The town and village governments of Saugerties are working together to deal with problems, and town supervisor Fred Costello and village mayor Bill Murphy see a strong cooperative relationship building over time.
A major water main break in October cut off water to the village and part of the town. The break, on Route 212 near Smokehouse of the Catskills, was well outside the village, and fixing it required a cooperative effort. Parts of the town close to the village depend on the village water supply, and were affected by the break and the subsequent boil-water order.
The reaction was quick. The break was discovered at about 3 a.m. on October 7, and by 7:30 a.m. the pipe was fixed. However, the loss of water from the municipal tank and its subsequent refill meant the water was not guaranteed to be pure. Residents were instructed to boil water for a few days afterward.
The village lost 2.5 million gallons of treated water because of the leak, village water superintendent Mike Hopf said in his report to the board in October. Water pressure was lower throughout the village, The closest users, including the Grant D. Morse Elementary School, “had no water at all.”
“I think that’s a great example of how the village and town worked together,” Murphy said. “We had it resolved within a day or two, and the boil-water was lifted soon. Also, because of all the upgrades and things we’ve done to our system over years, addressing turbidity and things of that nature, that’s the first boil-water notice we’ve had to put out in the village in the ten years I’ve been mayor.”
Costello said he could recall that there was a boil-water [advisory] “after every rainstorm” twi decades ago. “We’ve largely avoided those,” he said. “That’s a good thing, and it’s a credit to the good things the village has done over the years to make sure the water supply is protected from those high-turbidity events.”
Neither the supervisor nor the mayor sees complete integration into one municipality as likely in the near future. “I think Bill and I agree we are obligated to explore those opportunities on an ongoing basis, and we will continue to do that, but there are no set plans for consolidation,” Costello said. “I think if there’s a consensus or a belief that a consolidation effort would be fruitful, the next step would be the village board and the town board would agree to have a study done, and whatever the outcome of that study would be would dictate whether we move forward or not.”
Though there no plans for formal consolidation, “We are working as close as we ever have, if not closer, and I think we’re both proud of that,” Costello said. “We intend to continue that partnership, but to consolidate I think we can’t just do that on a whim. For us to have that conversation in an intelligent way with our residents, we would need a study to stand on, like we did with the police consolidation [ten years ago].”
Even after much study that identified the synergy between the departments and savings prior to the police consolidation, “there was still a lot of skepticism with the public,” noted Costello, “and it took a lot of dialogue.” The police consolidation has saved the town and village considerable money, Costello said. “It has been ten years, and just now the police department is spending the same amount as the combined budgets were ten years ago. That’s pretty extraordinary.”
Murphy noted that the village property tax has been flat over the past ten years, in part because the savings in the police merger could be applied to pay for other village services. Cooperation with the town, the school district and Ulster County have all contributed to the village’s ability to operate without raising taxes,
“We share resources – this past weekend [December 19 and 20], you can see how well the village was cleaned up. That was not just village, that was assistance from the town as well,” Murphy said.
“The town and the village have resources that are beneficial to everyone,” Costello agreed. “Saugerties wouldn’t be Saugerties without the business district. You can’t design one without the other, and government shouldn’t try to do that, We should work closely to enhance those opportunities for everyone, and make sure we continue to be the destination community that we have become.”
Murphy concurred. “I think nothing is more evidence of our ability to work together than what Fred and I have gone through together over the past nine months with Covid,” he said. “Everything this community has done has been Saugerties doing it together, not the village, not the town …. Everything this community has done has been Saugerties doing it together, not the village, not the town, It’s been Saugerties and how we work together.”
Machinery breakdowns, particularly in the village wastewater department, have been a village problem. “It’s not so much stuff breaking down,” explained Murphy. “We’ve had a couple of pieces of equipment in the sewer plant that we have been waiting to replace for a couple of years, so the replacements have been ongoing. This RBC [rotating biological contactor] is very expensive, and it’s taken a couple of years to get to the point [where it had to be replaced]. Before we were trying to fix it, but it got to the point where you’re basically putting a band-aid on it. To be cost-effective we have had to replace it. Unfortunately, maybe a plan should have been put in place 15. 20 years ago for that. Mike [sewer plant operator Mike Marino] has done a great job over the last ten years or so, developing a couple of five-year plans, These replacements are planned.”
The Covid-19 virus has only made things harder for both town and village. “The supply chain for pretty near everything has been disrupted, and securing parts for basically everything we run has been a challenge,” the mayor added. “In the town we have a project that’s funded at the Malden wastewater facility, and that project has been delayed by parts not being available.”
With two town sewer plants and one village plant, wastewater seems to be an area where consolidating the system might make sense. Costello agreed, but with a caveat. “There needs to be a look at it from an independent party, to decide where do we reasonably hope to end up; there’s a lot of bonding that’s specific, and what are we going to do with that money?” said Costello. “It’s a complicated discussion, but Bill and I understand the importance of working together on those issues. And if you look at the town areas most likely to grow are obviously Kings Highway and the Route 32 corridor, and Winston Farm, and those do not grow if we don’t have the support of the village to handle the water and sewer infrastructure because they are the ones that provide in those areas.”
“In that area, if you take it on, you have to show savings,” Murphy said. “In the early studies that we have done in the past, there’s not an opportunity for savings by combining the two.”
Murphy mentioned the costs of planning and bonding. “To the average person it would be an obvious path to take, and I thought that myself ten years ago, until we started looking at the debt that’s on these facilities, the bonding. There’s a lot involved.”
The town government has been looking into purchasing electricity through a community cooperative system known as community choice aggregation, Costello said. Under the plan, “a number of communities buy electricity cooperatively, giving them the power to negotiate better prices and, in some cases, an agreement to have power produced from ‘green’ sources.” He’s hopeful that the 9000 meters in Saugerties ban be combined with those in neighboring communities in the northern part of the Hudson Valley to create an energy consortium.
The village has only begun to discuss the proposal, and it would be premature to make a statement on it one way or the other, Murphy said.[At a village board meeting Monday, December 22, several trustees said they would rather see an opt-in program, so that only people who chose to join the program would be in it].
Weeds on the Esopus Creek have been a vexing problem for the village. They can clog the beach area. Last summer the village, the town and local contractor John Mullen reached an agreement to purchase a harvester from the contractor who had cleared a section of the creek the year before, Zdenek Ulman, also known as Captain Z. The village made the purchase, and is in charge of storing and maintaining the machine.
The harvester will be back on the water this spring, Murphy said. The village had two part-timers operating the harvester last year, and the arrangement seemed to be working out well. Prior to the village buying the harvester, volunteers pulled some weeds by hand. However, the village could have problems with insurance if it had volunteers working the harvester.
“I think the harvester is a perfect example of a successful partnership, and I think as we get more experience it will only become a better program,” Costello said. “I also think as we get some handle on the growth of the invasive species it will give us an opportunity to get farther and farther in. It was clear when Captain Z did some harvesting the year prior he was able to harvest and not have the same density as areas that were harvested for the first time.”
The harvested weeds will be composted, and will be available at the village staging area on North Street, Murphy said.
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