FINANCE/TAX
REDUCTION/MANDATE RELIEF - COMMITTEE
Monday, May 15, 2023 - 10:30
AM
Thomas Scozzafava, Chairperson
Noel Merrihew, Vice-Chairperson
Chairman Scozzafava called this Finance Meeting
to order at 10:30 am with the following Supervisors in attendance: Clayton
Barber, Stephanie DeZalia, Shaun Gillilland, Charlie Harrington, Roy Holzer, Steve
McNally, Noel Merrihew, James Monty, Tom Scozzafava, Matt Stanley, Ike Tyler,
Davina Winemiller, Margaret Wood and Mark Wright. Robin
DeLoria, Derek Doty, Ken Hughes and Joe Pete Wilson were excused.
Department Heads present: Judy Garrison,
Michael Mascarenas, Jack Moulton and David Wainwright. Laura Carson and Michael Diskin were excused.
Deputies present: Chelsea Merrihew.
Also present:
Joe Keegan - NCCC
News media:
Alana Penny – Sun News.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Good morning. We’ll call the
Finance Committee meeting to order.
We’ll start with Chelsea.
C. MERRIHEW:
Good morning. So you have my
report. We’ve collected $493,000 in
April, transferred $328,000 to the Treasurer for local retention.
I have two updates relevant to the New York
State budget being passed. The proposed
DMV revenue share increase was approved so January 2024 we will start receiving
across the board 10.75% for all revenue collected in the office and then online
from Essex County residents again, when I plug that model into last year it’s
an increase of about $50,000, so 20%.
MASCARENAS:
That’s great. Something positive.
C. MERRIHEW:
Then the other you’ve probably already heard but there were
modifications to the penal law 265.01E criminal possession of a fire arm rifle
or shotgun in a sensitive location so they did modify that to exempt firearm
private property in public parks in the forest preserve and added language
accepting the re-enactors so that was also good. That’s all I have for today. Any questions?
TYLER:
You said they modified that. What
was going on with that?
C. MERRIHEW: So when they made the changes last
year to what the sensitive locations would be for firearms there was concerns
because it said public areas but did not exempt the Adirondack Park or the
Catskills so the added language in there exempting the forest preserve from
being a sensitive location.
TYLER: The State did?
C. MERRIHEW:
Being a sensitive location, yes.
TYLER:
Okay I thought you said out of your office you guys did it.
C. MERRIHEW:
What’s that?
TYLER: I
thought maybe you said you changed that out of your office but it was the State
legislature.
C. MERRIHEW:
No, it was through State legislature.
TYLER:
Alright, thank you.
C. MERRIHEW:
You’re welcome.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Any other questions? If not,
thank you. Okay Laura has been
excused. Dave Wainwright.
WAINWRIGHT:
Other than my budget, I just want to mention again Grievance Day is
coming up it’s May 23 for most towns unless your Assessor has more than one
town.
We had BAR training, it was April 26th
held right here. We had 18 people in
attendance, two more completed virtual training and one went to Franklin County
so right now all the towns are in good shape as far as BAR members but if you
find that you do need one extra somebody bails out and all of sudden you are able
to get somebody we can get them trained right up until Grievance Day with
either they can come in and get a book or they can do this virtual training
it’s a YouTube video so everybody should be good this year.
Three towns were scheduled for full reassessment
projects this year. Willsboro was the
only one that completed theirs. Six towns did their maintenance in their
cyclical plan you have either a full reassessment year or you have a
maintenance year, six towns did their maintenance and eleven towns just took
care of their new construction Moriah is still working on their project for
next year.
I have a couple reminders, if your town has a
website you’re required by law to have a link for the public to go out and look
at their assessment rolls and their tax rolls. I looked at all the websites and
I do see that there are a couple towns that are either missing a link or
they’ve got a link and it’s to the 2022 tax roll, it’s just old and outdated
but the easiest way to do that is link it right to the Real Property site that
way you never have to change it we are always up to date and your websites will
always be up to date.
And the last thing I have is I know a lot of
towns are changing exemptions with the senior citizen’s limits and adding the
new fire fighters exemption please send our office a copy of your local law or
resolution so we can get this information input into the computer that’s the
only way it calculates the proper exempt amount for us to get it in there so
that’s all I have.
MONTY: I have a few questions for you
Dave. First off I think we’re scheduled
next year for a full assessment, this will be the fourth time in four years so
if we chose not to do it again because of the trends we can conceivably go
below 100.
WAINWRIGHT: Sure.
MONTY: Okay the first year that happens how
does that affect my town?
WAINWRIGHT:
Well when your eq rate falls your tax rate is going to go up so your
first bill that you’re going to see is your school bill coming out in September
and for Boquet Valley School all the towns maybe paying, I don’t know what the
rate is in Boquet Valley say it’s 10%.
TYLER:
Sixteen.
WAINWRIGHT: Oh sixteen you guys maybe seventeen
or eighteen.
MONTY:
We are at 100% this year I’m not worried about that I’m looking down the
road.
WAINWRIGHT:
That’s what will happen if you let your eq rate go that first year.
MONTY:
So basically we have eleven towns in Essex County who are going to see
that correct? Because you said we have
eleven that are not at 100%?
WAINWRIGHT:
That is correct.
MONTY: We have seven that are.
WAINWRIGHT:
Pending, yes.
MONTY: What other effects can that have? It’s my understanding the STAR exemption goes
away.
SCOZZAFAVA:
It is reduced.
WAINWRIGHT: Yes it will go down, it will be
okay this year next year it will go down.
For towns that have a lot of state owned land the state will not pay on
their higher value so this year we had a 10% trend on state land for some towns
that’s millions of dollars’ worth of state land you don’t get the benefit of
that. Your bond rating they say can
suffer. Exemptions not in the first year
but next year because we don’t put the equalization rate in for ’23 until
January of next year so what happens is the state will refuse the roll, they
come out with an equalization rate sometime around the end of July or August
they have a tentative roll, at that point we can’t change the equalization rate
for this year so it has to be changed for next year and that’s when you’ll see
your exemptions start to change, your STAR will go down a little bit, your
Veteran’s exemptions will change a little bit, your AG exemptions if you’ve got
AG exemptions in your town they’ll change, ceiling railroads will change any
town that has a railroad going through it the Assessor doesn’t actually value
that railroad the State does but they give it a ceiling amount they say you can
assess it up to these amount and no higher, those ceiling amounts will come
down. There are quite a few
repercussions to it. The other situation
is you’re not at 100% so what you’ll see on the roll is an assessed value and
then a market value and the market value is obviously going to be higher
because say your town is only assessing at 90% for market value or 80% but
because your tax rate is going to increase you’re going to be paying the same
amount, you’re still paying for that higher amount with the increased tax rate
because that equalization rate has fallen off so it’s not doing the tax payers
a favor by not maintaining 100% in essence it’s hurting them exemption wise and
the fact that they don’t get the benefit of the state owned land, the railroads
don’t pay as much as they could.
MONTY:
So in a situation where you have a merged school district, one community
is at 100%, two aren’t at 100% will that effect the 100% community or their tax
rate will be higher than the other two communities?
WAINWRIGHT:
The tax rate will be higher for the two that do not maintain 100%.
SCOZZAFAVA:
We’re at 75% and my phone has been ringing off the walls because as you
just pointed out, it’s going to show your taxable value on the tentative roll
and then it’s going to show you your market value.
WAINWRIGHT: Yes assessed value and market
value.
SCOZZAFAVA:
So people are seeing that number, geez, what the heck is going on here and
I’m telling them you’ve got to look at what your assessed value is because this
is the reason it is showing that much higher market value because we are 25%
according to the State below where we can be.
Moriah has a school district that includes part of Westport and part of
Crown Point so it’s definitely going to have an impact. Your Enhanced STAR or your STAR exemptions
are going to decrease as you point out, your Veterans so you know the Assessors
are working right now to get this reevaluation done which needs to be
done. They didn’t do anything for years
I’m talking about a number of years now down there and now unfortunately
everybody pays the price because everybody is afraid of the word, re val well,
you know the problem with that is that a reevaluation by not doing one your
taxpayers are going to get hurt more by if you were doing it because and that’s
a fact.
MONTY: I get that and that’s a lot of the phone
calls I’ve been getting Tom and all of sudden people see a 20% increase in
assessed value well, how come my taxes are going up 20%? I said, they’re not. I mean, last year our assessed value in town
was up about 15% yet I was able to lower the taxable per 1000 by almost forty
cents so it went up but not as much as it could and I get it. My last question is why do we not hire
Assessors if the State is dictating this?
Why don’t we save $20,000 and just let the State do this.
SCOZZAFAVA: Listen, we’ve had that argument for
twenty-five years with New York State.
MONTY:
We are darned if we do, darned if we don’t.
HOLZER:
We could always invite Jon Stec back here but we all know how
enlightening that was last time he was here.
He talked about everything but the actual issue. So just to follow up for communities that
have a lot of State assessed land and you said they don’t pay or they do
decrease and is that a penalty when they don’t pay?
WAINWRIGHT: No, they pay it’s just that they
will pay on last years assessed value.
You won’t get the benefit of whatever the state land went up and this
year was a 10% trend for state land.
HOLZER:
But that’s not the normal trend right?
WAINWRIGHT: It depends year to year but no,
generally it’s not ten but they are seeing a lot of forest lands go up now at
first it was just single family homes now you’re seeing it go to vacant land
and forest lands people are still paying way more than assessed value.
SCOZZAFAVA: One perplexing question that I’ve
always had is so you see this happening when your equalization drops down below
96% and then you start feeling the impact what about when your equalization
shoots up to 115%? What’s the impact
then?
WAINWRIGHT: It’s kind of the same. You’re assessing too high so you’re going to
see assessed value on the roll and market value will be lower. Your equalization rate, I’m sorry your tax
rate will change it will come down so it’s the opposite. When you assess more than a 100% you open
yourself up to grievance day and small claims assessment review and Article 7’s
people are going to say –
SCOZZAFAVA: On our website is there anything on
there that explains reevaluation and impacts and how I mean, generalizes it so
people could have a better understanding of?
WAINWRIGHT:
We have some links to State publications.
SCOZZAFAVA: Like a question and answer scenario
is what I’m thinking.
WAINWRIGHT: There are some things like that but
if you like, I can put something together.
I did do something for the Town of Willsboro.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Yeah, I think it would be extremely helpful if we had something like that.
GILLILLAND: Actually Dave did that for me last
week just kind of a general synopsis which I can send out to people who send
email and stuff which has been really great, I appreciate it.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Yes, I think it would be extremely helpful.
WINEMILLER: Right along with that I’d like to
ask if the explanation that you gave if you could include all the negative
things that happen when we fall below so that would be great.
WAINWRIGHT: Basically everything is negative.
There are no positives to assessing it less than 100%.
WINEMILLER:
Right but the way you explained it to us just now I think –
SCOZZAFAVA: Like on your STAR exemption that
type of thing.
WAINWRIGHT:
Yup.
TYLER:
This seems to be the State’s scheme to get people who are not at 100%
basically the State it will probably work out better that way and get more
money because they don’t have to pay different exemptions and stuff. I was just going to ask the same question, if
you could maybe put together when people come in my office and call me, what
happens if we are not at 100% if you could do that if it’s possible that would
be great.
WAINWRIGHT: Sure.
TYLER:
The info that we have on our webpage that we are supposed to have, was
Westport, are we okay do you know?
WAINWRIGHT: I don’t remember but I can go back
and check.
TYLER: That would be great, thank you. Let me know.
MONTY: What my Assessor did for us because we
were receiving so many calls he actually came to a board meeting but he also
put together a spreadsheet of sales in the last few years with the towns
contiguous to Lewis and it was scare you to know what these properties are
selling for.
SCOZZAFAVA: Oh, I see it.
MONTY:
It would scare you to know that and some of these people were coming in
and complaining one in particular showed an assessed value of $180,000, they
paid $450,000 and I said, so it was worth $450,000 for you to buy it.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Everybody is over assessed until it comes time to sell it.
MONTY: But my point is that sheet really help
prove as much as I hate to say it, proved what they were saying. There were
very few that went down.
SCOZZAFAVA: I get the sales from your office
and I see the sales and for Moriah I mean, they are through the roof. I mean, they are in many cases twice or more
than what the assessed value was on the property.
WAINWRIGHT: And the longer you go without doing
a full reval the more inequity gets into your roll so pretty soon you’ve got
people who are paying too much and other paying who are paying way too little
and it’s just unfair, it’s unequitable and it’s unfair so reval is the only way
to get these things straightened out.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Okay anything further for Dave?
Thank you. Okay Mike Diskin has
been excused. Mike Mascarenas.
MASCARENAS:
Hello everybody. I’m going to
just give you an update on where we are with some of the ARPA work. The board
approved the ARPA report back in February and we have been moving forward on
some of these projects.
Project number one is the Ag Building we
approved the architect last month that’s moving forward.
The IT upgrade, I don’t know if you know there’s
a couple different Hughs in the county and they are both very bright
individuals. Hugh Heron is leading that
project from an IT standpoint and he’s working now on making sure we are
meeting procurements and things and getting through all those quotes that we
need to get that accomplished. That will be an upgrade to servers, cyber
security, telephone and just an overall upgrade to our system that should put
us in a good position over the next seven or eight years so that’s moving
forward well.
The one area I wanted to speak to you about Mr.
Scozzafava asked me about in particular and I just wanted to make sure there
was no confusion was the jail project.
The jail project, the removal of the old jail just to be clear is well
underway and in terms of what we need to do to get that taken care of in the
time frame. I’ve been working with the
County Clerk’s office, Board of Elections I’ve checked out every piece of real
estate personally that is and around Essex County in terms of trying to find space
suitable for what we need. Just so you
are all aware you know it seems like it would be an easy thing just to bring in
a piece of equipment and have that jail on the ground I want to let you know
it’s much more complicated than that.
That jail house has set a lot of utilities, there’s a lot of fiber
running through that jail, and it services the Treasurer’s department in terms
of electricity and those types of things.
We need to get that stuff relocated. The pod needs to be removed so we
can even get at the jail. That pod holds
all of our election machines so I need to find a new home for those and Board
of Elections is working with me in trying to help me do just that. There’s a lot of records in the old jail that
I’m working with the County Clerk in trying to find space to relocate those
records and get those out so just so everybody is aware we’re not scheduling to
have that jail come down this year. We would like to get the pod out of the way
and all those utilities relocated. We’re probably looking at a removal more to
the end of 2024 which would meet our ARPA guidelines in terms of spending those
funds. I just want to let you know we are working on moving all that forward.
There’s a lot of people in trying to assist us in that. We just really have a space issue in terms of
where we can put those things. My goal
would be we just ordered those new election machines we’re hoping they will be
here for the November election. My goal
would be when those machines return that they would go to whatever new home we
find for them and that would allow us to get that pod to the ground and start
working on the things we need to do for the jail.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Good report. Any questions?
MERRIHEW:
Michael on the de construction of the old jail in the past we were sort
of assured of the state picking up a high percentage of that cost because of
the change in legislation this year in DSS reimbursement will that effect our
game plan there?
MASCARENAS:
Not necessarily right now so what they have there if we were to decide
to build a structure there in the future this project really just removes the
old jail, gives us the opportunity with the ARPA funds what we were looking at
before was a depreciation model that the State had in place for DSS. So DSS is
truly an agent of the State. We operate
under their networks, it goes into state infrastructure serve systems and they
will pay a percentage every year in terms of a reimbursement on the states they
occupy. Currently the space DSS occupies
is been already depreciated so the county is not able to take advantage of
reimbursement in that space currently a new structure would allow them to do
so. So that’s why it almost made sense
if you were going to put up a new building you would relocate DSS there so that
you would get that State support. That
model for Venesky for us is still in place currently the reimbursement that
came back from state was really primarily around Medicaid and reimbursement
around Medicaid and what our weekly shares are so it shouldn’t impact that
depreciation model as we know but currently our goal is to get that building to
the ground while we don’t have to push that back to our constituency. In the past we didn’t really have this
opportunity where we could take funding from elsewhere and get that building to
the ground and we were able to keep it off our tax rolls so I think it’s
imperative that we keep moving forward and figure that out. If any of you know space that maybe I haven’t
looked at let me know I’m happy to look at it.
It is important that it is in and around Lewis being that we have
election machines and records that need to be accessible. I know people have offered space in their
other towns but when we get a record request it’s hard to drive 45 minutes to
have to go get that record and then bring it back to Elizabethtown.
SCOZZAFAVA:
Good report. I think we should
take the whole operation and move it right to Lowes all the county offices.
DEZALIA:
So you were talking about space for records and that type of thing but
what about our employees that are in the Probation Department temporarily while
de construction is happening also after what are the plans for that department?
MASCARENAS: Absolutely. I visited with the Probation Director last
week on this very issue. As we get
closer her and I are going to work on a plan I think for them in particular we
could do a plan that was much like we did during the pandemic while that
building comes to the ground. She seemed like that probably would be suitable
in order to allow them to be dispatched from various area. They spend a lot of time as you guys are
aware in your neighboring towns and meeting with the clientele so it really
would be just providing them with what they need, the tools they need to get
their work done from a remote location while we get that to the ground but
you’re right there is a lot of details to this whole thing and it involves many
departments.
DEZALIA:
And our plan is to relocate them back there? That’s going to be their
home?
MASCARENAS: Yes right now well, I don’t want to
give you anything definite because there’s, Heather has been very good about
being a team player and she basically said if we have to go somewhere we have
to go somewhere so we have some options I think of how we can shift people
around to make the most sense it’s just wherever that space that we find might
be most conducive to the people that are going to occupy it going forward.
DEZALIA: Thank you.
SCOZZAFAVA: So the pod would be just, we
wouldn’t use it, we’re not going to try and move that to another location?
MASCARENAS: No Tom we had our engineers look at
the pod, we looked at the pod, we talked to Jack’s staff about it, that pod is
such a width that it came in three parts when it came down the road so right
now there’s been interior walls that have been modified, the roof now is one
roof, the joints are gone so even putting that on the road it would almost be
like a cardboard box that is open on both ends there would be no way to
necessarily hold that together, with that being said I do have Jim Dougan
pricing us out another pod like structure to see what the cost of something
like that maybe and then the trick would be finding, I went through the tax
sale auction stuff that we get put out there and there’s really nothing in this
tax auction that would be conducive to space to utilize to the county so just
to assure I’m not leaving any stone unturned. I am looking at every avenue.
SCOZZAFAVA: Okay. Any questions for Mike? Anything else Mike?
MASCARENAS: No, that’s it. Thank you.
SCOZZAFAVA: Joe, North Country.
KEEGAN:
Good morning everyone. Nice to
see you. It is for students and for
faculty it’s the best time of the year, graduation is right around the
corner. I want to thank you for your
ongoing support of the college and our students for another successful
year. Graduation is Saturday. We have
Billy Jones who is our commencement speaker. We’re looking forward to Billy
addressing. We also have nursing pinning’s taking place on the Ti and Malone
campus Wednesday night, Saranac Lake on Thursday if you’re around and would
like to join in any of those celebrations we would love to have you.
We had our first advisory board in four years
down in Ticonderoga thanks to Mark Wright who attended and I think it was a
really wide ranging discussion. Mark I don’t
know what your thoughts were?
WRIGHT: I’m
getting a lot of participation there. I
thought it was great.
KEEGAN: Yes and we had Senator Stec join us for
the entire two hours which is also wonderful. It’s great when our State
officials are able to be part of the college and we’ve had great support from
all them.
State budget I’m sure you’re all parsing it we
are all too, we were fortunate to be able to get the floor funding for the up
and coming year for the college that keeps $300,000 in our budget that we may
have otherwise lost so that’s a good thing for us all and we didn’t get the 4%
operating increase which we were hoping for.
The floor was the bigger nugget so we’re grateful for that and then a
couple last things, big capital projects.
I think you all know the Saranac Lake campus is under construction,
right after commencement we are going to see nursing and science labs upgraded
there, same thing down in Ticonderoga with the nursing lab and on the Malone
campus. We opted to not go with the ground
breaking ceremony because we’re not really breaking ground but we will have a
ribbon cutting ceremony when we do that we will invite you all to come in and
help us celebrate it. It’s the first
significant investment in the campus that we’ve had maybe, since 1977. I think we had the nursing building up in
2000, but it’s been a long time so people are excited. It’s hard to believe how much stuff we’ve
kept and collected over those 50 years in the science labs and then finally we
just wrapped up our AEMT the first round of the AEMT, 27 of the 28 that started
made it through the program that’s I think good for us all. We’ve got a second
round of basic EMT going right now, we’ll have another one in the fall we’ll
have another advanced in the spring and we’re looking to set up another basic
waste water operator course in the fall so keep it on your radar and as we know
more about the details we’ll get that out to you. And that’s everything Tom.
SCOZZAFAVA: Any questions?
MONTY:
Joe that’s wonderful about the EMT’s and the AEMT’s. It sounds like it’s being well received.
KEEGAN:
It has been Jim, yes.
MONTY:
Do we have more people looking to get into those type of programs?
KEEGAN: So the enrollments have been
strong. I haven’t seen the enrollments
for the fall yet but the summer enrollments are looking strong as well, so
yeah.
MONTY:
Nice, thank you Joe. That’s huge
for Essex County.
KEEGAN:
Yes we are delighted both with the ability to do it and with the
turnout.
MONTY:
Thank you.
KEEGAN: And we were able to through some
funding, we were able to bring all of those programs up to the twenty first
century with their materials new manikins so we got state funding from that
which was really helpful.
MONTY:
Nice, thank you.
SCOZZAFAVA: Anything else for Joe? If not, thank you. Anything further to come before this
committee?
GILLLILLAND:
I actually got a call by Seth, so to give you a little update everybody
is probably hearing about migrants. So,
this whole migrant thing is being driven by the City of New York, I guess the
State is hearing about it because they weren’t told a lot of these things, the
City is actually going up and hiring hotels and busing them to these hotels
without checking with the counties.
There are no plans, etc. at this time there is nothing saying any
migrants is coming to the North Country but this is an ongoing thing. The state
is probably going to think they go to the operation of what they are going to
do from the City because the City can’t keep it under control. There may be
more to come but at this point there is nothing showing any migrants are coming
up here or no plans to. If there were
the state would be funneling all that through DSHS and Emergency Services
that’s all I know.
SCOZZAFAVA: Any questions on that?
MERRIHEW: I’ve noticed to what Shaun is eluding
to, I saw that in the budget that was passed, $1 Billion dollars migrant
administration whatever it was and we are all fighting over about $200 million
dollars for our infrastructure that was just such a shock to see that much
money allocated and we’re left out there fighting for such a small piece of the
pie.
SCOZZAFAVA: This County in my opinion, Shaun
you and I have had this discussion or Moriah, the county, we do not have
anywhere near the infrastructure that would be needed to support them coming to
the Essex County. We don’t have the
health care needs. I mean our own constituency can’t even get into it, we don’t
have the housing, we don’t have the transportation that would be needed to be
available and so on so we probably should have some kind of an assessment done
on what we actually have here because eventually they could be coming saying,
you know well we are going to use Moriah Shock or we’re going to use one of
these facilities that support hotels.
MONTY: I
think they are coming already we just don’t know the large masses.
GILLILLAND:
What they did too is basically the City right now is looking for cheap
hotels.
SCOZZAFAVA: There’s one in Keeseville. Alright, with that any questions? If not, we stand adjourned.
As
there was no further discussion to come before this Finance committee it was
adjourned at 11:05 a.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Judith Garrison, Clerk
Board of Supervisors