How to resolve AdBlock issue? During the public comment period, a resident brought up how many of her neighbors were circulating rumors that the town was planning on building a park with baseball fields on the side of Route 9P and said she wanted to know once and for all if any of the rumors were true. No members of the board knew anything about the rumors and Peter Klotz denied them, saying that as far as he knows it is simply a recreational field being planned by the homeowners association and that there are no plans to place a park there.
Moving on, the town board heard a presentation from Rick Jennings, president of Malta Ridge Fire Co., Fred Sievers, president of Round Lake Hose Co. and Fred Lee, Malta Ridge Fire Police Lieutenant who all provided an update on their plans for the joint fire station being planned to keep up with the growth of the region.
The new fire station will sit on 1.8 acres with a 14,000-square-foot building and a parking lot with 30 parking spaces. There will be a small road from the entry of the parking lot to the back of the station for ambulances to pull in as they return from a call. The building itself will have a partial second floor that when built will be used as a storage space but will have the ability to house bunk beds and a kitchen area, should the station need full-time paid employees later on as the area continues to grow.
The fire companies are working with Bonacio Builders to design the building on a $3.5 million budget. After their presentation, the representatives asked the board if they could be considered for GlobalFoundries’ community benefit program in order to offset certain costs that they said are coming from taxpayers’ dollars. Several members of the board chimed in as they said they have brought up the issue to GlobalFoundries but it “is still up in the air” because they haven’t yet heard back from the company.
The fire companies will present their site plans to the Malta Planning Board in two weeks in hopes of getting their plans approved as soon as possible in order to break ground in August and see completion of the project by next March or April.
In other business, the board adopted a sewer town ordinance amendment, which cleared up confusing language that required anyone who had a new sewer line pass in front of their property to hook up to the sewer, even if they were functioning with a perfectly good septic system. The new language in the amendment makes it clear that people in this case would only need to connect if their private individual septic system failed.
Also approved was a site plan application notification policy which will notify neighbors when a site plan near them is being presented to the board. Councilmembers then took action on the longstanding drainage issue caused by the residents of 145 Ruhle Road, whose drainage runoff into the street has caused safety issues that the resident has refused to fix for months. The board voted to have the highway superintendent visit the property to fix the problem and attach the cost of repairs to the resident’s next property tax bill.
Finally, the board voted in support of the Malta Ambulance Consolidation, which will merge Malta Ambulance with the Stillwater Rescue Squad station on Hudson Avenue. If approved by the Stillwater Town Board, the station will continue to remain open, though the staffing and management will now be provided by Malta.
