PERSONNEL - COMMITTEE

Monday, March 20, 2023 - 10:00 AM

Stephanie DeZalia, Chairperson

JoePete Wilson, Vice-Chairperson

Chairwoman DeZalia called this Personnel Meeting to order at 10:00 am with the following Supervisors in attendance: Robin DeLoria, Stephanie DeZalia, Derek Doty, Shaun Gillilland, Charlie Harrington, Roy Holzer, Ken Hughes, Steve McNally, Noel Merrihew, James Monty, Tom Scozzafava, Matt Stanley, Joe Pete Wilson, Davina Winemiller, Margaret Wood and Mark Wright. Clayton Barber and Ike Tyler were excused.

Department Heads present: Judy Garrison, Dan Manning, Jennifer Mascarenas and Michael Mascarenas.

New media: Alana Penny, Sun News.

DEZALIA: Good morning. We’ll call this Personnel Administration committee to order and we’ll start with Jen.

J.MASCARENAS: Good morning. I think I have given you all a copy of my monthly report and updated vacancy list. I apologize, I lost track of my days so I didn’t get it to Judy by Wednesday. We still have 67 full time positions vacant and I have added the part times on there so you can see how many part times we have. We have 23 of those.

DEZALIA: Anybody have any questions for Jen?

DOTY: I should probably see Chelsea but I’m under the impression there are four new hires for the Department of Motor Vehicles that are being trained right now in hopes that we might be able to open up the Lake Placid branch in the spring or even mid-summer?

J.MASCARENAS: I’m not sure about four but, she may have four vacancies but I know we hired two new over there.

DOTY: Okay so two would only really help here?

J.MASCARENAS: Right.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, I don’t pretend to know everything those employees have to go through in terms to be properly trained, you probably have a better idea than I do but I think we need to ask when is a reasonable timeframe to try to reopen those campus’ in Ticonderoga and/or North Elba. I know that even with proper staffing it can be a struggle because when you factor in time off and those types of things, when they opened up those satellite offices they never increased staffing levels it’s my understanding from what I’m learning about it. Which means that everybody is short when that happens, you get one call in and it starts an issue so I think if we’re going to open those I think we need to properly staff them long term and look at the revenues that are generated in those local departments to make sure that the revenue generated is worth the hire and I have collected some of that information I’m happy to share that with both, with the whole board quite frankly in terms of what those offices were bringing in. I got that last week so I can share that with you all.

DOTY: Thank you.

J.MASCARENAS: Also, just for your reference, since January 1^st we’ve lost 19 employees and we’ve hire 12.

DOTY: So basically, everyone is wearing many hats.

J.MASCARENAS: Yes in many departments.

SCOZZAFAVA: I will be putting an application in in January. (laughter)

HUGHES: Good morning Jen. Just a quick question for personal education. Can you please explain why Keene Central School is listed on our list here?

J.MASCARENAS: Sometimes we have the different you know, towns, villages and schools that are having a hard time recruiting they’ll ask for us to post it on our website just to get it out there a little bit more.

HUGHES: Thank you.

MASCARENAS: And for those of you that are not aware of Personnel, those ancillary employees that work at schools are part of civil service if you weren’t aware of that so we do all those test orderings, qualifications for those individuals that may not be teaching staff.

DEZALIA: Okay, anything else? Alright, thank you Jen.

Judy –

GARRISON: Good morning. I just submitted a monthly report. I do not have anything in addition to that unless anyone has any questions for me?

DEZALIA: Any questions for Judy? No? Thank you Judy.

And Dan.

MANNING: I just have a few things you should have before you a resolution joining the new national settlements of pharmacies Walgreens, Wal-Mart and CVS approving the execution of New York State opioid settlement sharing agreements and releases. This resolution regards our joining the national settlement against Walgreens, Wal-Mart and CVS as we have in the past we have participated in litigation settlements with TEVA and Allergan, Johnson & Johnson and a few others and we are starting to see proceeds of those lawsuits start to trickle in. This will allow us to participate in the settlements with Walgreens, Wal-Mart and CVS as with the other settlements we are to get .036 or round it off to .036% not .03 but .036% of the overall settlement numbers which are in the billions so it is quite a lot of money. We are in line with Seneca County, Yates County, Franklin County and Hamilton County those counties are getting the .036% there are a bunch of counties in here with .04%, .05% of course Nasa County the bigger counties will see larger gains, larger shares so I need a motion with this resolution and a second.

RESOLUTION JOINING THE NEW NATIONAL SETTLEMENTS WITH PHARMACIES WALGREENS, WAL-MART AND CVS APPROVING THE EXECUTION OF A WAL-MART NEW YORK PAYMENT OPIOID SETTLEMENT SHARING AGREEEMENT, RELEASE AND ANY OTHER ASSOCIATED DOCUMENTS; THE CVS NEW YORK PAYMENT OPIOID SETTLEMENT SHARING AGREEMENT, RELEASE AND OTHER ASSOCATED DOCUMENTS; WALGREENS NEW YORK PAYMENT OPIOID SETTLEMENT SHARING AGREEEMENT, RELEASE AND OTHER ASSOCIATED DOCUMENTS AND AUTHORIZING THE COUNTY CHAIRMAN OR COUNTY MANAGER TO EXECUTE THE SAME TOGETHER WITH ANY AND ALL OTHER NECESSARY AND PERTINENT DOCUMENTS REQUIRED TO SETTLE ESSEX COUNTY’S INTEREST IN THE CURRENT NEW NATIONAL SETTLEMENTS WITH WAL-MART, WALGREENS AND CVS. Hughes, Stanley

DEZALIA: Anymore discussion on that? All in favor.

MANNING: And also with respect to, as you’re all aware we are participating in a statewide indigent services grant with the State of New York which to date, we’ve been participating for the last five years. I believe we are at $1.13 million dollars that we have, yeah. $1,131,700.00 that we have obtained or in the process of obtaining to help with our criminal indigent people defense expenses. You know off the top of my head we’ve been able to pay for salary increases to all the public defenders, we’ve been able to pay for an additional public defender, we’ve been able to pay for a part time public defender, we’ve been able to pay for full expense of our Conflict Defender, her salary, her office expenses and her administrative assistant. We’ve been able to supplement our Counsel of First appearance attorneys who, exclusively only show up at first appearances because the law has changed which is in my opinion, I don’t have an opinion on it. So, we pay that. We pay all the expenses on the Finucane Building which houses our Conflict Defender and Public Defender. We pay for case management so this is really helped us a tremendous amount. Without it we would be $1 million dollars short this year and eight-hundred, six-hundred and three-hundred in the others. Because we haven’t spent all the money for that five years we have to apply for a contract extension, they are willing to extend it for one year so I would like is a resolution authorizing the county chairman or the county manager to execute and forward a contract extension with the Office of Indigent Legal Services exte4nding our ILS for one more year in order to spend the unspent funds we haven’t spent yet on the current five year grant.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE COUNTY CHAIRMAN OR COUNTY MANAGER TO EXECUTE AND FORWARD A CONTRACT EXTENSION WITH THE OFFICE OF INDIGENT LEGAL SERVICES, EXTENDING OUR ILS FOR ONE MORE YEAR IN ORDER TO SPEND THE UNSPENT FUNDS ON THE CURRENT FIVE-YEAR GRANT. DeLoria, Merrihew

DEZALIA: Any questions on that? No? All in favor.

MANNING: Okay and just for your edification they are extending these grants another three years until April of 2027, so we have three more years of money and I think it’s going to be a hype. This last one stays in. We didn’t’ get $1.3 million, that’s what we are getting this year actually I may have misspoken it may be a lot more but anyway, we are getting more money so it’s a good thing.

On the Westport Hotel, I made a lot of headway finally been able to after numerous calls and speaking to numerous people and finding out who was on first I’ve been able to touch base with the people that listen to you regarding the release of tax warrants. As you know, the Westport Hotel had hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax warrants against it, there were five of them. One $45,000 and one $35,000, $4,000, $5,000 and $12,000, something like that in addition, there was a workers’ compensation lien all those are going to be released so we’re getting the releases they are in process. How long it takes? I don’t know but I’ve seem to find someone who is really excited about doing this. I’ve spoken to the attorney on the other side and she has stated that her client is willing to purchase provided these are all cleaned up. There does leave some additional liens on the property that in my opinion these liens are stale, they are outlawed because of the filing the list of delinquent taxes & real property tax matters but it’s hard to get that – so we’re making a lot of progress there. Then just finally I would like to ask for a resolution. I ordered two abstracts with title one for the Westport Hotel in the amount of $800.00, and one for Golden Ring which was $1200. I used exclusively Holcombe Abstract which generally we don’t we would go out for quotes however, Holcombe had done all the work on Golden Ring before so I wanted to keep that continuity and I needed that stuff rather quickly so I would like a resolution authorizing payment to Holcombe for the Golden Ring Abstract of $1200.00 and the Westport Hotel Abstract of $800.00 please.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING PAYMENT TO HOLCOMBE ABSTRACT FOR THE GOLDEN RING ABSTRACT IN THE AMOUNT OF $1200.00, AND THE WESTPORT HOTEL ABSTRACT IN THE AMOUNT OF $800.00. Stanley, Merrihew

DEZALIA: Any questions on that? Any discussion? All in favor.

MANNING: I would like to go into a brief executive session.

MONTY: Just a quick question back to the opioid settlement that money, what is it specifically targeted for?

MANNING: A portion of it you can use for whatever you want.

MASCARENAS: What we have been doing currently is we’ve been doing it to do opioid programing. We’ve haven’t been using it for general Government support. We’ve been trying to put those funds in the hands of individuals that do that work and give them some extra tools. Law enforcement we did the K9 units with those, there was a real nice article this weekend about the K9 units which I enjoyed. We give some money to Public Health so that they could do some of those visitations with new moms, those types of things and I’ve got a request in front of me right now for Mental Health that want to do some program with those funds so the Board could certainly go in that direction with a portion of the funds and use them for general operating costs. I don’t know that we need to at this time but I think it’s worth having the discussion about where we are at financially. I think we’d get more leverage out of those funds putting it into programming long term that we can support some of these things for multi years that we wouldn’t have another mechanism to do that with so, that’s really just making a decision of weighting the benefits verses the cost and see what direction the board wants to go but we can put something together if you want that shows you that.

MONTY: I was just curious.

MASCARENAS: It’s an allowable thing.

MONTY: How it was tied into the settlement usually settlement agreements ties us on how you can or can’t use it.

MANNING: I agree with Mike but the settlement does allow for, I’m not sure if it’s half the money is unallocated and the other half has to be used in connection with Mental Health and it runs the gamut, it could be something the Sheriff’s Department is doing, you know, it is very broad but I think Mike’s solution is well taken.

MONTY: Thank you.

MANNING: We do have to account for all that.

MASCARENAS: Linda is accounting for it in terms of projects in Munis so when those monies are taken out of one account to the other and the way those expenses are coming in are being tracked.

MANNING: There is also a statewide pot of money too I’m sure you are aware of.

MASCARENAS: Yes, some of that from what I understand and you’re probably aware of this is going directly to the Community Services Board I think a chunk of that money is going to that board and they can do what they want with it too. So now for your executive session.

MANNING: Yeah, I would like to go into a quick executive session regarding the jail lease the State Police.

DEZALIA: Moved by Noel, seconded by Davina.

THE COMMITTEE MOVED INTO AN EXECUTIVE SESSION AT 10:15 A.M.

TO DISCUSS THE JAIL LEASE WITH THE NEW YORK STATE POLICE

AND RETURNED TO OPEN SESSION AT 10:37 A.M.

DEZALIA: We are moved out of executive session. Moved by Davina, seconded by Mark.

MANNING: Just one last thing I’d like to ask for is a resolution authorizing me to continue to negotiations with the New York State Police relative to the lease of their space up at the Emergency Services facility.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE COUNTY ATTORNEY TO CONTINUE NEGOTATIONS WITH THE NEW YORK STATE POLICE RELATIVE TO THE LEASE OF SPACE AT THE EMERGENCY SERVICES DEPARTMENT. Stanley, Wright

DEZALIA: Any questions? All in favor. Anything else? Alright, we are adjourned. Thank you.

As there was no further discussion to come before this Personnel Committee it was adjourned at 10:38 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Judith Garrison, Clerk

Board of Supervisors