Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our October 22nd uh special meeting at the town boardroom.

If we'd all rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

And to the Republic for the United States, one nation under God, indivisible and justice.

If we could remain standing for a moment of silence as we remember those who um who are suffering uh with through the hurricanes, uh hope the relief effort goes well.

We pray for those embattled in turmoil in the Middle East, and we pray and thank our first responders and our military for all they do for our safety.

Are you okay?

Thank you.

So uh uh Councilman Murphy uh sends his regrets that he can't be here.

Uh councilwoman Howitt and uh our town attorney are en route uh separately.

Our town attorney is stuck in traffic on the sprain.

And uh Luciana should be here momentarily, but Susan, you had asked her for a moment to thank you.

Um I have an announcement, and I just want to make two comments.

The announcement is uh for the tree nursery.

Anyone who doesn't know we have a tree nursery at the Garden of Hope.

It's located at Curry Street and Tulip Drive.

You have to park on on Tulip and then just walk into the car.

We've had about 135 trees and shrubs donated to the nursery.

So now we have some transplanting to do from the little gallon containers into the soil.

Right.

Um Keith Shepard, the chairman of the Tree Conservation Commission, is there every weekend from 10 to 2, and he would love to have some volunteers.

You don't have to be an expert.

Most of us have done some gardening in our lives.

So all you need is a shovel and a willingness to help out.

You can email Keith at Keith at the ConicTreeCare dot com.

That's Keith K E I T H at Taconictreecare dot com.

Just tell him that you plan to be there so he doesn't get overwhelmed with too many volunteers one day, but it's basically Saturday or Sunday from 10 to 2.

Just a simple shovel, and your help is really needed.

As these trees and shrubs grow in the nursery, they're eventually transplanted to other parts of the town where we can do some beautification.

So it's a very, very worthwhile effort, and I hope you can help him out.

Um I also just want to make two comments about the agenda tonight.

I'm disappointed that there are two items are missing from the agenda.

One has to do with the grant application the town submitted last Friday to New York State.

It's for right, it's called a DRI slash NY forward grant.

It's for basically downtown revitalization.

It's a very comprehensive grant.

As part of the grant application, the town had to submit a letter of intent that it would seek certification to be a pro-housing community.

Okay.

So I thought that would be on the agenda for tonight.

And um, in fact, uh in email from the grant writer said that we need that the application would include the date when the letter of intent would be submitted.

So I'd like to know when that I didn't see anything as I as I read through the application, but this is something that has to be done because the application is incomplete without that commitment to seek certification for pro-housing community, and it lets supervisors lackman uh discuss the pro-housing community.

The second item which I thought would be on the agenda tonight after meetings at the recreation commission were the um potential land swap of some property, town-owned property but some private property, uh dealing with um upstony street involving Sylvan Glenn.

Uh that's kind of been on the back burner for some time, and also the possibility of revisiting the solar canopies at the Granite Knolls parking lot or at any other town-owned parking lot, for example, the Shrub Oak parking lot.

That's something that the REC Commission, these are two issues that the REC commission has been dealing with, and I was hoping that they would, I was expecting that they would be on the agenda and they're not.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So, Susan, if you read the uh if you read the email from Jay Grosso, our grant writer, it said that the intent to file the letter.

He said there would be a date in the application.

No, there would be an intent to file the letter.

And that intent was on the application, and we are working on the letter with our attorney, and we will have the letter, and we will bring it before the board.

I'll make sure everyone has their say and their input and be able to go through that.

Will that be by the November the first meeting of the city?

Let them finish with some commenting on what your comments were.

Thank you.

And and yes, is and I want it done by the end of the year.

I'd like everything wrapped up and ready.

Then uh as for the GUP to land swap, it was going to be on the agenda, but they're not ready because they were asked to get appraisals on the property.

So and I I believe I expressed to you that it was a matter of their attorney saying they were ready when you would ask me about it, but we've been reaching out and I'm not going to put them on without the information that was requested from the Parks and Rec Commission before going forward with that.

As for the solar canopies, I figured that when we spoke about the uh the park later on, we will be able to talk about that.

Uh but I will say putting it on the agenda probably is not a great idea since th uh or something that's um uh appropriate when three board members that are sitting right now have already decided not to re reinvite back when the first contract fell through because they did not uh they did not do what they were supposed to do.

But you have three board members who are already in favor of not bringing that back, so to sit there and have a discussion.