RENSSELAERVILLE — With two separate resolutions, the Rensselaerville Town Board showed the serious headway it has made with two of its most longstanding issues — the Kuhar Endowment Fund, and water district improvements.

At its Feb. 13 meeting, the four members present — Supervisor John Dolce was absent — voted, 4 to 0, to authorize the Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region to manage the $830,000 Kuhar Endowment Fund, and authorized an $80,000 bond for expenses related to the water district. 

The Community Foundation resolution was the final step the town needed to take to satisfy a judge’s ruling that the money, which to the town’s surprise had been left to it by a non-resident after his death in 2020, needed to be managed by an outside group for the town to use it. 

The town had previously announced that it would distribute interest earnings from the fund to a number of community-oriented organizations and projects, but was halted by the state. With the money now entrusted to the Community Foundation, a not-for-profit organization with a focus on philanthropy, the town can return to thinking about how to use the money, though it was not discussed during the Feb. 13 meeting.

The $80,000 bond resolution, meanwhile, will pay for a report on the water district that’s already been drafted by the engineering firm C.T. Male, along with various legal fees. 

This is money that will be paid back by residents of the water district to the town, which has been incurring the expenses on behalf of the Rensselaerville Water and Sewer Advisory Committee. The interest rate is 3.9 percent. 

Town Attorney William Ryan told the board before the vote that the “expectation is the map plan and report will be prepared for the improvements to the water district and, once we get that number we’ll roll it into the bond anticipation note, so there’ll be another bond resolution sometime in the autumn.”

Ryan also said there’s a hope that some of the expense will be covered by grant money from the Environmental Facilities Corporation, a state entity that helps fund public water-quality projects.  

Rensselaerville has for years struggled with maintaining appropriate levels of trihalomethanes (TTHMs) and HAA5 — a group of five haloacetic acids — which develop in the water supply as a result of the disinfection process.

Although they are not considered an immediate risk to human health, the acids are regulated contaminants and the town’s difficulties with them have caught the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency. 

“We aren’t necessarily in trouble by the EPA,” explained Jerrine Corallo, of Sustainable Growth, the consulting group with which the committee has been working. “We are being called upon to provide a corrective action plan. Basically, they’re asking us to document what we’ve already been doing, write that down in a plan, and they did indicate on the calls that all the work we’ve done … demonstrates that we’re taking this problem seriously.” 

The town’s water and sewer advisory committee has been working on developing a plan to address the issue, but progress is relatively slow since the primary obstacle is funding, with lots of bureaucracy standing in the way of it. 

The whole project is expected to cost $2.5 million, but the district will be able to receive interest-free financing from the state because an income study found that the district qualifies for hardship, and the EPA’s attention adds weight to the committee’s claims that the project is a necessity.