Town Board: Proclamations made, picker rules adopted, videos to be offered
To make time for the big crowd that filled Town Hall for the causeway hearing on Friday, the Town Board on Friday in short order and with almost no discussion approved 19 resolutions. Among the actions taken, the board:
• Read proclamations praising and thanking Maurice C. “Tut” Tuthill for 60 years of service with the fire department; Herbert S. Sherman for 50 years with the fire department; Joseph D. O’Brien for his designation as Citizen of the Year by the Lions Club; and Town Clerk Dorothy Ogar for 50 years of service in the fire department’s Ladies Auxiliary.
• Approved new rules for scavenging or “picking” at the Recycling Center, as expected. Details of the rules were reported last week and can be viewed at the Reporter website. Registration and orange vests are required now for pickers.
• Set a public hearing on a proposal to clarify the rules for pre-existing, non-conforming uses and determining when they have been abandoned, for Friday, July 8 at 5 p.m. The proposal would modify the definition for pre-existing, non-conforming uses, limit their expansion without a permit and consider the use to have been abandoned after one year of “substantial discontinuance of use.”
• Agreed by a 4-1 vote, with Councilman Ed Brown voting no, to a one month trial using a Maine-based website, “townhallsteams.com,” that would put Channel 22’s video-recorded meetings of the Town Board on line for $250. Mr. Brown objected, saying it will add to the town’s budget unnecessarily; Supervisor Jim Dougherty commented in response that the budget line for Channel 22 still would be under target even if the town signed a contract for the monthly service. He also said the Town Board would have to draft “the mother of all budgets” for 2012 because of expected decreases in revenues.
• Agreed to allow the fire district to buy gas from the fuel depot the town operates at the highway barn on Bowditch Road, as does the school district.
• Approved a contribution toward dredging the inlet at the Merkel Boat Basin in South Ferry Hills on the condition that the property association abandon its assertion that the town should pay for repairs to the deteriorating bulkhead there and agrees “to consider” the possibility that the town will granting mooring permits to the public in basin.
• Authorized the supervisor to sign a contract for municipal accounting software.
• Authorized the supervisor to spend about $3,100 for heating and air conditioning maintenance services for town buildings by Flanders Heating and Air Conditioning.
• Agreed to issue permits for the Shelter Island Historical Society’s One Day in History fundraiser on Saturday, August 6; its 48th annual Arts and Crafts Fair on August 27 and its Fall Harvest Festival on Sunday, October 9.
PETER BOODY
