Sam Teresi presented his $12.9 million Smart City Capital Investment Program to members of the Jamestown City Council during the Sept. 9, 2019 work session at city hall.

JAMESTOWN – Mayor Sam Teresi has less than four months to go before he leaves office at the end of this year, but that’s not stopping him from rolling out an ambitious borrowing program that he says could result in the city saving half a million dollars on an annual basis.

On Monday night Teresi, city staff, and the Jamestown City Council spent over two hours reviewing the proposed 2019 Smart city Capital Investment Program, which involves the city borrowing $12.9 million in order to address capital and equipment challenges facing the city.  An additional $1 million would also come from the state Financial Restructuring Board (FRB).

The mayor said that unlike borrowing proposals of the past, this proposal is geared toward an effort to identify and go after large expense projects in an effort to create efficiency and save money.

• READ DETAILS OF THE PLAN

“This is our first major foray into a true, smart city initiative where everything that we’re investing in has an efficiency, a revenue-generating potential, and has a savings potential. A lot of our bonding initiatives, as you’ve seen in the past, have been reactive to things. And some of the things that we borrowed on didn’t meet the definition of smart city,” Teresi said.

The plan involves borrowing money for seven main categories – three of which would focus on needs at the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities and the other four would focus on city infrastructure, facility needs, and vehicle and equipment replacement and upgrades for both Public Works and Fire Departments.

For the BPU, an estimated $3.5 million could be borrowed to address sewer lines, water mains, and needs at the wastewater treatment plant – although the specific amount wont be known until after BPU officials finalize a detailed plan for the borrowing.  That final plan could come by the end of this month.

Meanwhile, the other $9.4 million would be borrowed to cover everything from possibly building a new DPW garage to replacing and upgrading vehicles in the city fire department. Deputy Fire Chief Sam Salemme said that right now, several vehicles in the fleet are in very poor condition and borrowing as much as $1.2 million would go a long way addressing the problem.

“In one of the trucks – something as simple as a braking system has become obsolete. We pay through the nose to get just a caliper and brake pads to repair one of the trucks,” Salemme said. “It’s just costing us a lot of money to repair these trucks.”

Jamestown City Councilman at large Andrew Liuzzo (center) discusses the smart city Capital Investment Program with Mayor Teresi and other council members during the Sept. 9, 2019 work session.

Another major component of the borrowing would go toward the DPW, with $1.9 million being used to help pay for equipment and vehicle needs. In addition, $1 million from the FRB, making the total investment $2.9 million.  Another $4 million would also be used to construct a new DPW garage on Crescent Street.

DPW fleet manager Patrick Monaghan said right now the garage on Steele Street isn’t adequate to meet the needs of the department.

“One of their strongest recommendations for us – in order to put in place what they believe would be an effect fleet management program going forward – is that we need a larger and more adequate facility. Not only for maintenance, but just for simply managing a vehicle from the moment we buy it to updating and serving the vehicle to the day that we dispose of it,” Monaghan said. “Now, are we getting the work done? Yes. But we can do it a lot more efficiently, a lot quicker and a lot easier if we had the facility to do that.”

The total borrowing could be as high as $12.9 million and not all the projects would come on line at once if the borrowing did take place. However, Mayor Teresi said that by packaging all the items together under one borrowing program, it could help save the city nearly $150,000 in administrative costs and other fees that are typically associated with the bonding process.

“As we’ve done in the past with the BPU, when we package bonding initiatives together we are able to piggy back on top of each others efforts and basically share those costs so that we’re not going out in 2019 and doing $150,000 in costs and then the BPU is going out in 2020 or 2021. We’ll take them under one initiative and we’ll share the proportionate costs.”

If all projections were met, the mayor said the city would realize a projected annual savings of $599,500 through the program.

While the project was only publicly revealed on Monday night, the program is on an aggressive timeline to be reviewed and then acted on by the city council. According to the mayor, the council may give its authorization to proceed with the bonding process in a resolution that could be voted on as soon as this month’s Sept. 30 voting session.

On Monday morning the union representing 50 firefighters in the city released a statement saying the Jamestown Fire Department is understaffed and unable to properly handle everyday emergencies within the city.

Since 2009, the union says the number of calls in the city have “steadily increased” while the number of firefighters available to respond have been reduced.

“The lack of commitment by Jamestown officials to properly address the minimum NFPA standards as well as failure to address the increase of emergency ambulance requests continues to be a major liability for the city and places our citizens at even more rise,” the union said in a press release.

While the Union spent a great deal of time Monday going on the attack, Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi explained during Monday Night’s Jamestown City Council work session that he would not be responding to the concerns because the firefighters are still working without a new contract.

“Any questions to me, the administrative staff, or the city council that drags us over the line and bating us into comments about collective bargaining negotiations… we are not going to be taking that bait, because ultimately what it could do is drag the city into the improper labor practice of negotiating contracts out in public,” Teresi said.

The union specifically mentioned staffing of the department’s ambulance and ladder truck, saying there isn’t enough manpower to run both vehicles at once. That’s because an increase in the number of EMS calls in the city has forced the fire department to use its ambulance more frequently.

Teresi did acknowledge that’s been a recent challenge, but not one that is unique to Jamestown.

“The issue at hand is that the private, for-profit ambulance operator – Altar, now operated by the UPMC Chautauqua – has basically been gearing down its level of service for some time, putting more pressure on our backup transport system we have hear operated by the Jamestown Fire Department. We’ve never had a full time fire department ambulance service,” Teresi said.

The mayor said that hopefully a new plan can be rolled out locally or regionally to address the rise in EMS calls. In the meantime, he’s included two new ambulances in his Smart City Capital Investment program in order to make sure other city stations can also respond to calls if needed, rather than have all responses come out of station 1 downtown.

Firefighters handled 4,392 EMS calls last year. Of those responses, 532 patients were transported by the city’s ambulance. Currently the city fire department has 50 firefighters.

• ALSO AVAILABLE AT WRFA SOUNDCLOUD PAGE

Originally airing Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019.

Jamestown mayor Sam Teresi stops by the WRFA studio for his monthly interview and offers his thoughts on a recent court decision involving the city’s Annexation case with the Town of Ellicott/Village of Falconer. The mayor also takes time to offer an update on his proposal in January for a Capital Infrastructure and Equipment Replacement Program, which would likely include borrowing money to pay for several capital needs and programs. And the mayor talks about Sales Tax revenue for the city this year and how it relates to several hospitality and tourism driven projects that have opened in the past year.

Sam Teresi

At 5 p.m. the JLDC board will hold an organizational meeting to welcome new members to the board, as well as appoint the 2018 officers. According to JLDC bylaws, the mayor of Jamestown – Sam Teresi – is required to serve as president of the board, while the city council president – Marie Carrubba – is required to serve as vice president.

• VIEW MEETING NOTICE/AGENDA

In addition to organizational matters for the New Year, the board will also discuss how to allocate $600,000 in state funding for Downtown programming. The money comes from a portion of the $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant that the city received in 2016, and can be applied toward downtown entertainment projects and the JLDC has been assigned the agency responsible for allocating that pool of funding.

The JLDC is also the agency that would assume ownership of the Jamestown Wastewater Treatment Plant, under the proposed Capital Infrastructure and Equipment Replacement Program by the mayor to sell the facility in order to raise much-needed capital for the city. Tuesday’s meeting agenda does not include any action items by the board involving that proposal.

The JLDC is a not-for-profit corporation created by the Jamestown City Council in April 1981 which serves as the lending agency of the City of Jamestown’s Department of Development. JLDC loan maximums range from $35,000 to $350,000 based upon various loan programs and varying percentage participation levels. In addition, loans over $100,000 must be ratified by the Jamestown City Council. No taxpayer dollars are used as loan money.

Tuesday’s JLDC meeting begins at 5 p.m. in the Mayor’s Conference Room of City hall and is open to the public.

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On Monday night the Jamestown City Council unanimously approved a resolution allowing the mayor to accept the final report on Fleet Management Practices, prepared by Mercury Associates.

• READ THE FINAL MERCURY REPORT

The firm was hired in 2016 to assist city officials with managing its vehicle and equipment fleet. The cost of the report was $58,000 – with money coming from funds given to the city by the State Financial Restructuring Board for Local Governments in an effort to help the city identify efficiencies to help reduce local costs.

The study provides a blueprint for a new fleet structure that would not only help to manage vehicles, but also eliminate underused/duplicate vehicles. It also calls for sharing more non-specialized vehicles and equipment, implementing a new vehicle and equipment turnover program, and increase leverage with original equipment manufacturers for after-sales service and support.

Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi

Mayor Sam Teresi said there is little to no cost to pursue some of the initiatives in the plan, but a significant amount of funding would be needed to replace old vehicles, as well as prepare city facilities to house any newer vehicles that may come online in the coming years.

“To really get into the meat and potatoes of what is in that Mercury plan — that really can save significant dollars for the rate payer customers of the BPU and the taxpayer customers of the city council and me as mayor – it will require some serious investment of capitol to buy new equipment, to buy new maintenance operation equipment, to make renovations to building to make them large enough and tall enough to take new equipment in, and ultimately to secure that energy-efficient, productive equipment that can really help us lower costs,” Teresi said.

The mayor has said the funding to cover the related costs associated with vehicles and equipment could come from the proposed Capital Infrastructure and Equipment Replacement Program announced in November. Money for the fund would come from what the mayor calls a “paper sale” involving the city selling its $16 million Wastewater Treatment Plant, located in the town of Poland, to the Jamestown Local Development Corporation (JLDC). The JLDC would use bonding as a way to pay for the sale with BPU rate payers – both in and outside of the city – helping to pay off the debt for those bonds over a period of time.

The plan is not without controversy, as the Chautauqua County Chamber of Commerce / Manufacturers Association of the Southern Tier, along with others, have come against the proposal.