North East Town Board offers update on highway garage search

North East — The Town Board held yet another public meeting on its search for an appropriate site for a new highway garage, on Thursday, Aug. 4, at 7 p.m. Last year, the town held three such meetings before its proposal to convert Dutchess County Diesels was knocked down in a public referendum. 

Last week’s meeting was the first of this year, focusing on the town’s search since doubling down its efforts to find an alternative site more conducive to public approval. There have been a number of Highway Garage Committee meetings, all public, as well as Town Board meetings, all public, at which the subject was discussed in depth.

At Thursday’s meeting, town Supervisor George Kaye ran through what the board’s done thus far and what it still needs to accomplish.

In short, the board began anew in February of this year, putting together a Highway Garage Committee to hunt down as many properties with three or more acres in town that would work. The committee consisted of seven members: two Town Board members, the highway superintendent, the town engineer and three members of the public. 

Group met many times

The group met eight times: it held four public meetings and four site visits. Each public meeting was noticed on the town website and most in this newspaper. The site visits were kept private out of respect to individual property owners.

A total of 15 property owners responded to card mailers sent out by the committee; that number was whittled down to seven. From there, the Town Board ultimately narrowed that down to three. Since that time, another property owner contacted the town, offering his property for sale, bringing the total number of potential sites up to four.

Information relating to that search and the properties’ qualifications can be found on the town website, www.townofnortheastny.gov.

The four sites are the Tim Cole/Iron Will Farm (with an acquisition cost of $1,000,000), the Kotas property (with an acquisition cost of $350,000), Dutchess County Diesels (newly configured since last year’s referendum and with an acquisition cost of $1.75 million) and now, the Trotta site (cost not yet disclosed).

Based on the engineer’s preliminary schematic, it will cost roughly $2.8 million to construct the garage; roughly 15,000 square feet was deemed necessary for a functioning facility.

New information

The Trotta site is being offered by attorney Robert Trotta. It’s 9.4 acres and located off Route 44, near the Connecticut state line. 

According to Trotta, who spoke at last week’s meeting, the site is vacant and has an existing water body. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has restricted part of its development because of the wetland area, which reduces the available acreage to roughly two acres, though that remains to be confirmed by the DEC, he said. 

From the audience, comments about bog turtles could be heard, referring to the presence of the endangered species possibly being on site. Kaye confirmed that the site was identified for potentially containing endangered species. 

The supervisor also said it’s the “last piece of property” the board is considering, and that it needs to be appraised before the town can consider a price.

One property
owner’s opinion

Don Kotas, owner of the Kotas property, was also present at the meeting. He said that he ran some numbers, and the estimates the Town Board was offering for development of the different sites was exaggerated.

“I have a real problem with that when you’re looking for a bond issue,” he said. “You’re using unit prices and estimated volumes, and the unit prices are so far off. I’ve been checking with general contractors and suppliers and [your] numbers are not reflecting the true costs of the building by any means.”

“We asked for conservative numbers,” responded Kaye. “We didn’t want one number being given in the beginning of the process and then come back at the end with a different number.”

“That’s not fair to us, not fair to [other property owners],  not fair to the taxpayers to bump things up,” Kotas said. “I understand this is totally conceptual … at this point, but to double the price for building is totally unfair.”

Town engineer responds

Town Engineer Ray Jurkowski explained that the town is at “the very beginning part of the process,” and is continuing to look for cheaper alternatives. He said the town “started the process in 2003” and last year took a “fresh look” at its needs and options. Jurkowski said he then spoke with Highway Superintendent Bob Stevens and composed a “wish list,” which helped develop the estimated costs for purchasing and developing any given property.

“This is the starting point,” he said, “it’s not the end all and be all. We’re going to refine that process and see if there are alternatives. Things will get fleshed out during the process.”

The building and renovation costs are based on past projects the engineer has worked on, as well as projects other municipalities have worked on, including Stanford, Red Hook and Lagrange.

“Those are based on actual contract numbers received and awarded by the towns,” Jurkowski said. “We also recognize we’re not going to be able to pinpoint dollar numbers. It’s more about what potentially the town can be looking at if it continues to move in that direction.”

The engineer added that he welcomed comments, and that the town was intentionally seeking them out in the early stages of the process.

Possible favorites

Talk then focused around the Dutchess County Diesels site, which the crowd clearly felt the Town Board was favoring. 

“When you’re spending that much money — and taxpayer money — then you’ve got to think of the future,” Kotas said, referring to the Route 22 location. “What if they put a four-lane highway in there? Then you’ve got to get a new garage again.”

Though the Highway Garage Committee disbanded after completing its given task, some of its members were present on Aug. 4. George Lind spoke for those there.

“As a member of the committee, with three other members sitting here, we do not recommend Dutchess County Diesels be considered,” he said. “That piece of property may have buildings that are state-of-the-art for Dutchess County Diesels, but they’re not state-of-the-art for the town highway garage.

Lind continued to say that there’s water by the site, which could get contaminated by the addition of a salt and sand shed.

“You’re looking for the easy way out. That is my opinion as a member of the committee,” he said to the Town Board.

Public comments

Trotta, who acknowledged he just returned from Florida and missed all of the other public information meetings, then charged the board with not disseminating enough “hard information” to the public.

“There’s no cost analysis,” he said, “or whether the town would save money or overspend to do something we may or not need.

“Maybe this building can be expanded,” he added. “There’s a little bit of room here. Maybe there’s some alternatives to spending millions. It sounded to me like there’s been no analysis, whether there would be cost savings, whether in the long run taxpayers are going to benefit.”

He also spoke about the idea of a transfer station.

“I’m totally dumbfounded as to the lack of forward thinking,” he said. “Remember that we used to have a dump?”

He also said the village should be more involved, as village residents will have to help pay for the new garage. He referred to the cost of running two governments side-by-side.

“We never had so few governed by so many,” Trotta said to the laughter of the audience.

Additionally, Trotta spoke about the idea of soliciting donations from the community to help defray the costs.

“Nowhere have I heard anybody talk about asking for donations,” he said. “Sometimes, all you’ve got to do is ask.”

Kaye said that the board has already considered much of what Trotta raised — leads that ultimately fizzled out after being investigated.

Resident Cathy Fenn then asked if the committee members could address which property they thought was ideal. Most replied that the Kotas property was their favorite, for its size and possibilities. 

Village Board member Christine Bates then read a statement, specifying that she was speaking as a private citizen of the village and the town. She noted the town has “received a diagnoses on our town garage and town from only one professional,” which she said was not wise.

“When we go to a doctor and receive a diagnosis we usually seek a second opinion. Do we really need a heart transplant or would a bypass or stent work?” she asked, suggesting another engineer or an architect be brought on board.

She then asked if the existing town garage could be renovated and the salt shed relocated. She asked if the town could cooperate with the village for a shared garage. She asked if there were ways to save on construction costs if the town builds new. And she asked if the committee could pro-actively identify “ideal locations.”

After Bates spoke, her husband, Peter Greenough, took to the floor. He said “everybody realizes that we need a better town garage,” with few, if any, exceptions.

He questioned why the Highway Garage Committee was disbanded. He asked why the town relied on its website so heavily when “older taxpayers may not be highly internet savvy.” He asked why communication between the town and the public was not better. He asked why the property of the Thomsen & Graham junk yard on Sawchuck Road was not investigated. He asked if the town could keep the existing garage site and just relocate the salt shed. He asked why committee members were not informed of meetings discussing the project. He asked about fundraising, crowd funding and/or grant applications. 

“I hope the board and public will slow this down, take another approach, and do this carefully,” Greenough said. “There are many alternatives and the taxpayers need to be involved.”

Not so fast …

After he sat down, Kaye and Lind said they “took exception” to some of Greenough’s statements.

As far and Thomsen & Graham, Lind said, “we were in there.” The committee went “through the fence” three times to investigate the site. They found it was not amenable to the proposed project, mainly because the town would have to shoulder the expense of demolishing a building, which was deemed unfit.

“The only property we did not visit is now, Bob Trotta’s,” said Lind.

Kaye then asked if “there was any meeting the committee was not notified of?”

“Not until the committee disbanded,” said Lind.

“And you wonder why people don’t want to join committees,” Kaye said.

Board needs support

Kristen McClune spoke from the audience.

“I feel like no matter what these people say, you only care about dollars and cents,” she said to the crowd. “I have an interest in this because I’m afraid that I’m going to live 30 years more than my partner because he works in this building. They don’t seem to matter as much to you as money.

“Every time there’s an idea, there’s  resistance,” she added. “Nobody seems to think anything is a good idea.”

“I’d be very interested to know what the dangerous conditions are,” Trotta said.

The need and the future

Jurkowski then went through an abbreviated list: the roof is unstable, there is diesel-soaked insulation, it’s too small for town equipment and the salt shed’s proximity to the stream could cause contamination.

“Something needs to be done,” he said.

The board will now consider the comments made at last week’s meeting and investigate the Trotta property. Then it will once again schedule another informational meeting for the public to attend. 

“I’m not getting into all the points discussed tonight,” said Kaye. “We will consider it for future meetings.”

The supervisor added days later that the Town Board is considering getting a second opinion on some of the costs to either justify its current proposal or to find better alternatives. He added he felt “some of the comments made at the meeting were constructive” and will prove useful as the town moves forward.