FINANCE/TAX REDUCTION/MANDATE RELIEF COMMITTEE

Monday, March 17, 2025 - 10:30 AM

Steve McNally, Chairperson

Robin DeLoria, Vice-Chairperson

Chairman McNally called this Finance Meeting to order at 10:55 am with the following Supervisors in attendance: Clayton Barber, Matthew Brassard, Chris Clark, Robin DeLoria, Derek Doty, Shaun Gillilland, Charlie Harrington, Ken Hughes, Steve McNally, James Monty, Cathleen Reusser, Favor Smith, Matt Stanley, Davina Thurston, Ike Tyler, Joe Pete Wilson, Margaret Wood and Mark Wright.

Department Heads present: Hannah Carson, Laura Carson, James Dougan, Judy Garrison, Chelsea Merrihew and Michael Mascarenas. Michael Diskin was excused.

Also present: William Tansey, Joe Keegan and Roy Holzer.

News media: None present.

MCNALLY: I call the Finance committee meeting to order, County Clerk Chelsea Merrihew.

MERRIHEW: Good morning. I submit my report and I do not have anything out of the ordinary today unless there’s questions?

DOTY: Let’s talk DMV

MERRIHEW: Yes, I would like nothing better.

DOTY: It doesn’t look feasible that anytime soon you’re going to have clientele and I realize that Ticonderoga services a big area away from here and we have Franklin County in Saranac Lake. I guess it’s my polite way of saying if I’m not to keep bugging you should I decommission that room and take it back?

MERRIHEW: Honestly I do not foresee a point in the near future where I’m going to be able to open Lake Placid. We had to close Ti for the entire month of February. We are two steps forward, one step back right now. At least Saranac Lake is at three days a week.

DOTY: I knew they were at two I didn’t know if they had more or not.

MERRIHEW: I know they talked about going down one for the winter and then bumping it back up in the summer.

DOTY: I don’t mean to jump but I would kind of like a plan.

MERRIHEW: If you have better use for that room I’m more than willing to meet and come up with a plan. My one reservation about that space is it’s beautiful. It’s brand new equipment, brand new countertops.

DOTY: I know you’ve got monitors, you’ve got a whole system in there. Could you use that equipment at your other places?

MERRIHEW: Some of it and I would like to perhaps I could rope DPW into coming and maybe looking at the equipment that is there as far as the countertops maybe finding a way to retro fit it into my Ti space or a different space just because it is so new. I do believe the county put like $25,000 into that.

DOTY: I won’t move until we have a potential client. Let’s leave it that way.

MERRIHEW: No but if you want to start looking into it proactively I think we are at a spot where I just don’t see it being feasible to have the two offices. There’s days I struggle to keep the one office open.

DOTY: Sure, fair enough. Thanks.

MCNALLY: Anything else for Chelsea? I think that was a great report to pull the band aid off so that we can move forward in North Elba. It’s good to have someone up here and say, no Derek you’re not getting your office. You did a good job handling that. Alright, anything else for Chelsea? If not, thank you Chelsea. Laura Carson, Auditors.

L. CARSON: Good morning. I know you guys are running a little bit behind so just short and sweet. You’ve all had a chance to review my report. Do you have questions? I don’t have anything fun to talk about this month.

MCNALLY: Anything for Laura? If not, thank you. Real Property, Hannah Carson.

H. CARSON: Good morning. I don’t think I have any bad news to share today.

MCNALLY: That’s a start.

H. CARSON: As everybody knows the May 1^st deadline for filing the tentative assessment role is coming up and with that we have our BAR training scheduled for May 8 to take place right here in the supervisor’s chamber again this year we are going to do it at the 1:30 – 4:30 time. I feel like that worked out a lot better last year. We currently have twelve members that are required to attend but we like to invite all members for towns that are competing their reassessment project and this year we have eight towns so we may have a full house.

MCNALLY: I think you should attend that Matt.

BRASSARD: I will be on vacation.

H. CARSON: That’s all I have. Does anybody have questions?

MCNALLY: Anything for Hannah? Alright thank you. Treasurer’s office – excused. County Manager.

MASCARENAS: Other than what Dan asked of me a couple of weeks ago, it is business as usual. I will be putting together a more formalized report on the potential loss of federal aid and be able to develop some of those worse case scenarios. I’ve got a lot of information from departments I just got to be able to put it all together.

MCNALLY: Anything for Mike? North Country Community College, Joe Keegan.

KEEGAN: Happy St. Patrick’s Day everybody. Good morning to you all. As always thanks for your ongoing support of the college and our students. Actually I feel bad I have more to report than the three people that came before me, four people before me so I wanted to update you on our board. We had a board appointment Trisha Preston from Lake Placid was appointed by the Governor’s office to replace Mary Irene Lee. Trisha is a 1983 alumni from North Country. She worked several years in the Saranac Lake Central School District. She’s a resident of the Town of North Elba and we are excited to have her. We thank Mary Irene Lee. Mary Irene had a thirteen year service, seven years on a full appointment and six years on an expired appointment. The board will not have the arterial flare that they did with Mary Irene Lee you would have to know her, she was quite the dresser.

Our spring enrollment that I shared with you last time held through the verification period which is really good news. We were up 4% in the spring that continued on which works well for students and for families and for the college so that’s really good news. We have, I think there’s two things working through the state budget advocacy which you may be aware of. One is the Governor’s proposal for free community college for adults ages 25-55 if they don’t have a previous degree and they are seeking out an associate’s degree in a high needs field they can get virtually their course of study paid for. We will be assuming that it passes the state budget. We will be marketing that to students and we would love to have you amplify that message if that’s something you would be interested in doing relatedly we are doing budget advocacy around additional operating support for community colleges. I’m sure you’ve heard that a number of times. We, meaning the community college association of Presidents and the Trustees and we are working collaborately to try and get more operating aid to us from the State. The assembly put forward $30 million in their one house bill which we took as a win. The senate put forward $9 million in their one house bill hopefully they can find some common ground and get us some more operating dollars which would be awesome.

We had our campus safety training at the college on this past Friday it was a really great event and we learned a lot about just strengthening our safety profile I think something probably we are all in our minds about the need to do unfortunately.

I wanted to update you on a couple of things on EMT and including getting back to Matt and Robin on your question from last time. So currently we completed AEMT earlier in the month we had 14 AEMT’s complete in Essex County which was really great. It was a special segment for the county. We have basic EMT scheduled for Ticonderoga in the fall. We are running a compressed EMT course this summer if people are interested it will be a twelve week window taking place in Malone and I want to get back to what Robin and Matt asked last time which was, can we do something that’s hybrid given the disparity of the geographic area of Essex County to be able to get more people to take that in. I spoke with our Director and he indicated that we were already doing a hybrid. We are at about the 50% limit in terms of what we are able to deliver. I’m happy to speak with you both if there is another path you want to take but NYS limits the didactic or the actual instruction portion to 50% work at that level currently with what we are doing online. We can’t do labs other than in person. We can’t do ride along and that kind of experiential other than in person but I’m happy to talk with you both if you would like to discuss if there are some other options.

WILSON: Can I jump in with an antidote that illustrates the consequences of that. My son went to college in Vermont, took the EMT training at the University of Vermont Medical Center got his Vermont certification, passed the nationals EMT certification, wanted to move back here to New York and New York said, no thank you. We won’t take your national certification or your Vermont certification and the reason was he had like 55% online and so NYS felt that wasn’t meeting our standards and so he’s working in Massachusetts now but that’s how vigorous and sort of non-sensible it’s making it harder for us to deliver EMT’s in our communities. So sorry for that sidetrack but it was a perfect illustration of what you’re talking about.

KEEGAN: It was. Thank you JoePete.

Just a couple of other things for you. Capital projects will be underway soon so we’ll be upgrading the gym starting this summer with a new vestibule. We got a $225,000 grant from the State University of New York to help with the upgrade of our pool which we are really delighted. We’ve got a new nursing rural nursing diversity grant going in, it just went in earlier to the health resources services administration HRSA to try and get more nurses in rural areas which will be a boom for us and there’s a Title III strengthening institutions grant that we are looking at right now which will be able to use for capital projects and other things. Busy and it’s midterm we are coming up on spring break. Happy to take any questions.

MCNALLY: Anything for Joe?

MASCARENAS: Joe, just one question. Federal dollars?

KEEGAN: So we looked at like you Mike, we looked at where we may have risks. All of the Federal grants that we had we spent down. Title IV which is Pell, student loans those are the greatest risk. We’ve been assured that those are not at risk so we will continue to monitor at this point.

SMITH: You mentioned it was a 4% increase in enrollment during this semester. What was the enrollment in the fall semester was that an increase as well?

KEEGAN: It was. Yes we saw a 3% I think Favor I will have to look at that but we’ve had five semesters straight up.

SMITH: Excellent. Thanks.

MCNALLY: That’s wonderful. Anything else for Joe? If not, thank you. Anything else for Finance?

MONTY: I was hoping Mike was here because I just wanted to clarify if we’re online for our tax auction that we had talked about ’20 and ’21 to be running that in June of this year?

MASCARENAS: June isn’t a date I have. Mr. Tansey is here. He might have some more information that I do. I talked to Mr. Manning about this last week and he thought we were on schedule for a fall auction when I brought it up.

MONTY: I know for a fact we talked about this previously that we were going to do one in June and then the second one would be in the fall because at the time we discussed this it wasn’t done the ‘22’s weren’t completed yet as far as the foreclosure process goes.

MASCARENAS: And Bill, I don’t know, do you have any more information on the auction status?

TANSEY: I don’t as I stand here. I will have to find out and get back to you.

MONTY: I’m sorry to bring it up much like I did the personnel policy we are going back to where we were when I came on board in 2016, we are going to be seven years behind before we know it and we can’t keep using Covid as an excuse or Tyler-Hennepin we know the ground rules. You play games with the ground rules.

MCNALLY: But the key is once we auction those properties they will be back on the tax roll.

MONTY: That’s my point. That’s my point exactly.

MCNALLY: Yes, I’m with you Jim. Anything else? We are adjourned.

As there was no further discussion to come before this Finance/tax reduction/mandate relief committee it was adjourned at 11:10 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Judith Garrison, Clerk

Board of Supervisors