The Town Board of the Town of Warwick held a Public Hearing to Consider Introductory Local Law No. 6 of 2023 to Form a Special District Pursuant to Article 12-A of Town Law, entitled, “Hillside Water District.” Said Public Hearing was held on Thursday, October 12, 2023, at the Town Hall, 132 Kings Highway, Town of Warwick. Supervisor opened the public hearing at 7:15 p.m.
ATTENDANCE:
Supervisor Michael Sweeton Councilman James Gerstner
Councilman Floyd DeAngelo
Councilman Russell Kowal Councilman Kevin Shuback
Attorney for the Town, Jay Myrow – Absent
LEGAL NOTICE: The Clerk read the legal notice, which was duly published in the Warwick Valley Dispatch on October 4, 2023.
(Copy of this legal notice is printed at the end of these minutes.)
Supervisor Sweeton – Before I open it for public comment, this is taking over a private water system and we’ve done the analysis of the system, the condition of the system and we talked to the Orange County Health Department. They would prefer it be a municipal system. When we did the analysis of the cost the potential savings for residents are in the neighborhood of $700 or $800 a year and it will now be under as of January 1st, if we create the district, the auspicious of the town to maintain, to monitor and to provide the water service to the residents. We did meet with residents a couple of weeks ago and explained this and there seemed to be a consensus to move forward. From the Town Board’s perspective if we can help the residents save money it makes sense. This is a map of the district’s boundaries, which is essentially Hillside Avenue and this was the analysis that we did that show what your operational charge per quarter, your capital charge per quarter will be in your total per quarter, so again it’s a saving of roughly $800. I did speak to the owners of the system and there’s going to be about a $2,200 capital amount that will come to the town, which we will keep in reserve for any upgrades that we need to make. In the capital charge you see on this document it finances the purchase, which I had mentioned they originally wanted $150,000 and we got it down to $75,000 to save you some more money, so it includes the financing of that over 20 years and it also builds a little capital reserve for upgrades to the system. At this point I will offer the floor for any questions or concerns. If you would like to make a comment please come to the microphone and give us your name.
There were no comments from the public for or against this public hearing.
Supervisor Sweeton – Seeing none I assume you’re happy that we are going to create this district. The timeline on this is, there’s a resolution tonight to create the district and then it’s subject to a 30-day permissive referendum. Which means a certain number of residents of the Hillside District decide they don’t like the idea they could get a referendum. I don’t anticipate that happening, but until the 30 days is up, we can’t formally send it off to the Controller’s office, but there’s plenty of time for us to get it in place to take operation on January 1st. The operators of your system is the same that the town uses on all its systems, so that’s helpful and they are familiar with the system, they know how to operate the system, so you won’t see any change there. I know there were some questions about hopefully metering and that’s projects that can happen going forward and we can access how to do that.
CLOSE PUBLIC HEARING: Motion Councilman DeAngelo, seconded Councilman Shuback that the public hearing be closed. Motion Carried (5 ayes, 0 nays) 7:19 p.m. 10-12-23 CP
Eileen Astorino, Town Clerk