FINANCE/TAX
REDUCTION/MANDATE RELIEF - COMMITTEE
Wednesday, February 15,
2023 - 10:30 AM
Thomas Scozzafava, Chairperson
Noel Merrihew, Vice-Chairperson
Chairperson Scozzafava called this Finance
Meeting to order at 11:00 am with the following Supervisors in attendance:
Clayton Barber, Stephanie DeZalia, Charlie Harrington, Roy Holzer, Ken Hughes, Steve
McNally, Noel Merrihew, James Monty, Tom Scozzafava, Matt Stanley, Ike Tyler, Joe
Pete Wilson, Margaret Wood and Mark Wright.
Shaun Gillilland was excused. Robin DeLoria and Derek Doty were
excused. Davina Winemiller was absent.
Department Heads present: Laura Carson, Michael Diskin, Jim Dougan, Judy
Garrison, Chelsea Merrihew, David Wainwright and Michael Mascarenas.
Also
present: Joe Keegan and William Tansey.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Good morning. We’re running a
little late so I’m going to call the Finance Committee to order. First on the agenda is our County Clerk,
Chelsea.
C. MERRIHEW:
Good morning. In January we collected
$356,000, transferred $196,000 to the Treasurer for local retention.
Of notes, the Governor’s budget included an
increase to the DMV county revenue share for county run DMV’s. So under the current model we keep 12.7% for
in office transactions and 3.2% for online transactions after a $300,000
threshold is met. Under the proposed
model we’ll keep a 10.75% flat rate across the board so for in person and
online without a threshold we will start retaining 10.75%. I crunched the numbers for 2022 numbers and
it came up that we would have had an increase of $50,000 in our revenue so
about 20% if we get approved, that would start January 2024. I may be one of the few people who had good
news to the Governor’s budget. I know
the county clerks have been working for several decades to get that changed.
MASCARENAS:
It is good news.
C. MERRIHEW:
That is all I had.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Okay any questions? If not, thank
you.
C. MERRIHEW:
Thank you.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Laura, Auditor’s office.
CARSON:
Page one is our department head expense report to date, I received four
vouchers for Coroner Heald and the funeral home responded to three removals.
Page two is our supervisor expense report. Just mileage mostly. Page three is our invoice summary. We processed almost 1300 invoices and noted
207 errors in January to date, we prevented about $2500 in over payments and
$8900 in duplicate payments. Page four
is our budget. Page five is the assigned
counsel monthly summary, yearly comparison.
I’m intentionally not processing twenty-three vouchers I’ve received
yet, I’m still cleaning up 2022. We
received over 150 vouchers. We only paid out 26, totaled about $16,000, that is
because there are still about 170 sitting over at Chambers. I expect them back this week or next so this
should be in the, for this month’s numbers.
Page six is the Assigned Counsel 2022 budget. It’s not final yet. We are still posting for
2022. Page seven is the 2023 budget for
Assigned Counsel and that’s why you’ll only see admin costs there. As I said, I haven’t started processing 2023
vouchers and Page eight is our tax roll corrections. We received three from RPTS in January. Does anybody have any questions?
SCOZZAFAVA:
Nope. Thank you, good report.
CARSON:
Thank you.
SCOZZAFAVA: Dave Wainwright.
WAINWRIGHT:
Good morning. I’ll be quick this
morning too. You should have all found
your RPTS annual report in your box and I’ll just need a resolution for that
and other than that I’ve got nothing.
RESOLUTION
ACCEPTING AND PLACING ON FILE THE 2023 RPTS ANNUAL REPORT. Hughes, Wilson
SCOZZAFAVA:
Discussion? Being none, all in
favor, opposed – carried. Any questions
for Dave?
McNALLY:
I appreciate you sending those postcards out but you forgot a big part
of the postcard. What you didn’t put was
some rules to this, it was like click bait out there on the internet. We had 80
phone calls. All you had to do to adjust
that problem was put on there, primary residence and 65 and older so if you have
assessors that are angry you know what it’s about.
WAINWRIGHT: Oh, I know. Believe me I’ve been hearing it.
McNALLY:
I’m sure you have.
WAINWRIGHT: What I did was use the law as it’s
written, the exact wording because this was a second notice, not a brand new
thing. It’s a second notice and the first notice is on the back of their tax
bill the second notice is supposed to mimic that wording just as a reminder to
seniors. The fact that people are coming
out of the woodwork, people in their 40’s thinking that they would be eligible,
people from Canada, thinking that they are eligible in hindsight, yes, I could
of put a lot more wording in there but I did follow the wording that the law
says, shall be on the notice.
McNALLY:
Something to think about next time possibly you could add some more
wording on this?
WAINWRIGHT:
Sure, sure we can.
McNALLY:
Next time you do that, if you could put that on there.
SCOZZAFAVA:
We received numerous calls. I
received calls but on the flip side of this, okay I also had a lot of people
who were more than eligible that didn’t even realize it existed so it did help
a lot of people at least in my community.
McNALLY:
I agree with it completely getting it out there for the public it’s that
it just would have been if we would have had some more information on there to
keep the calls down.
HOLZER:
Well, in Wilmington we love hearing from our constituents so send out
anything you want, we are always willing to listen to people from my
community. Quickly, how many revals are
scheduled for our county this year?
WAINWRIGHT:
Revals that are part of the cyclical plan that they are required to do,
there are only three but everybody’s sales ratio is so low this year because
the sales are still coming in ridiculously high pretty much every town has to
do something again just like they have the past couple of years.
HOLZER:
So let me ask you this, if we as a body, as a county of 18 towns said
no, New York State we’re are going to have a cooling off period, we’re going to
keep everything status quo, would something like that ever work because this is
ridiculous. I mean, our guys in our
community can’t keep up with all the revals in Wilmington, it’s been year after
year after year and I’m sure North Elba is the same way probably Willsboro, all
of us are.
WAINWRIGHT: I think there’s a problem because a
lot of the –
GILLILLAND:
To add, what can the State do to us if we don’t do it?
SCOZZAFAVA:
Your equalization drops.
WAINWRIGHT:
Your equalization will go down
SCOZZAFAVA: There goes your STAR, it impacts a
lot of things.
WAINWRIGHT:
Then the follow year, people’s STAR exemptions will be a lesser amount,
Veteran’s exemptions will be less. The other issue is when your equal. rate
goes down the tax rate will go up to make up the difference you can’t get away
from it so even though somebody’s assessment can go up their equalization rate
is going to drive up that tax rate and they are still going to be paying it.
SCOZZAFAVA:
That’s going to happen this year with us. We will be 94% hopefully, and we’ll be up 6%
on our rate.
MONTY:
That was going to be my question because we had, I believe the last
report we got we had two communities that weren’t at 100% so did that affect it
last year?
SCOZZAFAVA: It will be this taxable year. It wasn’t last year, it will be this year.
MONTY:
So you’re going to lose STAR exemptions, Veteran’s exemptions if your
tax rate goes up 6%?
WAINWRIGHT:
Well, you don’t really lose the exemptions it’s a lesser amount.
SCOZZAFAVA: Lesser amount, yeah you keep it but
your tax will be based on 100% so you’re going to go up 6% on your assessment
is the bottom line.
MONTY:
Ten percent is what they asked for.
SCOZZAFAVA: But I’ve been around and around New
York State over this as you know Dave, for years and even the method that they
use to come up with these rates I’ve never agreed with and it’s killing us and
the problem is you can’t keep up with it all so it gets very discouraging but
to answer your question, I certainly think we could do a resolution and send it
to our State representatives to the Governor and so on as to, a well written
resolution on the position this is putting these eighteen towns in in Essex
County.
MONTY:
Agreed.
SCOZZAFAVA:
So if we can write something up I don’t think that would hurt.
WAINWRIGHT: It can’t hurt.
SCOZZAFAVA:
To give attention to the fact of what we are going through during all of
this.
McNALLY:
Isn’t there a rate where you don’t have to do a reval, 95% is that it?
WAINWRIGHT:
Yeah, if you are within 5% of 100% this State will give you that. So, if you’re between 95% and 110%.
McNALLY: I think we are going to meet that this
year because we do a reval every three years.
I think this year we meet that 95%.
GILLILLAND:
Doesn’t it depend on your sales?
SCOZZAFAVA:
Yes.
WAINWRIGHT:
That’s exactly it so, the issue is certain areas of the county have a
10% sales trend so the sales this past year, are 10% higher than they were the
year before and because of that everything needs to be adjusted.
BARBER: Doesn’t
it take the State at least a year to catch up if they are going to do a
reduction of the tax?
WAINWRIGHT:
It does. Yes.
BARBER:
Okay so my question is, if the Town of Chesterfield did not do the
revals people wouldn’t see the reduction right off that year?
WAINWRIGHT:
You’re right they would not, the only thing they would see is their tax
rates would go up school and what not because their equalization rates would
have to go down. You’ll see two values
on the assessment role there will be their assessed value and then you’ll see
market value below if market value is the higher one, market value is basically
what they will be paying taxes on whether their assessment is lower than that
or not that’s where equalization rate comes into play and effects your taxes.
MONTY:
This has nothing to do with your equalization rates or your post cards,
do you want to talk a little bit Dave about you and I talked about this
morning, about unity fiber and how it could affect some towns with the special
franchises?
WAINWRIGHT: Yeah, we get a list, the State of
New York values special franchise properties which are utilities, fiber optic,
overhead wires, underground wires, poles, guide wires all the things the
assessors can’t put a value on. This
year we got a lot of new ones pretty much all the towns that border the
Northway you’ve got a special assessment for a place called, Unity Fiber LLC
they are new to our county and we’re trying to figure out, Jim and I were
looking at that trying to figure out if they’ve taken over for another
company. It is extra money that the
towns are going to be receiving this year if it’s brand new. If they took over for that intel-fiber or if
they just absorb them or bought them out you probably won’t see any difference.
MONTY:
As long as the other companies were paying that along the way, correct?
WAINWRIGHT: That’s right.
MONTY:
If they haven’t been paying it along the way, someone is going to have
to foot the bill.
WAINWRIGHT: Right and I’ll check into that when
I get back upstairs.
MONTY:
It means a lot to the Town of Lewis because I’ve got seventeen miles of
interstate.
SCOZZAFAVA:
I have 100 feet. You’ll see Town
of Moriah and if you blink you’ll see Town of North Hudson. Anyone have anything else?
MONTY: Thanks
Dave.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Thanks Dave. Mike Diskin.
DISKIN:
I think if you drive down the Northway there’s a pole there that says,
Entering Moriah, leaving Moriah on the same pole. (laughter)
SCOZZAFAVA: I used to tell the State Police,
I’d say, why don’t you write those tickets in Moriah?
DISKIN:
Two cars won’t fit in that space.
Sales tax we sent out to you and we just got
another on Friday we got a second check so I wanted to bring you up to date on
that. With the first check we had gained
another $322,500, second check we had a smaller gain, it was not quite $85,000
but for the year we’ve actually gained at this point we are $942,597.32 ahead
of last year at this point. Not to get
excited because we all know those things go down later on when they chew
everything up there’s going to be some negatives coming in but just so you know
where we are right now with it. It
always happens in June and then again in December they actually calculate
everything that they have estimated because these revenues that we get are just
estimates based on prior sales and then they balance it out twice a year so if
their estimates are too high we’re going to see a reduction at some point,
probably in June if they over estimated it.
Occupancy – we finished up the year at
$6,804,438.95, that’s for the year. You
can see that it runs February through January but that’s because February is
when we get the January money so it’s actually January through December money
rentals that were out there so that’s the actual rentals for the year which is
about a little over $10,000 more than last year. It’s interesting because the first year we
did this in the year 2000, we had slightly over a million now we are at $6.8
million.
We started something this year that we spoke
about that’s getting new information out on new registrations and during the
month of January we had 16 new registrants.
I notified the towns individually rather than send them out to everybody
but twelve of them came from North Elba, two from St. Armand, one from
Wilmington, one from Newcomb. We
continue to get registrations. We got a
bunch this month. The gamut is running
primarily through North Elba but we are getting a few others that are coming in
and as we get them at the end of the month we send that information out to
Supervisors so that you’ll know who is registered in your towns and we still
continue to get information from some of the towns questioning who have done
their own surveys of town people that they believe should be notified and we’re
doing that, sending letters out letting them know that primarily there are
people that probably don’t realize the deed they are registered because they
are collecting through Air B&B or something and we require them to register
anyways so we know we are on that radar to send money in if they do collect.
I sent you revenues and also the cash flow. Now we’re going to get into the fun stuff. I know the County Clerk said we may get some
additional revenue this year, well guess what?
We may lose revenue from our auctions.
Some of you, I told you about this but in the Governor’s message this
year she included a requirement that she wants passed, new legislation of
Section 989 of Real Property Tax Law, that requires county’s or any
municipality that has a tax foreclosure auction to give the excess back to the
owner. It doesn’t say anything about
what we do with the negatives only if we have an excess we have to return it to
the former owner with the caveat that if there are liens, they make us file a
lien they get priority first to get that money and then we have to file a
priority lien of who filed the liens first so if there is excess money, we go
to the first lien holder, pay them off, if there’s money left over we go to the
second lien holder. The problem is how do you figure that out? They do this in bank foreclosures so
basically what we are going to be doing is same thing what happens with bank
foreclosures only banks have been doing this and they don’t get a negative on
theirs but this past auction we had a little over $110,000 in negative losses
from properties that sold for less than what was owed in taxes. There’s no
provision in this new proposed law to make that up by keeping that so it’s
going to be in that lost. The prior auction a couple years ago, when we did one
back in 2019, we lost almost $318,000, so if we have a bad auction and last
June was a good auction because we hadn’t had one in a couple years, real
estate, people were interested in buying up properties, real estate. If things turn the other way and go backwards
we’re going to see more losses than we do gains and we’re going to be having to
make that up in our budget. In our
budget we calculate that we are going to get everything that we’re owed for taxes. We don’t ever plan on getting an excess
that’s not really quite what the object is but it’s in the budget and it’s in
our fund balance to consider it as paid even though we don’t actually have the
money in hand because at some point the assumption is we’re going to get 100%
of what the taxes were billed out. We
lose $110,000, we are not going to get that so that’s going to have to be
calculated into the budget. A lot of
problems with this. First of all, we
don’t have that we will have to make it up by passing that loss along to the
taxpayers of the county and I’m not pointing any negatives to any particular
town but if we lose a lot of money in one town and another town that did not
have any losses their taxpayers still have to make up for the losses in that
other town.
SCOZZAFAVA:
The thing to do with the auction is that once they bid the amount due
for taxes, sold!
DISKIN:
You’re probably right, the first one to get to that point. Maybe if you do that the opening bid will be
for the taxes and that will be it.
MONTY:
Well, I’ve got three questions for you Mike. I’ll start with the first –
DISKIN: I’m glad it’s only three because I have
about 103.
MONTY:
Well, I’ve got more but I’ve got three that I want to ask you right
here. As far as Essex County makes towns
and school districts whole so do we get to make ourselves whole for paying
those taxes all those years?
DISKIN:
No.
MONTY:
So that’s one negative.
SCOZZAFAVA: Let’s not forget fire districts –
MONTY: No, no all of those. The cost of us going to a tax auction, the time
spent, the title searches, the legal work will we get to be able to take that
out?
DISKIN: We get to deduct what they call
administrative costs. They have not
defined what administrative costs are so we’re not sure what that means. As a Treasurer’s Association we’ve been
talking about this, we’re not sure what administrative costs are, what they
feel administrative costs are.
MONTY:
So this last question and you might want to pull a curtain around you
because I think it’s going to take the Wizard of Oz to answer this, what’s the
Governor’s reasoning? I know you
probably can’t answer that or you may have an opinion you can share with me
later.
DISKIN: Well, let me preference this by saying
this is not new around the country.
There’s a group called the Pacific Legal Foundation and I’ve talked
about them in the past year a couple of times who have been going around the
country and working and suing different states for the same reason. They were
in Arizona about three years ago, they sued the State of Arizona and they won
their case that people were not getting reasonable return on equity for their
property like they do on a bank foreclosure.
The State of Michigan went through this in 2021, and they lost their
case. There was a couple of cases, what
brought the case was there was a couple of properties in Wayne County which is
Detroit where somebody owed over $8000 in property taxes and the property tax
sold for like $29,000. There was another
one that owed twelve or fifteen thousand I’m just guessing the number and they
sold for considerably more and those people complained because they didn’t get
the equity. It’s a specific legal
foundation kind of like legal aid society owned nationally took this case on
and went to court and the Supreme Court in Michigan ruled in their favor, said
from now on the State of Michigan, when you have any auctions in your counties
you have to give back anything excess over that. The State of Michigan, I talked to a number
of Treasurers there that I have contact with who are dealing with this now and
the problem is the courts now are looking retroactive and god forbid, not going
back with going back retroactive with these losses and have to make up for them
for how many years back. Let’s hope that
doesn’t happen but in Michigan they have a process where once you gain excess
on your land you have to notify in a sale, you have to notify that former owner
that that’s available to them and they can apply for it, that excess. There’s an application process, there’s a
deadline they have to get that. Anybody that applies for the excess has to go
to the court that signed the foreclosure and in this case it would be county
court here in Essex County but whatever court signed their order and the Judge
rules on whether you get the money back or not so a lot of extra burden, the
Judge is not going to be happy.
SCOZZAFAVA: I did a little bit of research once
I found this out and some of this is coming from a lobbying effort of the lien
holders, they are saying, you know what we didn’t get anything.
DISKIN: There’s a lot of problems with
this. First of all it’s going to take an
enormous amount of time probably from the County Attorney Office, along with
our office, County Clerk’s office to find out who these lien holders are, how much
was owed because we know if you file a lien from a bank it goes down as people
pay it off so we don’t know how much is owed to the lien holder. The other
problem and the County Clerk will probably tell you this is a lot of people
don’t file their, when the lien is paid off they don’t file. Saying the lien has been satisfied so they
didn’t get satisfaction lien so we may be chasing this around and find out when
we get it all done the lien has been satisfied.
If there are no liens against the property which happens in a lot of
cases, the taxpayer gets the money back the problem is what if we can’t find
the taxpayers? And a lot of these cases
these properties have been abandoned, these people have disappeared or
certified notices will go out and come back unclaimed, we don’t know where they
are, we post the property required by law, we put the notice on the front door,
we put a stake in the ground whichever so that we’re covered by the real
property tax law but what do we do with the money if we can’t find them? What do we do in the case when there’s ten
owners in a family? Three of them are
deceased is there any estate that we send those people money to? There’s a lot of work on this. What do you do in a case of a foreclosure
where the husband and wife is divorced since then? We have to look up the divorce settlement
decide who got what in the divorce, who got the house, was it 50-50? How do you do it? Do you divide this money up? We had a property right here in the town of
Elizabethtown that we sold, we don’t know where the owner is, we tried and we
couldn’t find them and nobody has told us what we are going to do with that
money but I’m assuming it’s going to get abandoned to the State like other
abandoned funds. The problem with abandon funds, after ten years the state
keeps that money if nobody claims that within ten years so there’s probably a
little bit of a windfall to maybe the towns the State might get from this if
they file those abandon funds but there’s a lot of legal work that has to go before
you file that abandon funds, there’s a lot of stuff that has to be thought
about here. A lot of extra work on the part of county officials, my office the
Treasurer’s office, the County Clerk’s office, the County Attorney’s office to
chase these people down.
HOLZER:
So, one more fly in the ointment how, in your research, how are they
going to approach when a county takes possession of a foreclosed property and a
lot of times each of us different towns and even the housing land bank pulls
property out of the auction where does that leave us in able to acquire those
properties?
DISKIN:
We can acquire them and you can sell them, it was going to be one of my
suggestions maybe we just put all the properties in the land bank and don’t
give this money back. We are going to
lose the negative anyways why give these people a benefit? We are going to act
as a realtor to these people basically and I can see a lot of lien holders not
going out and going after these properties doing the foreclosure themselves, the
bank is going to say just let the county get it and they’ll give me what’s left
over just like it would happen if I foreclosed on it. If the bank forecloses on it sometimes they
don’t get anything out of it because nobody bids on that at the mortgage foreclosure
auction so they get stuck with the property and then they’ve got to go deal
with how to get rid of it so it’s a lot of easier for the county to get rid of
it, sell it and give them twenty or thirty thousand and the lien holder. There’s a lot of little things and the
biggest thing is a legal question that nobody has the answer for us yet, we and
I say we as the County Treasurers Association are putting together a package of
questions that we are going to go to Albany and talk about. In a tax foreclosure the in realm foreclosure
that’s done by the county, we notify all the owners, we notify all the lien
holders, we tell them here’s a date certain after which we are going to
foreclose if you want to protect your lien you have to come in and pay those
taxes off to remove it from the foreclosure, if they don’t do that their lien
is extinguished under the Real Property Tax Law, it’s gone so if the lien is
gone, how do you pay? How do you
reinstate that lien once it’s gone?
Nobody has told us how we can legally give money to somebody that the
lien is gone for, not only that, but if you read article, I believe it’s
article 8 of the New York State Constitution that says you can’t make a gift of
public money to somebody. This is public
money because the county now owns this property so it’s public money when we
made this profit, how do we then give this to a private individual or a
business with it not being considered a gift of public money? So there’s a lot of questions on how this is
going to happen and nobody seems to have an answer yet. It’s pretty basic information within this
section of law, it’s not very well flushed out.
A lot of issues are going to happen once this goes through.
TYLER:
This is the first time the State has ever done anything like this, they
usually don’t do this. (laughter)
DISKIN: I know they usually a 100% of it,
you’re right Ike they usually tell us more.
MONTY:
None of those other States Mike appealed?
DISKIN: Oh, absolutely.
MONTY: And did they lose it or has it not been
heard?
DISKIN:
Interestingly the State of Minnesota there’s a case now Hennepin County
that’s gone all the way to the US Supreme Court to be dealt with because in
Minnesota they started doing this, the State sued, it’s now in the US Supreme
Court. If the Supreme Court in the
United States rules against them, that’s going to open the flood gates for
everybody because now you’ve got settled law and it’s been settled by the
Supreme Court telling you to give this equity back. So there’s a lot of looming parts in here, a
lot of people are watching what is happening in Hennepin County Minnesota
myself included to see what’s going to happen with this.
SCOZZAFAVA:
So for this to be enacted it is going to have to be passed in both
houses right?
DISKIN: Absolutely. There’s a lot of counties that have already
done resolutions and that’s what I’m here today to ask the board to support
this. St. Lawrence County incorporation
their resolution opposing it along with a resolution opposing the, keeping the eFmap
money they put it together in one and asked them to do that. In Ontario County they separated them and did
two separate resolutions but basically it was to send a resolution opposing
this it’s called Part M of the Governor’s message saying that we don’t want
this to happen.
MONTY:
Is this going to happen in three years?
I’m leaving in three years.
DISKIN:
No it’s going to happen, if the budget gets passed and it doesn’t get
out, it’s going to happen now. It’s
effective with any foreclosure filing done after October 1 of 2023, so anything
we’ve done up to now in other words, the properties that we foreclosed on in
2022, we are not going to have to share that equity if we get it anything after
that October 1st, we foreclose on that’s when it’s going to begin so
the future ones are going to have it.
GILLILLAND:
Steve Acquario was actually at the AATV meeting with us last week and
he’s preparing this week for two budget committees on both houses, he took this
particular issue to heart because one of the things we talked about is his
counter to the expansion of housing availability because we said the whole idea
of the land bank would be gone.
DISKIN:
I heard a message from the Governor, interestingly was that and I don’t
have the wording exactly I will sort of summarize it, this is going to make
more housing available to people because housing is not going to be taken out
of the market. I ‘m not sure how they
reconcile that? That people are going to
be able to stay in their houses and they are not going to lose their
houses. The housing market will be
better. I’m not really sure how that
correlates but it doesn’t make sense but that’s what it says.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Ike, do you want to move that resolution? Is there a second, unanimous committee second?
HUGHES:
Can you remind me what the resolution is?
SCOZZAFAVA: In opposition to this proposal.
DISKIN:
Passing of actual new real property tax law part M of the Governor’s
message but it’s new. I’ll give Mr. Manning the exact wording of it.
RESOLUTION IN OPPOSITION OF THE GOVERNOR’S
PROPOSAL TO REQUIRE EXCESS TAX FORECLOSURE PROCEEDS TO BE RETURNED TO PRIOR
OWNERS. Tyler, unanimous
SCOZZAFAVA: All in favor, opposed – carries. Anything else Mike?
DISKIN: Not for me.
That’s enough. I’m going to have a lot
of work to do in the next six weeks or so before this all gets past.
SCOZZAFAVA: Good report. Mr. Mascarenas.
MASCARENAS: Okay so here we go again. At one of the board meetings last month, Mr.
Scozzafava asked me to look into Charge Point and that’s for our electric
charging stations that are happening over there. You all have basically a recommendation on
your desks of how I’d like to proceed with that. So, we looked at a bunch of information that
some of you have these in your towns, Saranac Lake, Lake Placid, Wilmington
what it looks like is most of you are around that 19 cents per kilowatt charge
per hour of charging so that’s what I am recommending. Two hours would be free of parking, after two
hours a $2.00 parking fee would kick in per hour. Charge Point does that. You’re allowed to set the flat fee. You can see the picture that I posted on the
bottom of that so that additional would be that. We have about $1200 we spend a year on
maintenance of those machines currently we are collecting nothing from that
from the user and just so everybody is aware, we weren’t allowed to. The original grant that we go required us to
allow free operations of that for a period of time. We are allowed to now that time has since
been gone and we can do that. So, we
should actually be charging for that. We
do have $1200 in maintenance cost a year.
If it was used every hour of every day for an eight hour day, we would
bring in somewhere around $6200 a year, it’s not a lot of money but it certainly
pays for the maintenance cost and hopefully for the charge people start
recognizing and being a little more courteous of how long they are parked at
those locations during the day. I’m
asking that the board approve this plan and we can implement it prior to April
1st that’s a little ways out but what I would like to be able to do
is meet with the department heads, share the policy with all the department
heads at the next meeting, get those notices out to the courthouse so anybody
who is in and around this area and get signage developed through DPW that would
be placed at the Charge Point talking about the new policy and process and how
we are going to do that moving forward.
RESOLUTION APPROVING A POLICY FOR THE CHARGE
POINT ELECTRIC CHARGING STATIONS. Tyler,
Merrihew
SCOZZAFAVA: Discussion?
STANLEY: I’m not on this committee but if somebody
were to charge only for the two hours and somebody would come charge for two
hours and somebody else would charge for two hours there would actually be no
income generated, correct?
MASCARENAS: No, if you see that there it would cost about
–
STANLEY: Well, didn’t you say the first two hours are
free?
MASCARENAS: The first
two hours are free for parking. We charge the 19 cents per kilowatt hour that
is being used to charge that machine which produces about 50 miles, after that
an additional fee is going to kick in. If
you’re longer that the two hours you’re going to pay an additional $2.00 per
hour to be parked basically in that parking spot.
STANLEY: So if somebody were to rotate every two
hours, we would possible get a $1.60 a day?
MASCARENAS: Well, I don’t know. The math that I have here
is, the math that I did assumed that people move their cars every two
hours. I’m assuming that they are going
to do that and that would generate about $6,000 a year.
SCOZZAFAVA: That’s
primarily what brought this to a head is that other people couldn’t get in
there to use it, there would be one vehicle there constantly.
STANLEY: So if I want
to park in that spot, it would cost me $12.00 for the day to park there.
MASCARENAS: If you parked there all day long you’re first
two hours would be the 19 cents per kilowatt hour, next if you work an
eight-hour day, it’s six hours so it would cost you about $14 or $15 because
you’re going to pay an additional two dollars and something for those kilowatt
hours to charge your car on the first two hours.
SCOZZAFAVA: Correct.
MASCARENAS: And we do only have two locations in the
whole county so right now we don’t have a lot of machines.
SCOZZAFAVA: Is there three?
MASCARENAS: Two. One machine, two hook ups.
SCOZZAFAVA: So you
can hook four cars there?
MASCARENAS: No, two sir.
SCOZZAFAVA: There’s two coming out of each?
MASCARENAS: No, there’s one machine with two hook
ups.
DOUGAN: Two at Public Safety.
MASCARENAS: Yes, Public Safety we have another hook up
but here we have one right out back one machine with – it’s basically like a
gas pump.
TYLER: So Mike did you look at what your kilowatt
hour would actually be charged to NYSEG?
MASCARENAS: I did
look. I didn’t look at the actual charge
per kilo watt hour but I looked at actual charge and it’s really minimal.
I want to say we spent on the charging
like maybe $120 all year last year in terms of that unit and what’s it’s
costing the county to hand out for free.
TYLER: We did that in Westport, we figured in 19
cents a kilowatt is what we are being charged from NYSEG and National Grid so
we’re charging 39 cents a kilowatt and a fee if you park there all night or
something and we had a couple of people in town who we using it all the time
when it was free and now all of sudden, nobody is using it. We wanted to get enough money so it would
cover the maintenance and all that stuff on it and we are getting some fast
charges in town and going to do the same thing with those.
MASCARENAS: Agreed and I think this will cover our
maintenance cost. Like I said, our
maintenance costs is $1200 a year. It’s
projected that we will probably bring in about $6,000 on it and I’m not looking
to make a killing on it but let’s cover our costs and prove the availability
for others that want to use it.
MONTY: So are we going to have a charging police
because what is to stop somebody from coming down, unplugging it, waiting five
minutes –
SCOZZAFAVA: No, if
they want to sit there all day they are going to pay whatever it is to be there
all day. Forty cents Ike, I’m surprised
you haven’t been turned into the public service commission.
MASCARENAS: What are
you charging? Are you charging about
nineteen?
SCOZZAFAVA: We charge enough to cover our costs and we
primarily put them in for when Charlie is in town so he has a place to plug
in. Okay, who’s next?
HUGHES: I just want
to be clear this would effect, so county employees would most likely park in
this spot is that correct? My question
is if there are going to be people other than county employees parking there I
would want to recommend some type of code to put in as a discount to county
employees?
MASCARENAS: I can
look at that and see if that’s an option.
I can you that almost no one that’s a county employee parks there and
uses it.
TYLER: You can do that. Through the one we have you can arrange a
code in there whether they are county or not.
STANLEY: I guess I’m confused. If you don’t stay the two hours you don’t pay
the $2.00 so if people are changing before every two hours they are only paying
the 19 cents?
MASCARENAS: Correct.
STANLEY: So that
would be essentially 40 cents an hour times six hours which would be $2.40
times 260 days would be less than $600 dollars.
GILLILLAND: It’s per kilowatt hour.
MASCARENAS: Right, you are going to use more than one
kilowatt hour in an hour.
STANLEY: That’s it, thank you.
MASCARENAS: The math right? If the board could simply give me the
authority to add charges. I will look into the discount so that we can get this
new policy process started by April 1 that would be great and that’s what we
need a resolution.
HARRINGTON: My
thought is this service should be provided by a private enterprise and that we
shouldn’t have any involvement with it whatsoever. That’s why we’ve got these commercial stores,
they can set up a station and they can do the charging and whatever and we
could elevate ourselves from any headaches.
SCOZZAFAVA: I agree
but they are already there.
HARRINGTON: So, take
them out.
MONTY: Weren’t they
purchased with county grant money?
SCOZZAFAVA: Yes, it’s like the ones we have in Moriah,
they were paid for through NYSERTA.
Crown Point? Who put them in, War
Cannon put them in themselves?
HARRINGTON: We have a
private enterprise who took advantage of this.
We were going to do some installations but when private enterprise said
they were going to do it my thought was, back off.
SCOZZAFAVA: Absolutely, same thing you did on the
transfer station. Alright so all in
favor, opposed – carried.
BARBER: I just want
to say that all your Stewarts are going to be putting in charging stations. My understanding was the manager who works in
Chesterfield, she said all the new Stewarts are putting in new charging
stations.
SCOZZAFAVA: Okay,
North Country – Joe.
KEEGAN: Good morning everybody nice to see you
all. Thank you for your ongoing support
of the college and our students were really grateful for that. I wanted to share with you, I’ll start with
our advocacy work. I shared this with you in December that Community College
President’s group, there’s 30 of us across the SUNY system working with the trustees
in all thirty community colleges have been going out to the State, we started
with the Governor’s office and now with the Assembly and Senate asking for
continued increase in investments in community colleges and there were three
asks that were identified in that little black box. We asked for the floor to keep our
maintenance of effort funding state funding coming in, they stay at the levels
that were 100% of this year, 2022-2023.
The positive sign for that is the Governor put that in her budget and so
we were really pleased to see that, for North Country that’s a $300,000 and
change impact for us if it stays in the budget so that’s really helpful. We also asked a 4% increase in our
operational aid. Even if we get the
floor we would be flat where we were in 1920 and I think you all know with
contractual obligations, with inflationary pressures and with our board of
trustees holding tuition flat for the last three years and we’re going to be
four in ’23-’24 we need revenue and so we’ve asked for that to increase that
from the State. That did not make it
into the Governor’s budget priorities but we are advocating at the Assembly and
the Senate and then the third, there was a $60 million dollar enrollment and
other initiatives. We asked for that to be included. The Governor put in a $75 million dollar
transformational funding initiatives which community colleges participate in,
that’s in her budget so on a whole, two of the three things we were requesting
made it in through the first line. We will see where things will shake out over
the next month and a half. I wanted you to be aware of what we were advocating
for and the impact that it will have on us.
I’ve reached out to our State elected officials Billy Jones, Dan Stec
and Matt Simpson who have been very supportive of the community college over
the years and I know I heard from Billy that he will continue to advance our
advocacy asks so I’ll keep you in the loop.
Like I heard the county saying, we’ve got six weeks of advocacy left
before things get settled and hopefully it will really benefit our
students. Just to give you a
perspective, with all the taxable aid that comes in the North Country, this
includes county and state support we get 50% of what the State operating
campuses get to prepare some of the most financially needy and academically
needy students and so, this doesn’t seem beyond available for us so I wanted to
share that with you.
I wanted to bring you
up to speed, I think the county is aware is aware of our EMT efforts. We had
basic EMT last semester in the fall of the first 19 students that graduated
excuse me that’s it for their tests 18 of the 19 became EMT’s, they passed
their test which was great that means 18 more EMTs out in the communities. We are currently running a two, AEMT courses
right now one in Saranac Lake, one in Malone we have 28 students enrolled in
them. We have a basic EMT starting this spring, late spring early summer in
Ticonderoga and we’re going to be at Lewis early for preparatory early first
responder course. I think it’s for
Emergency Medical responder so that’s real positive.
Continuing with
trying to align our programing options for students that line with the county’s
workforce needs. We got approval for a
teaching assistant position. We’ve heard and I’m sure you’ve all heard about
schools just desperate for those pathways for teaching assistant up through
teacher education so that allows for students to start with us an aid able
certificate in teaching assistantship onto a two year degree that prepares them
for early childhood ED and then they can go onto a four year school for that so
that was great. I think the announcement was out three days, we picked up three
students so it was real positive.
Mike you will be pleased about this, our AS
Human Services our Child and Family Services are now online. It means we can reach more members of the
county to be able to hopefully fill some of those county jobs in Social
Services. We’ve also got a chemical
dependency counseling we are hoping to get online and we were able to in the
spring we offered admission for 26 of our practical nursing and associate
degree nursing students for a spring only semester. These were students who didn’t make it
through their full year, they had an opportunity to come back. It was great.
It was good for them. It’s good
for the county. It’s good for the
college. It’s good for employers so those were all positive and I think you may
have read the reports in the paper, we had a pretty good spring with our
enrollment so our enrollment is up relative to our budget and that was real
positive and we’re hoping that it is a sign that we are coming out of the
downward pressures of the pandemic.
The only other thing I wanted to share with you
has to do with what I heard you speaking about I think in Stephanie’s meeting
about the capital projects. We’ve got
the nursing labs project is underway, it’s in the last phases of the design
phase right now. We are expecting that to go out to bid in March and we also
have our science labs renovation project also going out to bid in March. It will be the first significant investment
in our colleges in several years. It’s
about a $3.3 million project and I think you referenced about having some, I
think Steve had said, you know if we had something nice to attract people, we
will be having some new science labs and nursing labs to do that so thank you
to the county for your support in those applications and we’ll keep you in the
loop as we learn more. Maybe there will
be a ribbon cutting or something and that’s it.
Thank you.
SCOZZAFAVA: Thank you. Any questions for Joe?
HARRINGTON: Yes, I heard that there were
sessions for trainings for water and waste water persons. Is that in the realm right now?
KEEGAN:
So we ran a course in the fall. We
ran the first course of waste water basic waste water and we are planning to do
another round next fall so in fall of ’23 and we are preparing a, laying the
ground work for what we are hoping is a round table discussion with interested
parties so that we can learn what the needs are regionally and also when is the
best time to run the course. So last
year, the way we ran it was we ran it on the weekends because we wanted to
offer people that were in our region not having to leave their jobs for two or
three weeks some, we heard from at least one supervisors who said that didn’t
work for them so we’re trying to – we want to make sure when we run it again
that it meets as many needs as possible so yes on both counts.
SCOZZAFAVA:
How many did you have enrolled?
KEEGAN: Four in that initial culvert.
WOOD:
Can you tell me, if someone enrolls in your course does the State
testing happen in that course or do the people still have to wait until six
months later?
KEEGAN:
You know, I don’t know that. I’ll
find out when that is.
WOOD: That would be helpful.
HARRINGTON:
Yes, we’ve had discussions in the past about CVES doing preliminary courses
for EMT trainings is that being offered?
For those persons who are interested in EMT and then you would be, North
Country would be the stepping stone for the finalization of the trainings.
KEEGAN:
One more time, I’m sorry Charlie I was writing down about the waste
water question.
HARRINGTON:
It’s the same question but involving EMT’s.
KEEGAN:
The testing does follow up right after, it’s my understanding the
students sit for the test in EMT right after they take it with us. I’m not sure about wastewater.
MASCARENAS:
What he was asking you Joe is has Champlain Valley Educational Services,
do they offer an initial EMT so that maybe you do the advanced training at the
back end, so the kids come in prepared?
KEEGAN:
I’m not aware of that Charlie but I will look into it.
HARRINGTON:
It appears to me that that will be a stepping stone.
SCOZZAFAVA:
It is. Good idea.
GILLILLAND: I just want to place another brain
bug in your head, you heard our discussion about Fish Hatchery?
KEEGAN: I did.
GILLILLAND: That seems to me is an area that
and we’ve had some challenges on getting technicians and things like that to
work there, I’m sure the DEC and their hatcheries and other county hatcheries
around have also and what we want to take a look at is some offerings or
courses or certifications in management, hatchery management in fisheries would
be something we may benefit from.
KEEGAN:
I will bring it back to our science department.
SCOZZAFAVA: Okay anything else for Joe? If not, very good report. Thank you.
KEEGAN:
Thank you Tom. Thanks everybody,
nice to see you all.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Anything further to come before the Finance committee?
HUGHES:
Good morning Mr. Chairman. I
would like to bring forth to this committee a resolution in support of the
Essex County land bank application to the Empire State Development.
RESOLUTION SUPPORTING THE ESSEX COUNTY LAND
BANK APPLICATION TO THE EMPIRE STATE DEVELOPMENT. Hughes, Wilson
SCOZZAFAVA: Discussion?
MONTY: I just want to
brief everybody. I sent out draft
application and we haven’t heard anything back this way we are beginning the
process, it will go through ways and means which gives us another time frame to
look at it. If anybody has any questions
please contact myself or Ken and hopefully get it approved at the March meeting
so we can submit before the Governor gets her legislation in. Thank you.
SCOZZAFAVA: Thank
you. Any further discussion? Being none,
all in favor, opposed – carried. Anything further to come before the
committee? If not, we stand adjourned.
As there was no further discussion
to come before this Finance committee it was adjourned at 11:56 a.m.
Respectfully
submitted,
Judith Garrison,
Clerk
Board of Supervisors