FINANCE/TAX REDUCTION/MANDATE RELIEF COMMITTEE

Thursday, February 12, 2026 - 10:30 AM

Michael Tyler, Chairperson

JoePete Wilson, Vice-Chairperson

Chairman Tyler called this Finance Meeting to order at 11:00 am with the following Supervisors in attendance: Clayton Barber, Ken Hughes, Mary Lamphear, Tracie McGill, Steve McNally, Clayton Menser, Timothy Pierce, Richard Preston, Cathleen Reusser, Matt Stanley, Davina Thurston, Ike Tyler, Joe Pete Wilson and Margaret Wood. Matthew Brassard, Chris Clark and James O’Bryan were excused. Timothy Follos was absent.

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

Deputies present: Bill Tansey

TYLER: Let’s get this show on the road, finance committee. Chelsea is excused. Laura.

L. CARSON: Good morning. Alright page one, our coroners have been very busy in January. They responded to 17 calls. The funeral homes handled four removals this is all based on vouchers that I received.

Page two is our supervisor’s expense report mostly just mileage in January. Page three is our invoice summary we processed over 2,000 invoices, we noted 437 errors. We prevented $44,000 in duplicate payments and about $1000 in overpayment. Page four is our budget, auditor budget. Page five is our 2025 assigned counsel summary. She did receive 174 more vouchers in January processed most of those were 2025. Our budget for 2025 now is about $1.2 million expended on assigned counsel expenses. Page six is her case assignments in January she had 66 new cases, and she closed 23 and page seven is the 2026, assigned counsel budget. There isn’t much out of there, yet she’s been focusing on processing 2025. Page eight is our tax roll corrections we only had two from real property and then page nine is our, I did a three year ROOST comparison because I think this is the first time we’ve ever met on a Thursday so today I cut all of the ROOST checks they are in your mailboxes so if you checked your mail already, check it again you already have money in there so is there any questions? I thought that this would be a nice visual for the last three years of what’s come in and what’s gone out to you.

TYLER: Any questions for Laura?

L. CARSON: Mr. Menser, I’m waiting.

MENSER: No, I’m digging into our budget so deep I haven’t anything.

HUGHES: Laura, page nine, this is a small thing, but I don’t know if you want to call a ROOST comparison? I know that we often and I just did the exact thing and called it ROOST money but it’s really our Essex County bed tax money. I know collectively it’s been ROOST but I think it’s more accurate to call it Essex County bed tax.

TYLER: Good point Mr. Hughes.

REUSSER: Thank you Mr. Hughes.

TYLER: Thank you. Hannah Carson, Real Property.

H. CARSON: Good morning. I have a resolution request to accept and place on file our 2026 annual report. I have placed those binders in everybody’s mailboxes.

RESOLUTION ACCEPTING AND PLACING ON FILE THE 2026 REAL PROPERTY ANNUAL REPORT. Barber, Hughes

TYLER: Any discussion? All in favor, opposed – carried.

HUGHES: Can I just say something very quickly about that? New supervisors, it’s an awesome, awesome document. It’s a lot of work to put together, a lot of time and effort, there’s a lot of numbers, there’s a lot of charts, there’s a lot of graphs, there’s a lot in there the bible of real property tax. Take a minute to go through it and check it out you will have a better understanding of your tax rate for each of your funds, how your town works overall, county comparison it’s really a daunting document as a new supervisor I shied away from it the first year I think but it really is an amazing piece of information life in your town and life in the county so don’t be shy, dive into the uncomfortable and check it out it’s really great.

MENSER: Along those lines, we have a new assessor that has been screening diligently and waiting for the office up here to work with him they are trying to get basically somewhere between 189-200 properties corrected by March 1^st for the next rolls once they get that much done, it’s going to have a major effect on Crown Point’s overall assessment so will all that go into effect in time for school tax distribution?

H.CARSON: It should. I know that they are trying to correct a lot of inventory because there’s a lot of parcels that have been missed both builds and demolitions so your town should have a lot of physical increase this year.

MENSER: I’m expecting ten to fifteen million dollars this year.

H. CARSON: Yeah, that will take affect for the school taxes to come out in September.

MCNALLY: Clayton you’re going to have a bunch of new friends after that comes out.

TYLER: Thank you, anything else?

H. CARSON: The last thing I wanted to mention, especially for the new town supervisors if your town does not have all of your board of assessment review seats filled I highly suggest trying to fill those before April. We do training here in May and if they do not sit for training then they cannot sit for grievance day and if your town doesn’t have a quorum on grievance day they can not sit to hear grievances if that happens, the grievance day is then pushed to the county level and that is comprised of the Chairman of the Board, Mr. McNally, the Clerk to the Board of Supervisors and the County Treasurer. Since I have been in real property it’s only happened once.

DISKIN: Four times.

H. CARSON: Four times for you Mike?

MCNALLY: It better not happen.

THURSTON: It happened in St. Armand a couple of years ago.

TYLER: Michael, four times in 75 years, not bad.

REUSSER: Do you communicate directly with the Board of Assessment review members for each town about this training?

H. CARSON: We do. Yes. We send letters.

REUSSER: Thank you.

TYLER: Thank you. Mr. Diskin, County Treasurer.

DISKIN: One of my favorite things since I’ve been here is being a board of assessment review person. I always look forward to doing that. I think we did one in Essex one year a time ago, down in North Hudson, one in St. Armand and there was one other one. I can understand why you are probably having trouble getting board of assessment review people sometimes.

So let’s start with sales tax and this morning when I came in we gotten our second check actually notification that there was one in our account today so I was able to update the sales tax. We got sales tax for the month of February. The second check was down a little bit, not a lot down about $46,000 but for the month we still were $186,000, a little over $186,000 more than February last year so for the year to date we were at about $430,000 ahead of last year already. It sounds like a lot but things can change in a hurry with sales tax as we all know but it is looking up favorably and I think it’s starting to show some of the occupancy stuff is starting to show in sales tax with some of the increases. Any questions on sales tax? If not, we will turn to the occupancy and you’ll see that there is an actual total once we got out of the January money from the December short-term rentals and once we get that money we can complete the year and get a better picture of how we did. You’ll see we were almost $160,000 ahead of last year. We almost made $7.5, seven million four-fifty-six and we were ahead about 5% from the year before.

We’ve had three meetings with Deckard so far. We have another one scheduled for tomorrow. The first roll out of that we should see that in a couple of months we still have a lot of planning there to do but initially what will happen is they have a list, they have a program that shows all of the short term rentals that they are aware of that they data mine from all these different companies VRBOB, Airbnb the biggest ones but Evolve, Expedia all the ones that are out there they have the accurate names and address and they think we don’t have a registrar already they will send a letter out with the name of the county saying I heard you haven’t registered, you need to register here’s the situation, you need to do this by a certain date, that date goes by and they have not been registered a second letter goes out with a little stronger verbiage and finally a third one that says you’ve got a very short period of time before we start penalizing you and coming after you legally. It’s a letter, a warning notice and a final notice that goes out with a very strong wording on it and that will roll out over the next two, three months at that point we’ll have a pretty good idea whose in your town, what’s in your town, who we sent letters to and you’ll get that information. They also will include information, we are changing our structure in the past we’ve always gone monthly, quarterly or annually we are going to change our structure that everybody has to report monthly and that just makes it easier for Deckard to be able to accommodate what they need to do everybody report on a monthly basis so you don’t have rentals that month you just send a zero in but they will have to report otherwise we’ll consider if we haven’t gotten anything from then we send them a letter saying you haven’t reported anything this month. There’s going to be also a mechanism through Deckard called, full pay but it’s online payment program so they will be able to pay online and what Deckard has found is that probably 75% of the people prefer to do it this way rather than send us a check. It’s similar to what our credit card option is for to pay taxes at the county and other departments like public health, mental health, real property and so on but it’s with a different company and they will manage that for us and they will make that option available to them to pay that way. So, there’s still a lot to learn on it like I said it’s kind of a slow roll which is good but we’re going to be heavily involved in it over the next six months.

THURSTON: I’m just curious Mike, with this new program, I know St. Armand has a short term rental local law I’m sure some of you do as well, can you report to us formally you know, all the short term rentals in our town or something like that?

DISKIN: Once we have a better handle on the information that Deckard gives us probably when we start sending these letters out we’ll know who is out there and we’ll be able to send them to you. I know we’re going to have a question about some of the towns particularly in Essex has a moratorium we’re going to be able to find out exactly where you are and if somebody is trying to register with us we’re going to have to reply that and say, no you can’t register anymore with us.

HUGHES: It’s a six month moratorium so we maybe extending that.

DISKIN: When does it expire?

HUGHES: I don’t know. I’m sorry.

DISKIN: If anybody decided to do that we’ll need to know that because as we get registrations in or if the town decides to cap a certain amount of STR’s you want in your town, you say this is the x number of STR’s we can have in our town and no one can open a new one, we’re going to need to know that because if we get a registration through Deckard turn that down and refuse it for them saying there is a moratorium there or there is a cap on that and we can’t accept this registration.

MASCARENAS: Mr. Diskin, does it maybe make more sense to check with Deckard and see if we can give the town’s viewing rights?

DISKIN: I will check with them and see what we have.

MASCARENAS: That way it’s just an efficiency thing where you’re not getting eighteen calls and having to provide reports, but they can look themselves and see and then they’ll be able to tell you if something doesn’t line up, if they know of somebody that’s getting one.

DISKIN: Yeah, we are in the early, early staging on planning on doing this but that’s one of things that we want to ask them is there certain rights that can have or just to go in and do it and say, you’ll be to see all these little dots in your dots and they’ll be different colored dots they will be one color if they are registered, they will be another color if they don’t have registrations they way they are going to determine if they have a registration because they are going to check with us and they are going to assign a number to that registration and they’ll be able to me yes they are registered or no, they are not and you’ll be able to see all these different dots in your town.

STANLEY: I’m not on this committee but I was under the assumption that going with Deckard we were as towns were going to be able to have a viewing link to make sure and see what is in our town and make sure everything that we know is in our towns is picked up by Deckard?

MASCARENAS: Yes, that would absolutely be the goal. I think we just need to ask that question and see if there’s additional costs to make that happen and figure it out from there but that certainly would have been my goal as to not add a bunch more work to the Treasurer’s department that is already struggling in terms of capacity.

STANLEY: Well, I guess my understanding was that it wasn’t a goal, it was that we were going to get access to it.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, I thought that was the case too when we did that presentation but it was so long ago I don’t want to speak wrong but I feel like that is correct.

HUGHES: The moratorium in Essex expires in March, next month.

DISKIN: Just let us know if you extend it so we get through this. The other thing that Deckard offers and we didn’t initially take this as part of our contract but they have an interesting thing that they have a complaint department for a certain amount of money they will monitor that complaint department so if someone in your town knows of somebody that has a short term rental and knows they are not registered there is a way to register a complaint rather than, obviously they can go to their town supervisors but this is directly online to let us know hey, my neighbor has an STR I noticed he isn’t registered yet. There is an additional cost so it is something that we are going to look at I think it is something like $2,000 a year it may or may not be worth it but it’s an option that they do have and that’s pretty much all the information I have on that now. The only other thing is my monthly report so just the month of January other than that I didn’t have anything else to report to you.

A couple of things I do want to discuss with you though and I know that many of you heard of or maybe all of you have heard of some of these problems that are happening to our neighbors in the south in Warrant County with some loss of funds. We have not had a formal ACH policy, we have something in writing that’s very generic, it’s in our investment policy that we pass every year at the beginning of the year and it just says that the county treasurer or their deputies is authorized to transfer funds designating depositories that we designate them to or any other state agency it’s pretty much all it says. I have been looking at getting models, sample standard ACH policies from other places even as far away as the State of Washington to look at other states that are doing that. A friend of mind in Thurston county Washington has a really unique on and also one from the State of Michigan for my connections through nacctfo and then there’s also some other ones out there that are standard so we are going to be looking at those. We are going to be sitting down with the Auditors department because I think it’s important that they be involved in it, be aware of it because they have to approve all of these things and we’ll come up with a policy. I don’t know if we will have it ready for you next month but we’ll work on it and try to get it to you next month if possible. Something that can be presented to the board to review and then we’ll get it into writing and then it’s there for people to look at.

MANNING: You are going to give us a copy too?

DISKIN: Yes, absolutely.

THURSTON: Thank you. So, ironically just yesterday I had a phone meeting with our insurance company who is requiring the town to come up with a policy exactly for that and pass a resolution and provide it to our insurance company to insure that we are taking steps to know exactly who you are wiring money to and if that’s happening in St. Armand, we have NYMIR I’m sure it’s all coming for all of you so I think having a policy that the county and we can piggyback on Dan can help us out with that.

DISKIN: As we develop that we’ll keep in mind that this is something that will not only be available for the county but we can use it in all the towns as well we’ll try and make it specific enough to model your towns as well.

HUGHES: NYMIR did provide a template as part of that attachment.

THURSTON: They didn’t give me an attachment.

HUGHES: Double check I’m pretty sure there is an attachment I thought but I also just want to say that the timing is great because certainly our friends in the south, Warren County and what took place I’m glad we are looking at this and I’m glad that we are going to have something that is going to protect to have something in writing as a just in case.

DISKIN: I will be honest with you we very seldom do a true ACH wire, we just don’t do them. We do wire transfers where we’ll send money from an account in our county to your town whether it’s state land or whether it’s occupancy tax money, mortgage tax money whatever. We do the same thing with schools when we pay the schools and the villages for unpaid taxes but those are really wire transfers they are not ACH they don’t go out into automated clearing house to do that. Very seldom do we use ACH wires, we do them when we paid off some of our money that we’ve owed on borrowings and we’re pretty well done with that now. We might have one more left and that’s it and we are required to use those because you have to pay the depository trust company through ACH. We seldom use one or two a year that are actual true ACH.

MCNALLY: After the audit Jim Monty and myself and others there was a group of us, I’m very confident with the checks and balances that we have in Mike’s office, Laura’s office and Linda I think they do a great job. I can’t foresee ever a transaction without proper procedure being done they do a great job.

DISKIN: We are very thorough and if someone initiates even a wire transfer, someone else in the office has to verify that it has to be somebody segregated we even do that for payroll when we send money out to NBP bank to do our federal somebody has to verify that money before it’s released and it has to be a separate person they will not allow the same person who initiated the wire to verify it as well they will give us a call back and it’s a separate person.

MASCARENAS: Ms. McGill is likely interested in this in her accounting background and somebody else maybe but if you ever want to sit down and see the permissions and levels and Munis and different approvals you would be like, holy cow how many different people from where it starts to where it ends. We start with an account clerk, it goes through the department head depending on what it is and where it goes then I see an awful lot of them and I give final approval on capital and those types of things it goes back to Linda the routing of our process in how many different eyes are on any different expenditure you’d be like oh, my god. You are going to feel really good that we are protecting money. The ACH is specializing I don’t want the public to get confused about the differences in funds and like Michael said, we rarely do that kind of thing so having a strong policy and letting everybody know what it means is important but the likelihood of just the way we are how diligent, how our department heads are in the Treasurer’s department and the auditor’s department you’ll feel really good about knowing that our money is relatively safe.

DISKIN: This is similar but not the same, we get one or two emails a month from allegedly employees in the county that want to change their direct deposit and they’ll say, this is so and so and I want to change my direct deposit and I want it to start effective immediately please start sending it to this bank. We had two of them within the last three weeks, two of them in the last payroll. First thing we do is pick up the phone, call this person and say hey, did you ask us to change this? One was in Board of Elections the other one was in DSS and that’s the first thing we do. We have a policy where if they want a change they have to personally come into our office, fill out a specific form, which gives us the information they have to provide us with a photocopy of a voided check showing us what their new account is and then it has to be signed off from two different people before we change anybody routing number where their checks go without that information we don’t allow them to do that even if you want to change banks or change the amount of money, because some split their payrolls between a couple different banks even to do that, that has to be in writing we don’t allow anybody to call us on the phone and do it or email us.

TYLER: We’ve had that happen numerous times in the Town of Westport also.

DISKIN: The only other thing, Dan, do you want to talk about the auction stuff?

MANNING: Yes, Mike and I have discussed some of these things. First I think you know we removed three properties the approval process last regular board meeting that were bid on at the auction those properties were lot #9, #77 and #116 I think we should have a resolution at this time where we approve the sale of lot #9 in the Town of Chesterfield to Gregory Dennon for the price submitted on the report and with respect to lot #116 in the Town of North Elba also approve that which is the sale to Douglas Dreissigacker and then with respect to lot #77 in the Town of Moriah which was bid on Mr. Galvin, we deny that sale based upon the fact that there are numerous code violations with respect to properties he owns some very severe and some long standing and that the board’s policies and the board’s general stance on what’s to be done with properties in the county that are blighted or need rehabilitation or need to be sold at auction is that we want to foster an atmosphere where those blighted properties are taken care of and the tax sale is one mechanism to do that with the land bank so the justification for the removal and the denial of the sale to Galvin would be just that. We will put that on all one resolution. So approve number 9 in Chesterfield, approve number 116 in North Elba and deny number 77 in the Town of Moriah for the stated reasons. Mike, I don’t know if you wanted to add anything?

DISKIN: No not on that.

HUGHES: As a point of ethicality I recommend that we split these up into three separate resolutions for committee just because I don’t know if all of these are universally to me I think I would rather do each one individually. That’s just my opinion.

MANNING: Okay.

HUGHES: That up to the committee obviously.

MANNING: Ken, it’s going to just say this is why, this is why, this is why with three individual bullets for each and that’s what will be on the individual resolution.

BARBER: So, I would just like to go on record we had a conversation about the property in Chesterfield being number 9, I just want to go to the board and tell them we talked about coming up with county law about blighted properties this is talked about at my town meeting every week and I keep expressing the point that we talked about at the county coming up with a law to add an extra fee onto these blighted properties that just continue to stay there and granted, my code officer is proceeding through the steps there’s just so many steps by the time I had one piece of property with the owner filed bankruptcy so then it had to start all over, then when he goes to bankruptcy they turn around and pay the taxes and that’s the first thing they do is pay them and then as I said, we have to start the procedure over. You’re looking at 90 days so I just want to push the county to move forward with the blighted property law.

MANNING: It wouldn’t be county law it would be town law.

BARBER: And I understand that so the county proceeds and then it’s passed down well, like I said we’ve talked about it enough and again, this needs to happen because just by me talking to my community about blight properties and adding this extra part I’ve had a couple people who have actually moved forward because they are scared about this law coming into effect and adding that extra cost to their taxes.

MASCARENAS: If I could respond quickly and correct as possible, so I think what Mr. Manning is saying yes, this is a law we can assist towns with and not be a county law because the county would not have the ability to enforce that law so it really is, he can help you develop language if you’re interested in any of your towns he often does that kind of thing but then it’s your code enforcement that makes sure that these laws are getting abide by we don’t provide code enforcement currently in each individual town so I think there’s more than one way to skin a cat you can get your outcome. The struggle, I’ve saw it too in every town I’ve been around it for years code enforcement officers are hard to come by there’s many good ones, there’s just not enough of them quite frankly to do all the not only code but the property maintenance items and then when we do sometimes we end up with Judges that are synthetic to the blighted people and it stops there so there’s a lot of issues and barriers for communities to try and deal with some of this problem but if you want a law Mr. Manning can do that and each town can kind of decide for themselves whether what parts, what they want to implement, what they don’t but a county law correct me if I’m wrong, would not be appropriate because of the enforcement of that law we don’t have the ability to do. Correct?

MANNING: That’s part of it, yeah. It will be more of a town local law for everybody and then you would be responsible for implementing it and following through on it and then if you don’t get paid it would go onto the warrant and then it would probably force some people into foreclosure who knows.

HUGHES: The housing task force is actively beginning to look at the blighted property conversation and the code conversation as well I just want to put that out there.

MASCARENAS: That’s probably an appropriate avenue to bring that issue through. Thank you.

MANNING: I can do a draft law in probably a couple of weeks.

HUGHES: Some of us already have them. I know Essex has an unsafe structure law.

MANNING: No, that’s a different thing. Unsafe buildings local law is a valuable tool if you use it.

TYLER: I will entertain a motion that we move all three or do one at a time, what do we want to do?

MANNING: I would say all three if we can. That’s the way we do it when we look at the auction in total we do it all in one resolution.

TYLER: Advisement of counsel I’ll entertain a motion to accept all three.

MANNING: A motion as to what I said stated the resolution, accept two and reject one.

TYLER: I stand to be corrected for once in my life.

RESOLUTION APPROVING THE ESSEX COUNTY TAX SALE WITH RESPECT TO APPROVING LOT #9 IN THE TOWN OF CHESTERFIELD, LOT #116 IN THE TOWN OF NORTH ELBA AND REJECTING THE SALE OF LOT #77 IN THE TOWN OF MORIAH. Wilson, Thurston

TYLER: Anymore discussion on this great subject? All in favor, opposed – thank you.

MANNING: I guess one other thing regarding the auction terms and conditions. Currently auction terms and conditions of tax foreclosure paragraph four (4) says no former owner of a property, spouse, domestic partner or his or her agent or relative shall permit a bid on property purchases on public auction unless they bid the amount over the taxes and there is some other qualifications. I’ll let Mike speak to why we would like this change, but we would like changes to state, no former owners of the property or spouse or anybody –

DISKIN: First, let me start by saying that when we do a foreclosure we notify people obviously and give them six months and just as a side, we are starting the next one notices are going out tomorrow in the mail and notices will be in the paper middle of next week with the publications so we are starting the process for the next round six months this will run from the middle to the end of August then we’ll do the whatever legal stuff we need to do and we’ll have an auction in the fall late fall probably October maybe November but we will do these under 2023’s as far as catching up but let me go back to say we notify these people, they have six months to respond to this after that, we go through the legal process, we get a court order, we get the title on the property up until two weeks before the auction these people still have the opportunity to come in and do it, to pay for it. They can come in and buy it back from us, there’s an additional fee, plus the filing fees from the county back to them but up until two weeks before that auction they have that opportunity. What we found this time, this was never really an issue with the owner coming in and bidding on it again because in prior auctions before Hennepin came in they could come in and bid it for whatever they bought it for they got now with Hennepin, anything over the amount of taxes owed it goes back to the owner so there’s a loop hole here that the owner can come in start bidding on the property drive the price up, even if they don’t end up with it they end up with the excess. So, they could be one of the people that could either forces a higher bid than what normally have been bid on the property of they could just end up buying the property and getting that excess back and pocketing it and really, no harm, no foul but it kind of forces people that wanted to bid on it to bid more than they wanted to. I found that in a couple of cases where places went for way higher than I thought they would be only because the owner was bidding against somebody that wanted the property and created that situation where that person had to bid a lot higher than they would otherwise if the owner wasn’t in the process there so I think the best thing to do is just exclude the owners if they don’t get in under that 14 day wire that should be the end of it for them. It’s not to say they can’t send in their friend to go in and buy it for them they can try it’s just not going to go back in their name and there is a clause under our terms and conditions that it can’t be deeded back to the former owner for five years. There is always a way to get around this but directly for the owner to buy it we would like to exclude that person to come into the auction bidding.

MANNING: And just briefly, to state is which because of Hennepin is state law and you have to give back surplus that’s why this really needs to change and as Mike says, over a year period from the time the person will know from the time of filing the petition until it goes all the way through the system and two weeks before and it’s rare counties allow a second bite at the apple two weeks before it is paid. Owners have more than a year to get their ducks in a line to pay and if they are going to show up at the auction and just pay their share of the taxes, they should have thought about that before so we are not picking on the prior owners but we can’t let that loop hole exist because of the Hennepin surplus issue.

MCNALLY: An example of this, we have a property in Minerva that they came up here and tried to pay the taxes the day before. She has two properties, she bid one property up to $150,000 and she bid the other property up to $125,000, she was going to bid three, four hundred thousand dollars on this. There’s no loss for her except so she’s going to get that money back, she’s going to get over the excess taxes but she was pretty safe. The people that are making money on this is the auctioneer that got the 11% commission so basically, it cost her $29,000 to get her property back and that’s a rarity when these properties are going over $150,000, $200,000 so on a lot of these properties that sell for six, seven thousand dollars, you’re paying six or seven thousand to get your property back but this is an insult if this is allowed to happen at our auctions because you’re going to get the money back so, you’re not going to lose your property if you’ve got the money to pay the auction charge. The deterrent is used at the 11% at the auction site so the auctioneer is making out very well with this.

TYLER: Can we have a motion on that please, to move this? Ms. Thurston, second Mr. Menser. Anymore discussion?

GARRISON: Mr. Menser is not on the committee.

TYLER: Sorry Mr. Menser. Mr. Wilson are you a second on this?

WILSON: I will second.

RESOLUTION REMOVING FROM THE CURRENT ESSEX COUNTY REAL PROPERTY TAX FORECLSOURE ACTUION TERMS AND CONDITIONS PARAGRAPH 4 AND INSERTING IN ITS PLACE LANGUAGE DENYING FORMER OWNERS THE ABILITY TO PURCHASE AT AUCTION. Thurston, Wilson

TYLER: Discussion? All in favor, opposed – carried. Anything else Mr. Diskin?

DISKIN: No, unless you have something for me?

TYLER: Thank you Mike. One Mike to another Mike.

MASCARENAS: Alright, I’m going to be really quick. I do have two resolutions this morning. A resolution authorizing the county Chairman or County Manager to execute a contract with Blackcreek in the amount of$10,075.73, for an upgrade of Maxxess Card Access software at the public safety building with funds to come from the contingent account and further authorizing a budget amendment for the same. Just quickly, this is the security system that operates up at the public safety building. On December 31 and January 1^st when the clock struck midnight our system went dead. It came to end of life support; we were able to trick the system into changing the date and time and continue operation so we’re in good shape there. This was managed by the Sheriff’s department in the past, our IT department that’s why I’m asking this come through IT not the Sheriff’s department so in the future we know the software, we know when the updates are needed those types of things it’s not going to be put in their lap because circumstances have also changed up there where we’ve moved the probation department up there in recent years and every department now there is hours, there’s not a mix of different state and county agencies so we missed it. It happened and we need to do this upgrade and, in the future, county IT will follow this security system.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE COUNTY CHAIRMAN OR COUNTY MANAGER TO EXECUTE A CONTRACT WITH BLACK CREEK IN THE AMOUNT OF $10,075.73, FOR AN UPGRADE OF MAXXESS CARD ACCESS SOFTWARE AT THE PUBLIC SAFETY BUILDING WITH FUNDS TO COME FROM THE CONTINGENT ACCOUNT AND FURTHER AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT FOR THE SAME. Hughes, Wilson

TYLER: Any discussion? All in favor, opposed – carried.

MASCARENAS: Okay the second one, a resolution authorizing the purchasing agent to – the wording isn’t great on here I’d like to get better wording to Dan Manning to award federal funding under the CY22 Cyber security grant program in the amount of $50,000, US Department of Homeland Security for the period 8/1/25 through 8/31/26, this is really, we’re not sure what we’re spending the money on this is really about a budget amendment increasing revenues and appropriations for this grant that was received. We know what we wrote the grant for was to create countywide incident response to any breach that could potentially happen and how we would handle that that’s going to take an RFP that needs to go out and get a proper vendor. I want to clean up that language because it’s very confusing in terms of what this resolution is going into ways and means but if you don’t mind passing it now, I will get you a more appropriate one at ways and means.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE PURCHASING AGENT TO AWARD FEDERAL FUNDING UNDER THE CY22 CYBER SECURITY GRANT PROGRAM IN THE AMOUNT OF $50,000.00, BY THE US DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY (DHS) STATE HOMELAND SECURITY GRANT (SHSP) ADMINISTERED BY THE NEW YORK STATE DHSES FOR THE PERIOD 8/1/25 THROUGH 8/31/26. Wilson, Hughes

TYLER: Any discussion? All in favor, opposed – carried. Anything else Mr. Mascarenas?

MASCARENAS: No sir.

TYLER: Anything else?

WILSON: Joe Keegan texted his apologies, there was a traffic accident in Saranac Lake, and the road was closed so he ended up having to turn back so he wanted to and planned to be here.

TYLER: Thank you. Anything else from this committee? We are adjourned. Have a great day.

As there was no further discussion to come before this finance committee it was adjourned at 11:45 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Judith Garrison, Clerk

Board of Supervisors