A vote on the proposed Bridgeport Sewer District has been pushed back to Saturday March 28. The delay comes, according to Supervisor John M. Becker, out of the necessity for the Sullivan Town Council to enact a local law allowing the town to accept absentee ballots.
Becker said the law should be drafted and ready for review at the town council’s meeting scheduled for 9 a.m. Feb. 18.
The vote will be held using lever machines. Bridgeport Elementary School will be the polling site, and the polls will be open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Owners of affected parcels will receive a card, Becker said, and each tax map number will be allowed one vote, regardless of the number of homeowners or residents per parcel.
A quorum of the Sullivan Town Council voted Feb. 4 to accept the map plan and report of Barton & Loguidice Architects and Engineers for the proposed Bridgeport Sewer District last week. The trio of Dep. Supervisor William Cole and Councilmen Tom Kopp and John Brzuszkiewicz voted unanimously after a presentation by engineer Ken Knutsen of B&L.
According to Knutsen, the district boundaries were changed slightly to include a couple of adjacent parcels that were omitted from the original plan. He said the district’s customers number 808 as of Wednesday night’s meeting.
“The annual cost based on current financing to the best of our knowledge is $828,” Knutsen said.
Knutsen said included in the map plan and report are breakdowns of the finances calculated in increments of $1 million blocks of grant funding if obtained. The town is in the running for $4 million in aid that would bring the annual per-unit cost to within the $690 annual threshold sought by the Office of the State Comptroller.
“This delay is not a bad thing,” Becker said. {Q}”We are supposed to hear more about grant funding in the middle of the month, so we will hopefully have more solid numbers on [March 28] so people will know what they are voting on.”{Q}
The Sullivan Town Council will take comments from the public at a 7 p.m. public hearing March 4 on the proposed Bridgeport Sewer District.
For more information, call 687-9190.
