NEW SCOTLAND — A group of New Scotland’s elderly residents showed up at a recent workshop, held to hear how the town should allocate its remaining coronavirus federal relief funds, and asked the town board to set aside some of those funds for a new bus.

Transportation of the town’s senior citizens has been at half capacity for the past three years after it was determined repairing one of the town’s two senior buses would be too expensive, which led to the board declaring it surplus and the bus being sold at auction.

With the full federal payout — doled out in two chunks during the summers of 2021 and 2022 — sitting in New Scotland’s bank account since last July, the town had been slow to allocate its $602,000 in American Rescue Plan funds, having earmarked a third of the federal dollars for playground equipment and   code codification services in December.

It was at that December meeting that Councilwoman Bridgit Burke said she felt residents should have more to say in how the pandemic payout was spent. 

While she was “fully in support” of the proposed spending, Burke had felt it was “very important that we be as transparent as possible to the public,” and went on to mention how other municipalities “allow the community to come in and make suggestions about how they thought the funds should be used. And I think that this is very worthy … I would like to hear from the community as well.”

At the May 10 workshop, Burke explained to attendees what the federal funding could and couldn’t be used for. 

She said it could “be used to replace revenue that was lost due to COVID. It can be used also for negative impacts caused by COVID to small businesses, households, hard-hit industries, and for general economic recovery.” She also said the money could be used “for premium pay for essential workers and investment in water, sewer, broadband, and infrastructure.”

What the town can’t do is use the money “to directly or indirectly offset a tax reduction,” Burke said. “It also can’t be used for pension funds.”

New Scotland has about $384,000 in remaining unallocated pandemic funds.

In December, $23,000 was set aside to streamline the town’s general code as the board then authorized the purchase of new equipment for the Feura Bush and Swift Road playgrounds. The price tag for the equipment came to about $320,000, with $125,000 of that total covered by a state grant secured through Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy’s office. 

On May 10, a handful of New Scotland senior citizens asked board members to use some of the remaining funding to purchase a new bus.

One resident noted she had recently been to a concert attended by a number of seniors at Troy Music Hall, and couldn’t help but notice the “lovely” bus  shuttling some residents from the Summit at Mill Hill in Guilderland. In contrast, “the bus we have right now is just terrible,” she said. 

 Deb Engel, New Scotland’s senior outreach liaison, told the board after one of the town’s two senior buses was taken off the road three years ago, she had “been attempting nonstop to secure funding through three submissions of grants on behalf of the town.”

Engel said, “obviously,” her attempts have not been successful.

And the town’s current senior bus has seen better days. 

“We’re trying to salvage it so that we can continue to use it,” Engel told The Enterprise in October, when the bus, which is from 2009 and has about 50,000 miles on it, was having work done; the exhaust system was rusted out, Engel said at the time.

A month earlier, board members had passed a resolution allowing the town to accept private donations to help pay for the uncovered portion of a grant Engel had applied for; the award would have been for 80 percent of the new bus’s cost, about $90,000.

During the May 10 workshop, Engel said having since learned about the ARPA funds, she thought, “It would be a great opportunity for the town to provide or contribute whatever available funding is there to purchase a very-much needed vehicle.”

She said the pandemic took a terrible toll on all  New Scotland residents, but it was the “seniors and the elderly residents in town who were affected immensely.” Engel said, “They were left almost completely vulnerable and alone. They were terrified at the thought of going to the grocery store or coming into contact with the public, [and] becoming very sick.”

Engel told the board a new bus would allow for more elderly residents to attend twice-weekly senior lunches held at the Wyman Osterhout Community Center and Saint Matthew’s in Voorheesville.

This spring, the New Scotland Seniors started taking regular bus trips for outings to various local venues.

Engel also pointed out to board members that New Scotland’s residents aren’t getting any younger. 

“According to the latest Census report, seniors are currently the largest population [cohort]” in New Scotland,” Engel said nearly 38 percent of residents are over the age of 55. “In the town of New Scotland, we all know that the senior numbers are going to continue to grow over the years.”