Motion to close the meeting at 8:59 p.m. by Mayor Kalaj, seconded by Trustee Guttman. 5 Ayes - Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman, and Trustee Rosner. Minutes respectfully submitted by Kerry Dougherty, Village Clerk 3