A decade after issuing bonds to fund the construction of its new Town Hall, the Town of Shawangunk is examining the possibility of refinancing the bonds in order to save a sizable amount of money. During its May 16 meeting, the board heard a presentation from Noah Nadelson of the Munistat financial advisory firm regarding their options for refinancing or paying off their bonds.

The municipality has approximately $2.45 million in bonds between the Town Hall funds and the water district, with $1.15 million in bonds out for the sewer fund. The Town Hall bonds were issued in 2009 with a 10-year call, and the sewer bonds were issued in 2010 with a nine-year call, so the town has options this year in both cases. During Thursday’s session, the board unanimously adopted a resolution to pay off the 2010 sewer bonds this year with fund balance from the sewer fund.

All of the bonds can be prepaid or refinanced in November. “If you want to refinance them, you can do that 90 days in advance of the call date, so we can refinance the bonds as early as August 1st,” Nadelson told the board. Investors have been collecting interest payments on the bonds every six months for the past 10 years. “What you could do is sell the bonds towards the middle or end of July, and then you could close after August 1,” Nadelson explained.

If the town chooses to refinance the Town Hall and water bonds, Shawangunk could save between $17,000 to $20,000 per year from 2020 to 2034, for a projected total of $279,428 in total savings.

“We’ve been eyeing the sewer bond because we wanted to call those and pay them off,” Town Supervisor John Valk said. “So I scheduled an appointment with this gentleman (Nadelson) and he did the numbers, and when he brought them in I was quite impressed with how much we could save. So that’s why I invited him to the board, so we can proceed and have time to think about it.”

The town will monitor market conditions over the next few months before a decision has to be made on the potential refinancing.

“If interest rates go up, we’ll just freeze it for now and wait,” Valk said during the meeting. If the refinancing moves forward, it could provide the town with a fiscal boost. “We could use another 20 grand a year in the town coffers,” Valk told the board.

Slow ambulance response time
During Thursday’s meeting, resident Ingrid Malloy informed the board about a scary situation that took place on May 11 when a local boy became pinned under an ATV. While the sheriff’s department and fire department responded immediately, Malloy explained that it took an hour for an ambulance to arrive on the scene after the local team did not arrive.

Eventually a Pine Bush ambulance was called to tend to the young victim, who was not seriously injured. Malloy said the situation wasn’t tenable for residents who may face life-or-death situations and need an ambulance to respond promptly. The Mobile Life firm handles the town’s ambulance during the day, while the Wallkill volunteer corps responds to calls on nights and weekends.

“Mobile Life covers 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, because that’s when people are working,” Valk said. “Then the locals cover evenings and the overnights and weekends. They’ve only been responding to less than 50 percent of those calls. So gaining volunteers is difficult. There’s only four or five members that respond to calls. This is not just ours, this is all over. It’s a big issue.”

Shawangunk Police Chief Gerald Marlatt said that he’s noticed a dwindling number of volunteers signing up to man the ambulances. “It’s probably been the last 10 years I’ve seen a rapid decline in volunteers,” Marlatt told the board. “Not only for Wallkill Ambulance, but Pine Bush Ambulance as well.”

Valk said the town would have to raise taxes significantly to contract an outside firm to cover all the shifts. “This ambulance corps wanted to hire EMTs, which the payroll would have been $300,000,” Valk said during the meeting. “They wanted us to raise the taxes from $80,000 to $300,000, which we would far exceed the tax cap then.”

Malloy noted that she would pay for the peace of mind to know an ambulance would show up when one is desperately required. “I don’t mind paying for a service, because someday I may need it,” she told the board.
“We have no control over making people go to an ambulance call, they’re volunteers,” Councilman Robert Miller said during the meeting. “If they decide not to go, we can’t do anything about it. “