What is your position on the proposed renovation of Town Hall, keeping in mind that (a) the tentative 2012 budget does not include funds for the cost of bonding for the project, and (b) such costs — an estimated $92,000 per year in interest and debt service on a $1.45 million bond, as provided for in a 2007 townwide referendum — cannot be excluded from the state’s 2 percent cap on property tax increases?
Jeremy Wilber. “Given all considerations, the original proposal from 2007 would have to be scaled back,” said Wilber, who endorsed the current, downsized renovation plan, which would enlarge the quarters of the police, emergency dispatch, and justice court departments, while preserving the use of the building’s main room by community groups, through relatively minor alterations. “The only element that I wouldn’t take away (from the original, more extensive renovation plan) is the geothermal heating system, which I think is important, and we must do something at Town Hall to address the issue of safety. There are too many stories of violence occurring in courtrooms.” The candidate added that he “absolutely” opposed a proposal, which the Town Board considered but ultimately rejected, to sell Town Hall to a local business owner who planned to convert the building to retail use.
In response to reported criticism from Rose, Wilber defended the installation of photovoltaic cells on the roof of Town Hall — a similar array has been mounted at the highway garage in Bearsville — and the choice of a geothermal heating and cooling system for the current garage, which opened in 2005, replacing a facility one-third its size. The former supervisor maintained that a state energy agency and the state comptroller’s office issued reports commending the Town Hall solar installation in terms of both cost and performance. Meanwhile, according to Wilber, not only the Town Board and environmentalists, but also former highway superintendent Stan Longyear, who had a background in mechanics and engineering, supported the use of a geothermal system at the new highway garage, which is heated and cooled solely with geothermally generated electricity. Wilber produced an energy analysis purportedly showing that total energy costs for the first winter of operation of the new garage increased by 67 percent over the previous winter, although the new facility was three times the size of its 5,000-square-foot predecessor, which used oil for heating while also consuming electricity.
Lorin Rose. “First, get rid of the geothermal system and all the bells and whistles (in the current Town Hall renovation plan). We shouldn’t hang another $1.5 million in debt on the taxpayers, at a time of cutting employees’ hours. We could do most of the renovation for about $200,000,” said Rose, who maintained that the amount the town has spent on architectural and engineering plans over the last four years, which the candidate estimated as $140,000, could pay the salaries of two mechanics and a helper for a year of work on the renovation itself. “We have wasted money and continue to waste it,” he said.
The use of a burner that would heat recycled motor oil could yield significant savings in the heating costs for the highway garage, said Rose. According to the candidate, burning oil that was collected from Highway Department vehicles and donated by local individuals and businesses could save at least two-thirds of the approximately $15,000 annual cost of heating the garage, after the estimated $10,000 price of an oil burner had been amortized. Responding to Wilber’s contention that such an arrangement would discharge both fumes and heavy metals into the atmosphere, Rose said, “The oil is completely filtered; you only add compressed air to atomize it. It would work like any other oil burner. If you keep them clean, they work fine. You have to balance the release of substances into the air against the potential savings of $3,500 a month in electricity costs.”
Rose added: “Being ‘green’ is mostly hard work. At home I have a 600-gallon tank that collects rainwater, which is gravity fed to water the garden. I grow and can my own food.”
