Marlborough Supervisor Scott Corcoran read a letter he received from Quality Environmental Solutions & Technologies [QuES &T] informing him that a final visual inspection and air clearance sampling was done at the TOMVAC building, assuring him that all asbestos has been removed from the building.

“This means that we are safe now to re-occupy the building and this report gets filed with the state of New York,” he said. “We have clearance now to move on to Phase II, which is the actual bid of the main building. I want to thank QuES&T Labs and East Coast Haz Mat for doing a quick and expedient job and they stayed well within their time frame of three weeks, so we’re right on schedule with this.” Remediation of the asbestos came in on budget at $89,900.

Girl Scout Project Approved
A few weeks ago, Marlboro High School Junior Jasmine Taylor asked the Town Board for their support to create a fitness fun trail at the town park that is her Girl Scout Gold Award Project.

In a letter to the Town Board, Taylor wrote that her project, “would encourage and promote families to bring their children to interact in outdoor settings. My hope is to have children looking forward to coming back to the park.”

Taylor plans to paint 5 to 7 different activities on the path and is looking to start her project in late June and finish by September.

Councilwoman Sherida Sessa said Taylor’s project will be located on a paved path, just down from the old bathroom.

“It’s a newly paved piece of sidewalk that’s about double the width of the rest of the path around the pond,” she said.

Sessa said having the project in this spot will not disrupt the flow of people walking around the pond, “and allows the children to play a little bit off the beaten path.”

The board approved Taylor’s project.

Term Limits
Corcoran suggested that the Supervisor’s term be extended from two to four years but also favors the adoption of a 12 year limit for all who serve on the Town Board. He said upon reaching the limit, the individual would have to take some time off and could run again at a later date. The amount of time out of office is to be determined.

Corcoran said after serving a decade on the board, he has seen the challenges that past Supervisors have faced with only two years at the helm. He asked that this issue be put under new business, with additional discussion at future board meetings.

Water Rate Hike
Corcoran has proposed a water rate increase of $2 per 1,000 gallons for a year in order to pay off a $260,000 deficit in the water district. He said rather than take out a high interest loan, the town decided to raise the cost for water usage, with the goal of eliminating this amount within a year.

“We calculated what the average usage was for a year and what that number would need to be in order to get that deficit to zero,” he said. “This is a temporary number depending on what the actual water usage is; if people use more water it could be less than a year, if they uses less water it could be more than a year.”

Corcoran said after the deficit is eliminated the $2/1,000 gallons comes off the water bills.

“The new bills that are coming out are all going to be itemized so you will actually see what your water usage is with the operating costs on one line. The next line will say deficit and will tell you what that cost is and the next line will tell you our Town of Newburgh debt that we owe them from the bond and the last line says 49 cents per 1,000 gallons that is for future upgrades to the facilities.”

Water bills had been calculated at $9.37/1,000 gallons but on top of this will be new charge of $2/1,000 to eliminate the deficit and also 49 cents/1000 for future upgrades. The $2 charge will be the one that drops off. Going forward there will be four billing periods instead of three, making it less of a financial impact upon residents.

Bayside Taxes

Corcoran recently met with developers Dan Baxter and Dan Reiger, of the Baxter Group, to discuss a few key points of their Bayside residential project that is slated to be built adjacent to the Middle School: the assessment on the property, the need to go to the Planning Board for a building extension and making sure there are no outstanding fees owed to the town. The developers removed a proposal for a commercial storage building that was to sit close to Route 9W and have also withdrawn their application for a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes [PILOT] agreement they submitted to the Ulster County Industrial Development Agency.

Corcoran said he and the Superintendent of Schools Michael Brooks were not in favor of a PILOT agreement for this project.

Corcoran subsequently provided financial details on the project. Fully built out, at 104 units, the assessment will be $11,699,600. Calculating the town, school and county taxes for the 2 and 3 bedroom units, at $402,192 and $110,880 respectively, brings the total the developers will pay annually in taxes to $513,072.

“They were looking for a $10 or $11 million assessment but we’re not here to make a deal...I had the assessor work on this for over a week to get them an accurate assessment,” he said.

“Your assessment is not just based on the property and building values and in this particular its kind of based on what you rent the facilities for. Since their rents are way higher now, we gave them an assessment of where they are going to be at [and] it fell in-between their high and their low number of where they wanted to be.” As a result, Corcoran said the developer was more comfortable with moving ahead without the commercial storage proposal and not having a PILOT agreement.