City Council

Village of South Blooming Grove Regular Meeting Monday May 8, 2023 8:00pm  Call to order Mayor Kalaj called to order the Village Board Meeting at 8:03 pm on May 8, 2023, for the Village of South Blooming Grove 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 Scott Ugell Esq. – Village Attorney o Al Fusco - Village Engineer o Joel Stern – Confidential Assistant to the Mayor o Kerry Dougherty – Village Clerk o Absent – Isaac Ekstein – Legislative Aide to Mayor o Absent – Zalmon Rosner - Trustee  Correspondence  Mayor’s Comments • Tonight is the celebration of Lag Baomer. It is a bonfire celebration which we will have again tomorrow night in our village. • I also have some great news there is a new school opening tomorrow at 58 Fort Worth. It’s very exciting. It’s going to have about 300 children attending that school. I got a tour of the school and I couldn’t believe how wonderful that school came out. Whoever worked on it did a great job.  Public Comment • Bonnie Rum – I have questions about the third resolution. I’ve never heard of a village that needed a marketing and PR firm. Why are you hiring a marketing and PR firm and where are you getting the money especially since you already have an issue with the garbage tax, the second garbage pickup that you haven’t picked up any money for it I believe. Marangi is picking up the second day and they are the ones that get paid so I don’t know where that money would come from. Can you tell me where the village money would be coming from the garbage and for the PR firm since your budget has already been passed. • Trustee Feldman – It’s more like a communication, so the village stays with twitter, website just to make sure. Bonnie Rum – Where are you getting the money, because it wasn’t in the budget. 1  Village of South Blooming Grove Regular Meeting Monday May 8, 2023 8:00pm • Joel Stern – To add to what Trustee Feldman said. Trustee Feldman is actually right from his point there have been some complaints in the past that about the village communications need improvement or enhancement of both. We have trilingual constituents in the village. We have traditional English we have a huge constituents speaking Yiddish that they don’t understand English and they are having a hard time of what is being said. We have a major Spanish or Latino constituency especially with the Tanager Gardens and we have additional people moving in and it’s very important to communicate in all languages. It takes up a lot of time especially when people are switching to logging onto a website as they used to do in the past and getting their updates via social media which is facebook, twitter. A lot of people nowadays uses Wats App and text messaging. It may not be the traditional way but it’s the best way to make sure that all residents are informed of what’s happening in the village whether it’s updates about water main break, sewer maintenance, road improvements and what not. • Joel Stern – Now I would like to touch on the marketing component. I would like to thank the village board, Mr. Fusco and the Attorney Ugell were able to secure a grant of $4.7 Million to rehabilitate our water infrastructure, water system and Mr. Fusco is working on many more to improve the sewer system we need millions of dollars in roads. When you go in front of a state government you need to have a good case to show. You really need that marketing and PR so that they buy your pitch. Unfortunately, this is how it works. You need to invest a little bit in order to be able to secure those grants to tell your story to show what’s going on. How the infrastructure like the new census that people coming in and it’s a very important investment. Now where the money is coming from thank God we had a very successful 2 years with budgeting actually this year the budget was lower, taxes were lower unfortunately not looking at the village so you could not take part of that but each and every village resident with all the inflation and the craziness going on they got their taxes lowered. So, rest assured that it won’t be on the back of the village residents. • Bonnie Rum – So what you are saying is you don’t have an answer for it. Mr. Ugell should have explained about the bargaining with Marangi. He should have known about that. I know he has his own legal problems right now. That’s what a municipal lawyer should be able to help you out with.  Business o Resolution No. (30) – Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove Setting a public hearing for Community Development Block Grant – 2024 for May 22, 2023 at 8:01 pm. Motion to accept by Trustee Feldman, seconded by Trustee Guttman. 4 Ayes, Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman. 1 Absent Trustee Rosner o Resolution No. (31) – Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove Adopting the Storm Water Management Program (SWP) and authorizing the inspection of the enforcement of the SWP. Motion to accept by Trustee Guttman, seconded by Mayor Kalaj. 4 Ayes, Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman. 1 Absent Trustee Rosner. o Resolution No. (32) – Resolution of the Village Board of the Village of South Blooming Grove Authorizing the Mayor to enter into a contract with A1SN Marketing Communications as of the PR and marketing provider for the village. Motion to accept Trustee Feldman, seconded by Trustee 2  Village of South Blooming Grove Regular Meeting Monday May 8, 2023 8:00pm Guttman. 4 Ayes Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman. 1 Absent Trustee Rosner.  Discussion Al Fusco discussing Resolution 31 - We are an MS4 community that we have been requested to provide a copy of our Storm Water Management. We have Storm Water local laws but we didn’t have a Storm Water Management. The DEC has given us. It’s a maintenance program. We got an issue a notice of violation from the DEC because we didn’t have this so I took a couple of weeks and prepared this. We properly do Storm Water Pollution prevention. We have done it for all the projects. I’ve reviewed them all. We review them weekly. There are weekly reports that come into me and I have inspectors go out there. I have people out there in Clovewood for months and months and we’ve been doing. This is the manual and in addition to it every year we do an MS4 report from March 9 around to March 8 of next year. When it passes we will send it to the DEC and hopefully they will void our notice of violations.  Abstract Motion to accept the Abstract by Mayor Kalaj, seconded by Trustee Feldman, 4 Ayes, Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman. 1 Absent Trustee Rosner.  Comments Deputy Mayor Weiss asked the status of the fence where there was an accident with the car by village retention pond. The clerk is trying to obtain a fence company. Trusee Guttman had another sewer backup this weekend. Issac Ekstein - The village is working on repairing the sewer pipes in this area Al Fusco – Has been discussing with Delfino. Al Fusco will look at the grades and see if they can change the grades in the sewer. He has already look at it with a camera. We are applying for a $14 Million grant for sewer for intended use plan as we speak it came in the mail today and we are going to increase that and work on that. In relationship to the water grant that I was able to get to step 1 in the United States senate with Senator Gillibrand for $2 Million grant for our water system. We have one leg up on that it’s got to go to a committee by then the plans will be done and we will be out to bid. For $4.7 the full application went in last Thursday. For now we have the full application and the Mayor signed it. It went out, I got that information back on whether we received it and I’m very confident that we crossed all the T’s and I’s. It will give us authorization to move forward. We started locally, Isaac and Joel got a local hydrologist to look at the Orange and Rockland site which I wanted to do also. So back to the sewer for a minute we have applied for $14.7 and basically we started out with an infiltration inflow study. We put flow meters in and hopefully we find out where issues are. Where the issues are when it rains. Because when it rains the system builds up. Sometimes 2 or 3 times. There’s cracks in the pipes there’s cracks in the manholes and when ground water gets in those. Now your treating clean water so we have to plug that up. We can probably save 100,000 gallons. Sanitary sewer evaluation we will take that information from those readings. We take grant money to fix it. Then we have additional monies available for treatment. We will locate some shots maybe upstream or downstream we can adjust it. That’s a good 3  Village of South Blooming Grove Regular Meeting Monday May 8, 2023 8:00pm start and then we will evaluate it and see what we can do with tv camera. The camera gives you a view if the pipes are broken and then you can fix it right there. There’s a lot of times you have those blockages. It used to be pampers. Pampers would blow up like a balloon and plug the sewer but now it’s the wipes. The mayor told me Delfino is coming in after the meeting. I’ll talk to him and call him tomorrow and set it up on a weekly basis to start the cleaning. I’ll send my crew out for manhole and then the tv cameras. Joel Stern has one more comment. I would like to thank Mr. Mayor. The new school. It’s a very special day tomorrow and could have not been done without you, Attorney Ugell and especially Village Engineer Fusco. The first school ever in the history of the Village of South Blooming Grove and making sure everything is 100% legit, legal and safe for the kids and the teachers was a marathon and we came through it everything is certified everything is okay and we are here to celebrate tomorrow during the holiday. So congratulations to all of you on the Village Board, Mr. Fusco and Mr. Ugell.  Adjournment o Motion to close the meeting at 8:29 pm by Mayor Kalaj, seconded by Trustee Feldman. 4 Ayes, Mayor Kalaj, Deputy Mayor Weiss, Trustee Feldman, Trustee Guttman. 1 Absent Trustee Rosner. Minutes respectfully submitted by Kerry Dougherty, Village Clerk 4