FINANCE/TAX
REDUCTION/MANDATE RELIEF COMMITTEE
Tuesday, January 20,
2026 - 10:30 AM
Michael
Tyler, Chairperson
Joe
Pete Wilson, Vice-Chairperson
Chairman Tyler called this Finance/Tax
Reduction/Mandate Relief Committee Meeting to order at 10:30 am with the
following Supervisors in attendance: Clayton Barber, Matthew Brassard, Chris
Clark, Timothy Follos, Ken Hughes, Mary Lamphear, Tracie McGill, Steve McNally,
James O’Bryan, Timothy Pierce, Richard Preston, Cathleen Reusser, Matt Stanley,
Davina Thurston, Ike Tyler, and Margaret Wood. Clayton Menser, and Joe Pete
Wilson were excused.
Department Heads present: Michael Mascarenas,
Dan Manning, Hannah Carson, Mike Diskin, Roy Holzer, Chelsea Merrihew and Jim
Dougan. Laura Carson and Judy Garrison was excused.
Deputies present: Dina Garvey, and Bill Tansey
Also present: Joe Keegan - North Country
Community College
TYLER: Welcome to the Finance Committee, the first
on the agenda is our County Clerk, Ms. Merrihew.
MERRIHEW: Good morning, I submitted my report and my
figures for the month of December. I will just go over these briefly, because
it’s the beginning of the year. I have my monthly report to the Treasurer, this
shows all the money that was collected in my office and that I disburse at the
end of the month. So, in December, we took in $730,000.00 and transferred
$365,000.00 to the Treasurer for local retention. The remainder, mostly goes
back to the State of New York and there is a small portion that goes to the
Federal Government for passport fees.
My other reports are related to the transfer and
mortgage taxes that I collect in my office. In New York State there is a
mandatory New York State transfer tax I am required to collect, anytime a
transfer of land is recorded in my office. In 2010, this Body, implemented a
local transfer tax, so whenever a transfer is recorded in my office, I am
required to collect $2.00/$1,000.00 of the sale price. In December, I collected
$73,000.00 and the total for the year was $688,000.00. We had budgeted
$500,000.00, so we came in over. I believe for next year; we increase that
amount to $600,000.00.
MASCARENAS: Based on that.
MERRIHEW: And that goes to capital.
MASCARENAS: Yeah, just so everybody knows, a couple
of years ago, new Board Members, this fund is largely used, traditionally to
pay off debt. The Courthouse, the Jail are two items that we used this from. In
the past we would have to budget a certain amount of levy to also offset that.
The Board, a couple of years ago, knowing that that was going to be paid off,
started a local law, much like you’ve done today, to utilize those funds to pay
for roads, bridges, those kinds of things. So, we still have the authority to
collect. So, the fact that she’s bringing in that kind of money is really,
really a good thing and way above what we anticipated based on prior years, so
hats off to them.
MERRIHEW: And then the other tax is the mortgage
recording tax. In New York State, every county is required to collect, there
are two taxes, the basic tax that goes back to the town where the property of
the mortgage covers and then there’s a special edition, that we call it, that
goes back to the State of New York and then there’s two different mortgage
taxes that the counties can chose to implement. In 1994, Essex County,
implemented one of those taxes and then I think around 2004-2005, they
implemented the second. Those are each a 1/4 % of the amount of the mortgage.
So, I collect that, transfer it at the end of the month to the County
Treasurer, that is also held and goes into a capital account. So, in December,
we collected for both of those taxes, $136,000.00, making our year to date,
just over a million dollars.
And then with my reports, I always include this mortgage
tax collected by town, because it shows a breakdown of those four taxes that I
was just talking about, of interest for you is the basic tax, because that’s
the tax, semi-annually, that is sent back to you for your portion.
So, those are the standard reports that I submit
every month, we usually don’t talk much about them.
I also have a resolution request. I am required by
County Law to submit an accounting of all the monies that I have received and
dispersed for the prior year. So, in 2025, you’ll see my accounting, we
collected $11.4 million, the monies received shows under what category I
collected those and the monies dispersed shows where the money got sent.
RESOLUTION
ACCEPTING AND APPROVING THE ANNUAL ACCOUNTING OF MONIES RECEIVED AND DISBURSED
BY THE ESSEX COUNTY CLERK IN 2025; SUBMITTED TO COUNTY LAW 406
Barber, Thurston
TYLER: Any discussion?
HUGHES: Chelsea, who’s that sent to, the State
Comptroller’s office?
MERRIHEW: No, it’s dispersed the same, like my
monthly reporting.
HUGHES: No, I mean the report, itself.
MERRIHEW: No, I am only required to submit it to
this Board.
MASCARENAS: No, the State doesn’t want any paper,
but they want you to have it.
HUGHES: Yeah, thank you.
TYLER: All in favor? Opposed? Carried.
MERRIHEW: And that’s all I have, today, unless
anyone has any questions.
HUGHES: I read in the paper about Warren County’s
DMV, being closed for a week, because of the implementation, transition, from
old technology, to new technology, are we going to be experiencing something
similar in Essex County?
MERRIHEW: So, yes, I am still deciding, there’s some
information I am waiting for from New York State, I know some county DMVs have
chosen to be closed all of Friday. I am leaning towards being open until 2:00
in the afternoon, but there’s still one piece of information that I’m waiting
for. So, it’s going to be a huge transition, we’re going from a system that’s
been in place since the 1970’s to a web-based system. There’s going to be two
transitions, one this year and one two years from now. So, right now it’s going
to be the licenses and then later it’s going to be the registrations. They’re
shutting down the entire State system at 6:00 PM on Friday. So, no phones, no
internet, no access to any of the computers. They’re going to work on over the
long weekend and hope to have to up and running by Tuesday afternoon. We should
know by then whether or not it’s going to work and then opened on Wednesday for
business. I am leaning towards staying open on Friday, as long as I can, but
there’s outstanding information on one of our major accounting reports and I
want to have that. So, I am also planning and I will send this to you, we were
going to do our family passport nights, right before that, so I am going to
hopefully have the DMV open a couple of extended hours before we shutdown.
HUGHES: Great, thanks for the update.
TYLER: Anything else? Thank you
MERRIHEW: Thank you
*********************
The next item
on the agenda was the Auditors Office with Laurie DeZalia, Deputy, reporting as
follows:
DEZALIA: Good morning, I’m Laurie DeZalia, I’m the
Deputy Auditor, Laura Carson is the Auditor. What you chose our department to
do is to audit claims that are submitted through the County. We make sure that
all the polices and procedures and regulations are adhered to. That’s what our office
does in a nutshell. We approve tax roll corrections and some other reporting
type things. We work very closely with the County Manager’s Office and
Treasurer’s, Real Property. I work very closely with DPW, myself. That’s what
we do in our office.
Information on the reports, she has included the
Department Head Expense Reports, which includes the coroner information. That
falls under us, only because they don’t have a Department Head, that reports,
so we put that on our reports.
The Supervisor Expense Reports, those fall for the
previous month, so you’re going to see the old supervisors on there. Next
month, you’ll see the new ones on there. Judy, will do your mileage voucher, I
had a question on that this morning, so you’ll see here at the end of the month
and they get turned into us and then we do your payments.
Data Collection and Information is on there. Invoice
number of preventions or duplicate payments and overpayments, the number of
errors that collect and that’s always been a bone of contention. It really just
justifies a department and one thing that we found through efficiency meeting,
this last year is we want to improve the number of errors, but we have a lot of
new employees. So, like you, we have a lot of new staff, so of course, your numbers
are going to higher and we want to be more support staff and help them train
versus correcting all the time.
Assigned Counsel information is there. That used to
be solely under our department until that department was established about a
year and half ago. Leah’s is physically located in our office. She’s the
Assigned Counsel Administrator, under a supervising attorney. Again, we report
their information, because there’s not someone here reporting.
There are budgets in there and there is also
information on special prosecutor data, that’s included in our packet.
Anybody have any questions for me? If you do, we’re
located behind the mailroom. People think it’s a closet door and that’s where
you can find us.
TYLER: Thank you, Laurie.
DEZALIA: Thank you
*********************
The next item
on the agenda was the Real Property Tax Services with Hannah Carson, reporting
as follows:
CARSON: Good morning, so first on my list is just a
wrap on our 2025 budget and the next thing that I wanted to talk about was, I
have an update on the Chapter Amendment, regarding the exemption for veterans
with a 100% service-connected disability rating. You should all have the
amendment on your desk. Dan and I are still questioning why they are taking out
or it seems like they’re taking out the wording for it being an option at the
local level. I’m not sure if he’s heard from Patrick Cummings, yet.
MANNING: I haven’t, my supposition, though, is they
took that out because it’s already in the existing laws with respect to
veterans and it would probably be the same. What they took out is already in
there, in the existing law, but I want to speak to Patrick, we can get that
information for, hopefully for Ways and Means.
CARSON: So, I will update you guys through email,
once we get clarification on that. I do want to note that this is not a blanket
exemption for all veterans with 100% disability rating. Despite public
perception, the law does not provide a total exemption for all veterans just
because of that 100% rating. There are very specific criteria that they have to
meet, which I can send that information to you guys, but are there any
questions on the amendment?
And then lastly, you should have a chart. This shows
the surveys, deeds and boundary line adjustments that we processed in 2025. As
you can see the trend in deeds is going down. We like to see that, but
unfortunately sale price is not going down as quickly. Are there any questions?
TYLER: Any questions
THURSTON: I was recently asked about the Homestead
Exemption for the Town of St. Armand. I think this is a mechanism that some
people are trying to get towns to implement, to kind of offset the STR problem
that we have. Can you explain to all of us what the Homestead Exemption is and
how it might work?
CARSON: I’m not sure what you mean by Homestead
Exemption. Are you meaning like what Newcomb has like homestead, not homestead?
THRUSTON: Exactly, yes
CARSON: So, that’s not really an exemption, that’s
two different tax rates.
THURSTON: Okay
CARSON: So, the non-homestead parcels, which is like
the vacant land over 10-acres, I think it is, commercial, your big tracts of
land, that is not homestead and they appear to have like 2-3 times the tax rate
that your residential properties have. You can view that kind of one of two
ways. It may push commercial properties
out of your town. I think there’s 17 towns, I would have to double check that,
I think there’s 17 towns in all of New York State that have the homestead, not
homestead. I can send out more information on that, but it’s not an exemption.
THURSTON: I’m sorry, I understand that, I misspoke.
CARSON: That’s okay
THURSTON: I’m just wondering, is there a mechanism
and I’m not sure if this is even appropriate for Essex County, but I am going
to ask the questions regardless, I recently have been hearing a lot about,
investors buying single family housing and jacking up rents and having rental
homes instead of owner occupied homes and as we know affordable housing is a
massive problem here in Essex County and I am just trying to come up with any
kind of mechanisms that we can, to help out our residents to try and elevate
that problem and negate that.
MASCARENAS: I don’t know it was Last Day of the
Annual, Dan, probably remembers, too, a little bit better and cut me off if you
need to, but our prior Board supported, really the legislature making the
change in terms of how assessments are made and adding a 400 series, I think is
kind of what the suggestion was in terms of these STRs. Currently, we have
about 2,200 of them countywide, that’s not what we have registered. My number
is coming from Dekker and what they did with their presentation to the Board.
That’s a lot of properties and I think everyone is feeling that pinch in terms
of getting increased taxes based up purchases that are made from people that
have now turned the property into an income property and how we define that and
move that needle at the state level, I think matters. So, I think Robin’s paper
did a really good job at that. We could certainly get that out, again, to the
Board. It explains it very well, kind of, he identifies the problem, potential
solutions and those types of things. But I think homestead and non-homestead is
another option. In terms of doing that, Dan would know much better than I
would, in terms of the legalities and how that all works, but we’ll get that to
people, so they can see that and review that and I think we need to stay on top
of it, because it really is driving some of our communities to really turn into
STR towns and school systems and those types of things are feeling the pinch
because of it.
O’BRYAN: Yeah, I am going to echo what Ms. Thurston
said, the significance of this and I think some of you have seen, told me about
it this morning, but have seen the news bulletin that came out, that a company
called Bright Sand is studying coming to Ticonderoga, coming to Sylvano, to
International Paper’s property, those would be 200 new jobs, high paying jobs
coming into the County. Homes and having homes enough to support across our
towns, close enough to us, to be able to support people coming in is going to
be very important and that’s the thing that I worry about the most, is we’re
getting ready to build 32 new homes in Ticonderoga. It’s all part of the design
behind the college some 20 years ago and that is going to kick off this spring.
As we bulldoze, they have a caveat in the deed that says, you have to be 55 or
older to buy in. So, what I see happening is I see what we saw before is people
who want to downsize, downsize and then what will happen is their homes will
become available. The last thing I want to see is all those homes go into
B&Bs, because they’re not going to help us attract a workforce to Essex
County. So, I just bring that up, because that’s going to be a big issue. We
will know about it this week, we’re having a meeting this week, so we’ll share
that back with the Board, thank you.
CARSON: That is all I have, is there any other
questions?
FOLLOS: Related to the Homestead versus the
non-Homestead tax rate. Are there any towns in this area that have adopted
that?
CARSON: Newcomb is the only one.
FOLLOS: Thank you
TYLER: Thank you, have a fantastic day.
*********************
The next item
on the agenda was the Essex County Treasurer, Mike Diskin, reporting as
follows:
DISKIN: My office has been extremely busy on this
tax foreclosure, more so than I think we ever had. I don’t know if there’s more
interest in it or just a lot more questions or new people, but there is a
tremendous amount of interest in that. I attended a meeting last night a
pre-registration and bidders meeting last night in Ticonderoga and normally you
get 10-15 people, there were probably 75 people and a lot of questions. So,
hopefully it will attract a lot of attention at the auction.
Let’s start with the sales tax and the sales tax
finished up last year and ended with our collections in December at $671,226.00
more than December of 2025. That brought the total to a $1,259,036.00 than
2024, so we had good sales tax numbers. Keep in mind, for those that are new to
this and I will remind you, for the people that have been here awhile. This
does not necessarily follow our sales tax that is in the budget. Actually, the
sales tax that is in the budget, the way sales tax is broken down is typically
for money that you got, received within the last month or month and a half and
if you look in the sales tax description, monies that you get in February are
actually for December. January and February more most November and December
money is still trickling in, because people are either on a monthly or
quarterly filing. So, sales tax gets calculated in the budget, it has to take
into account what we take in, in January and February, as well. This is
strictly a calendar year amount that I am giving you, most counties follow this
calendar year amount. For some reason, along before I was here, so it goes back
a ways, it was changed by a previous group of administration and the Board, so
one year and I don’t know if it was a budget way or not, but one year they
actually counted 14-months of sales tax, it helped them with their budget, I
assume and then it throws everything else off, the way it is calculated. So, I
know when Mike puts in the budget it is calculated, basically from March 1st
to February 28th. What I am giving to you is strictly calendar, so
it may not match up to what we have budgeted, over the couple of months, we
backout the January and February and add the January and February from this
year, but it does bode well that we’re running that high and I think we’re
beginning to see some of the affects of sales tax on occupancies. I think
that’s driving some of it. You’ll see in the next report that our occupancy is
up, considerably and our sales tax, just to move forward, our sales in January,
which is actually November, mostly November, but some December in there was
almost $244,000.00 ahead of last year. So, that signals to me, that some of the
collection of occupancy tax that are being turned in, primarily from the
marketers, the VRBOs and the Airbnb’s, groups like that. Most of the smaller
people, people that are doing that, have already been turning in sales tax,
like hotels and motels, but the smaller individuals one, will probably pay
that, will setup on an annual basis, so, you’ll see that, probably coming in
next month or so. I think we’ll see our sales tax number grow, and we will get
a better idea of where we’ll be able to use some of that money and how much we’re
going to have.
MASCARENAS: Yeah, so those of you that are aware…
DISKIN: Sales tax in January, is actually up for the
whole month, we’re almost $244,000.00, occupancy in December, if you look at it
and you’ll see that it’s not a final number, because December money that we get
in is for rentals that were done in November. Money that we get in January is
for December. So, we calculate that, actually February for January. But, we’re
almost to where we were last year. We’re at $6,950,000.00. We were a little
over $7 million, we still have a month to go. We’ll probably closer to $7.5,
$7.4, so you see it’s growing each year. We’re picking up more and more people
that are registering, every month and we are, this week, we are kicking off a
meeting with Dekker, the group that we are contracting with to help us locate
these STRs and we’re having a Zoom meeting with them, I think it’s on Friday,
either Thursday or Friday and we’ll know more about what we’re going to do, but
one of the things that they will do is give us an outline of how many they have
discovered in the County and they do that by data mining the VRBOs, the
Airbnb’s, those types and they will be able to tell us how many people are
supposed to be registered versus how many are. Those people that are not
registered, they’ll have names and addresses for us. They will create and
generate letters for us, that will go out with the County signature, County
letterhead, that says, you’re not registered yet, we discovered this and you
need to register and this is what you need to do. We’ll work up that letter and
ask them to register. At that point we should have a better handle on what is
at each one of your towns and I believe we’ll be able to go out, the towns will
be able to, on a view only basis, be able to look at that in their particular
town or even zoom in on a particular street or area in your town. I know when I
first looked at it, for instance, in the Town of Willsboro, they pinpointed out
in Willsboro, on the Point, they showed us people that are out there and
they’ve for little red dots, black dots and red dots were for those that are
registered and black ones are for those that are not, I believe, but they had
different quotes for them and they can tell you who’s registered and who’s not,
even within the neighborhood and it’s going be very beneficial for those of you
to look at, once we get that formed.
The only other thing I had on my agenda was just a
reminder of the tax sale, tomorrow. As I said, we had the pre-bid meeting last
night, very well attended that I have ever been to and I have been to a lot of
them. A lot of questions, a lot of questions, again, today, people are still
asking questions about it and if you look online, the Absolute Auctions
website, there are already people bidding online.
TYLER: What time does that start?
DISKIN: It starts at 10:00 AM, normally, we used to
start at 11:00, but that’s back when we used to have like 35 properties. This
year we have a little over 100, 110, so we’re going to start an hour earlier to
get this done. Registration will start at 8:00 AM. I downloaded, before I came
over here, a page and a half of names of people who bid, or registered and will
bid online. What that means is they can be sitting in their living room, having
a cocktail or a morning coffee or whatever they start the morning with and bid
from there. You see these advertisements where they’re all dressed in shirts
and ties and below it, they don’t have anything on. They can bid from home, so
it will be live, simultaneously, and there will be somebody there with a laptop
that will take the live bids and they’ll be bidding on their behalf, so they’ll
hear, they’ll get a signal from them that they want to bid and they will say,
we have online bid, so it isn’t necessarily the people that are there that
maybe the winning bid, there could be, a lot of times, it’s people that you
don’t even seen that are online to bid and they do everything online.
Unfortunately, one of the things with the online bidding, in most cases, people
buy sight unseen and within 2-3 years, after they see what they got, we usually
have them back, so once in awhile it works out well, but a lot of these online
bids are speculative, they buy it and they try and resell it real quick and
they sell it somebody else that doesn’t know what they’re buying, it happens. I
invite all of you, if you’re around, tomorrow, I welcome you all to come and
watch it, it’s pretty interesting. It goes fast, they’re bids go through fairly
quickly, within about 2 minutes they bid on a property and go to the next one.
They don’t waste much time.
TYLER: How long will it take?
DISKIN: This one, probably about 3 hours, maybe at
the most. I’ve seen them when we have about 35 properties, we’re done in a
little over an hour.
MCNALLY: Can we have a short Executive Session?
TYLER: I don’t know.
MASCARENAS: You have to get a first and a second.
TYLER: Are we all done with Mr. Diskin?
DISKIN: Does anybody have any questions for me?
O’BRYAN: Distribution of sales tax money, how does
that go across our 18 towns?
DISKIN: It’s based on two factors. The first factor
is the population of the town in relation to the rest of the County and that’s
percentage and then the other part that is calculated is the total assessment
of the town versus the total assessment of the county and we get a percentage
and we use that to calculate. And we did that back when we decided to share the
sales tax, for a couple of reasons, but mainly it helped out, like the small
towns, for instance, Newcomb, Lewis, Minerva, who don’t have a lot of
population, they have a lot of assessment and that kind of balances it out.
That’s how the sharing goes.
O’BRYAN: Thank you
FOLLOS: It’s mostly based on population, right? Or
is it like, 50/50, population versus assessment?
DISKIN: 50% of the amount that we share and we share
¼ of 1%. We get 8% sales tax and the County ends up keeping 7 ¾% of it, ¼% of
it is shared with the towns. If you look at my monthly reports with sales tax,
you will see there’s a column over on the far end that shows how much we put
out for towns and how much we put out, we saved for the County and you look at
this year, for the calendar year, strictly, the calendar year, you’ll see a
total of what we did there and each month we calculate that and then ¼ of 1%
gets shared and then 50% of that in based on assessment and 50% is on
population.
TYLER: Anything else for Mr. Diskin? Thank you.
Before we entertain a motion to go into Executive
Session, I would like to entertain, Mr. Joe Keegan, from North Country, so he’s
not hanging out down here.
*********************
The next item
on the agenda was North Country Community College with Joe Keegan, reporting as
follows:
KEEGAN: Good morning, everyone, Happy New Year and
congratulations to all the folks that have been elected to new positions within
the County, by your colleagues. Mr. Tyler, nice to be working with you in this
capacity. Hopefully, we’ll talk about basketball rather than football over the
next year, but congratulations to Mr. McNally and Mr. Brassard, as well and
greetings to the new supervisors, I look forward to having the opportunity to
meet with and working with you over the upcoming year. I am President of North
Country Community College, for those of you that don’t know. I am also a proud
alum of the college, so my Saints pride runs deep. We are in the midst of
spring enrollment, so knock on wood, things are looking good again for the
spring. We are currently trending up on applications. We’re trending up in
enrollments. It’s always a bit risky to go out with what that looks like, but
right now we’re trending about 5% up for spring, over spring. If that continues
that will be the 7th consecutive semester of upturns in enrollments.
So, things that we are really grateful for, we are
anticipating that the SUNY Reconnect, that free community college for high
needs programs that is offered to adult learners of which Essex County has a
lot of adult learners that would benefit for a 2-year degree, it looks like
that will be priority of the Governor’s, going into the new year and not only
continuing it, but expanding it, so as we know more, I will certainly keep you
in the loop on that.
We are, New York State is underway, which means that
our budget advocacy to get more funding for community colleges from the State
is also underway, we’re looking to keep the floor funding that we’ve had over
the last number of years, keep the increases that you’ve seen over the last two
years, $8 million for community colleges, each of the last 2 years, so we’re
hopeful about that.
We started our third class of the hybrid nursing
program, which I know the County has had interested in, has begun last week.
So, we had 30 new association degree nursing candidates enrolled across the
North Country. That provides another course of, or another class for nurses,
we’ve had, the last two years, we’ve graduated 29 and 30 new registered nurses
and put them out in the field, which is great news.
We’ve got a few capital projects, which I have
shared with you before, underway. Which it is nice to have some capital dollars
to invest in the college. We’ve had some longstanding periods of time where
we’ve not been able to do that and we’re in a good period where we’ve been able
to make it a more appealing place for students.
And then a couple of things that I wanted you to be
aware. We got some EMT courses going for the upcoming spring. We’ve got an
advanced EMT course running, we’ve got a basic EMT course running and I believe
we’re working on the County with having a basic EMT, over here.
We’ve got a new crisis intervention micro
credential, which is in play. That will be helpful for a lot of our human
services providers.
We have Direct Support Professionals, which help
places like Mountain Lake Services, Sunmount, that as a micro-credential,
three-tier. North Country as put more students through that program than other
community college and there is something to be said for that need and interest
there, we’re really grateful for that.
And we will be running another Wastewater Basic
Operator Course in the fall. So, I will keep you to date on that. That came
directly out of the County, saying we need the Basic Wastewater Operator
Training and this will be our 5th round of that. So, happy to get
all that information out to you all as things unfold and I am happy to take any
questions if there are any.
TYLER: I don’t have any questions, but I just want
to let the new Supervisors know, since Joe, has taken over there has been a
great presence at that campus for issues that the County has had for years,
finally being developed into things that we could use here in the North
Country, nursing and wastewater, I believe is one, too and several things.
We’ve just got a lot better relationship now that Joe’s in charge and he’s
doing a heck of a job for the North Country.
KEEGAN: Thank you
MASCARENAS: Joe’s budget process is a little quicker
than ours and you’ll see that and you’ll learn an awful lot about college and
operations and how that works in the coming months. The college is a shared
college between Franklin and Essex Counties. We’re equal partners in terms of
how payments are rendered to North Country, but yeah, I echo what I said, North
Country has really been vital in kind of our development of our own recruitment
and retention plans, not only for us, but your towns in areas that we’ve been
struggling to attract people in wastewater/sewer. EMS, they were critical, had
they not stepped in when they did, we’d be struggling much more than we are
now. So, our relationship has been really positive there and Joe’s very
responsive. So, anyone of you have any questions, comments, concerns, what to
visit the campus, I am sure he’s love to have you.
TYLER: Thank you, Joe.
KEEGAN: Thank you
TYLER: Alright, we need to entertain a motion for
what reason, Mr. McNally, would this motion be to go into Executive Session?
MCNALLY: Auction business.
MANNING: Legal advice on auction business. Someone
from the committee needs to make the motion.
TYLER: Mr. Barber, and Mr. Hughes and thank you.
THE COMMITTEE ENTERED INTO
EXECUTION SESSION AT 11:10 FOR THE PURPOSE OF LEGAL ADVICE PERTAINING TO THE
TAX FORECLOSURE AUCTION
Barber, Hughes
TYLER: The time is 11:20 and I need a motion to come
back into the regular committee meeting. Ms. Thurston, second by Mr. Barber
THE COMMITTEE RE-ENTERED
REGULAR SESSION AT 11:20
Thurston, Barber
TYLER: Mr. Mascarenas
*********************
The next item
on the agenda was the Essex County Manager, Michael Mascarenas, reporting as
follows:
MASCARENAS: Yeah, not much to report today, other
than New Supervisor Orientation on Thursday, 9:00 AM. I am hoping to get you
out of here by 11:00 AM or so. Some of our Department Heads get really excited
about those presentations, so some of it going to depend upon questions that
you have and how that works out. Veteran Supervisors are welcome to attend, for
sure. Some questions maybe more appropriate for you to answer. I’ve asked Ms.
Reusser to join us, being that she’s right here in town to do a segment, but
anybody is certainly welcome to attend, if you have a specific thing that you
want to talk about, or you just want to be available to answer questions that
come up on the fly, I think that would be great, too.
TYLER: What time is it, Mike?
MASCARENAS: 9:00 AM
TYLER: Anything else to come before this committee.
REUSSER: I have a meeting at 10:00, do you need me
for the whole thing?
MASCARENAS: I can get you to go first, if we know
that. So, we’ll put you on right at 9:00 AM and you can do your thing.
TYLER: We are adjourned, have a great day.
AS
THERE WAS NO FURTHER DISCUSSION TO COME BEFORE THIS FINANCE COMMITTEE IT WAS
ADJOURNED AT 11:22 A.M.
Respectfully submitted,
Dina Garvey, Deputy
Clerk of the Board