KNOX — The six-year-old town hall is in need of some immediate repairs, according to Knox’s new supervisor, Vasilios Lefkaditis.

He organized a Feb. 27 tour of Knox facilities for town board members and presented the board with his recommendations on Tuesday.

Repairs for the highway department garage, transfer station, and park are all too substantial to be handled by town funds, he said. Lefkaditis plans to pursue county and state monies.

“It’s too far gone,” he said of the highway garage. “Again, we’ll do triage,” he said, alluding to a process doctors use, prioritizing patients in a disaster to increase the number of survivors.

“Most of this was built by volunteers,” Lefkaditis said of town facilities. “We have to build on what these volunteers proudly built years ago.”

He had the most specific recommendations for the town hall because the problems there are the most manageable. Since the emergency generator is not working, Lefkaditis proposed hiring Gentech for a service agreement to maintain the generator, for $550 a year, a proposal approved by all four town board members present at Tuesday’s meeting.

Lefkaditis noted that the town hall is designated as an emergency center and, without a generator, wouldn’t give security to those taking refuge in a disaster.

Second, he recommended removing mold from drywall in the town hall’s basement right away. He expressed concern that spores from the mold could get into the heating and ventilation system. There was some discussion about whether highway department employees could do the work or if special certification is required to handle mold.

Third, Lefkaditis recommended examining and repairing the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system, stating the system doesn’t heat well when it is very cold outside.

Fourth, he recommended repairing emergency lighting right away.

Lefkaditis had a second list of less pressing projects for the town hall. He is hoping to use inmates from Albany County’s jail — those convicted of non-violent crimes who are part of a work program — to remove stones from around the perimeter of the building. A mowing machine has propelled the stones into the siding of the town hall, causing many small blemishes.

He also wants to create a schedule for Louis Saddlemire, who is in charge of maintenance, to follow.

Other facilities

The town park failed an insurance inspection because piers that anchor playground equipment have been heaved above ground “right where the kids play,” said Lefkaditis.

“The equipment is outdated,” he said.

The only pressing need is to remove trees — particularly poplars near the Little League field — that could be dangerous. One tree fell, landing on the dugout; no children were nearby. The board agreed to the tree removal and liked the idea from the Conservation Advisory Council of planting oaks instead, which are hardier and would break the wind.

The board also agreed to remove trees that are dangerous in the park wetlands, but only near paths or near where Saddlemire mows — places where people could get injured if they fell.

The Knox Youth Council has come up with a four-year plan that Lefkaditis called “brilliant” because it can be done in phases as funds become available.

“I’ve been harassing our assemblyman, senator, and….the county executive for building project money,” Lefkaditis said.

Illustrating his points with pictures, Lefkaditis said of the transfer station, “The big problem is this wall bows five or six inches under the transfer station itself.” He also showed places where the parking lot is buckling.

Roof tiles blew off during a tropical storm. “The boys re-did all the seals,” he said of highway workers, and now there are no leaks.

At the highway garage, Lefkkaditis said, the waste tube is narrow and clogs. When it is opened to be cleared or when it rains heavily, foul odors permeate the garage.

“The stench…I was gagging immediately,” said Lefkkaditis. “It was atrocious.”

Skylights leak and are covered with mold, he said, and most of the garage is not insulated. “We’re burning fuel like crazy,” Lefkaditis said, and, still, the temperature in the building is in the 50s.

Slabs in front of the garage have settled and are backfilled with dirt to keep heat in.

An inspection this week from the Public Employee Safety and Health Bureau cleared the highway garage of the 16 violations it had found during a November inspection, Lefkaditis said. Still, he went on, there are problems with the garage’s electrical system; he termed its electrical panel “a hodgepodge.”

Lefkaditis said he had talked with the county executive, Daniel McCoy, about a shared facility. “We have no interest in shared services,” said Lefkaditis, “but, if they throw big money at us, we’d share a building.”

Finally, a scenic boardwalk that meanders over wetlands has been closed off because Saddlemire deemed it unsafe. “Kids could just disappear and fall into the brink,” said Lefkaditis.

He said that he and many other people didn’t know the boardwalk was there. “It’s beautiful,” he said, but he would consider replacing it only if outside funds were secured.

Funds from the Tennessee Pipeline paid to build it, Lefkaditis said. He said he called Kinder Morgan and, if its planned pipeline goes through, “We can hammer them for money.”

Finding funds

Much of the four-hour meeting on Tuesday was devoted to Lefkaditis’s proposals for saving money.

He noted that, since little snow fell this winter, Knox paid $23,000 less in salaries this year than in the two previous winters.

The town also paid for 700 instead of 1,900 gallons of fuel this year and reaped additional savings by purchasing it for less on state contract.

Lefkaditis recommended keeping the same company, Paychex, to handle payroll, but downgrading to a plan “without the bells and whistles.”

“We had the platinum package; we don’t need it,” he said. “We save 2,000 bucks and it does everything we need.”

Joan Adriance said from the gallery that the transfer station workers should be paid biweekly instead of quarterly. That reduced the savings from $2,000 to about $1,800 — a measure the board approved.

The next efficiency measure recommended by Lefkaditis, and approved by the board, was for town telephone lines. He said that, when he first tried to make a call from Town Hall, the town clerk, Tara Murphy, told him she was using the line. “I felt like I was a 14-year-old calling a girl and my mother told me to get off the phone,” he said.

If one person is on the town hall’s main phone line, no one else can use a phone or send a fax, he said. Recently, the building department left its phone off the hook and, said Lefkaditis, “For three days, everyone was getting a busy signal.”

The town has two other lines, one at the highway department and one for the town court, that don’t allow calls to be transferred to other departments.

Lefkaditis worked with Cornerstone Communications on a plan that “gives everyone a direct line with their own answering machine,” he said, which would cost $105 more for 13 months. “Then we pay less in perpetuity. I think I beat them up so much…they’re not calling back,” he said.

The board agreed to give Lefkaditis leeway to negotiate for a new plan that would cost no more than $110 per month over the current rate.

The board also agreed in concept, although final details were not available, to use a different kennel for stray dogs found in Knox. The town had used the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society in Menands. “We pay $65 a day for every dog we take to Menands. We brought in two dogs that cost us $700,” said Lefkaditis.

The new kennel is run by Joe Durma on Zimmer Road in the town of Wright, and costs $15 per day. “People get hostile when they have to drive to Menands,” Lefkaditis said, stating Durma’s kennel “is just six miles down the road.”

He said Durma’s kennel is certified by the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets, and that the town’s dog-control officer, Saddlemire, “is ecstatic about this.”

Finally, Lefkaditis recommended, and the board approved, changing brokers for municipal insurance, from Amsure to Ken Gray. Currently Knox is paying about $69,500 a year for workers’ compensation. “That’s too much,” said Lefkaditis.

Gray’s proposal is for $46,896, he said. “We aged out of a hit we took in 2010 and they never removed it,” Lefkaditis said of Amsure. In 2010, he said, “Someone unfortunately passed away. A judge said part of it was work related.”

Lefkaditis also speculated there may be further savings ahead since paving is covered by the current insurance plan. “Paving is the most dangerous job,” said Lefkaditis, causing insurance rates to go up.

“We deliver stone to the paver,” said Highway Superintendent Gary Salisbury. “They lay it out,” so the actual act of paving is not performed by town workers.

“I’ll call the new insurance company and have them interview Gary,” said Lefkkaditis.