Amy Smith
Reports for Village Board Meeting: Monday, September 8, 2025
Water Department
The mayor gave the report on the Water Department meeting. I can report on water usage and testing results. The usage report included in our binders appears to indicate a sharp reduction in water usage; however, those numbers are a result of a change in which flow meter was used to collect the data.
H20 Innovations is now overseeing the Water Treatment Plant and they pulled flow data from a meter that captures only a portion of the actual usage. Thus, the report shows roughly 3.3 million gallons of treated water for an average of just over 100,000 gallons per day. However, there is no reason to believe that the Village’s water consumption dropped by two-thirds in the past month.
Three locations were sampled on August 28, 2025. All three locations were negative for Coliform and E. coli. The free chlorine residual amounts ranged from .08 mg/liter to .13 mg/liter.
Grants
Since our last meeting I contributed to the writing of the WIIA grant on this meeting’s agenda. I’ve also been researching possible grants to fund improvements to the wetlands near the WTTP.
In my August report, I talked about the opportunity of a grant from Hudson River Valley Greenway. Initially, we were focused on the option of applying for a $20,000 Greenway Community grant to fund a community visioning process. Nelson, Pope and Voorhies followed up with a proposal on how they might support and develop such a process. In reviewing their proposal and considering how the Village might best prepare for community engagement of this sort, I recognized some intermediate steps needed to make the visioning process more truly productive. In the past 4 years, as part of preparation for a NY Forward grant process, the Village has heard most about the community’s general interests surrounding the Village center. Residents, business owners, and users of the Village center talked about crosswalks, wider sidewalks, more spaces that looked nice, slower/quieter traffic and so on. To take visioning to the next step the Village needs more specific ideas and projects around which to focus community engagement. However, the Village does not yet have the professional reports and proposals needed to move the visioning forward.
The Greenway Compact Grants provide up to $50,000 for projects that support the compact’s values. The single issue we have the most documented community interest in and support for has been improvements to the Village center that would increase pedestrian safety, reduce traffic speeds, and add plantings within the central business area, I think a better option for
where the Village is currently at would be to use a Greenway Compact Grant to pay for the services of professionals in streetscaping, traffic flow and sidewalk engineering.