Planning Agency - Regular Meeting

I call the ag planning meeting to order.

First to order business is, except minutes from July 21st, 2026, to have a motion. I'll hold it. Motion by Scott. Do I have a second? So any further discussion? House paper? Aye. Great. Occupancy tax admin fees.

So there's a couple of things that I want to go over today that are kind of budget season, but also stuff that I need to know to help me to figure out how to budget. And one of them is the occupancy tax the charge that is currently set up. When the original occupancy tax law went into effect in 2009, there was language in the law that allowed the treasurer's office to withhold up to 15% of the bed tax that was required at the time to help fund the fact that they were doing the work to collect the tax. That then got more complicated when we started getting the voluntary occupancy tax. And then we had two occupancy tax accounts. One of them is revenue for where people are directly paying us. And then one of them was the voluntary tax collection from Airbnb. That then changed again last year because with the new state law, Al at the time wanted everything budgeted under one account. just because we were now getting checks from multiple places. But then what's ended up happening is there's actually revenue being distributed into both accounts. And so I think it still has to be determined by the treasurer's office as to whether we want to keep one or both. But in any event, if we were to do what the current policy says, which is we started out 15% of just bed tax, then it was 15%. of just bed tax and not voluntary tax. But then when everything was consolidated last year, it now reads 15% of everything, which means that I would lose potentially over $30,000 in revenue to the tourism programs. So I had several discussions with Al and with Becky, and unless she's changed her mind, I think the feeling is it's kind of one hand washing the other. And there really isn't any reason to apply that fee, that the money really should be going to the tourism programs. So Dan isn't here. I think it's up to however we want to do this. But the way the current local law reads is essentially it says the amount retained by Washington County with respect to administering the tax is shall not exceed 15% of the revenues collected. So I don't know if we actually have to change the local law. I think all we really need is a policy decision that says, we're not going to charge anything.

If Dan and- Yeah, we'll let Dan interpret that.

Right. There it is.

Yeah, you go.

Well- He went that way. Yeah. If my memory serves me correct, we put them in two different accounts for my data collection. Are we actually, I mean, Airbnb is one that we were getting before. And then we were seeking out short-term rentals to make sure that they were doing the same as the Airbnb. Has that shown to be productive?

I don't think we really know yet. The reason is that, again, this all started with we were directly collecting from bed and breakfast owners. We then had a voluntary collection agreement with Airbnb. They've been remitting, but there are dozens of other online platforms that have not up until the state law changed the year before last, which is why we purchased the Deckard software because we're still trying to get a handle on who is out there. And I'll talk about that in a minute. So that's why I think Al, since there was no clear way to distinguish, he wanted to put it all in one account. But then as revenue has actually been coming in, I think the treasurer's office said, well, we still have this other account. It's an easy way for us to differentiate who's directly paying us versus like the individual short-term rental owners versus a platform. Because what's happening is we still don't have the data, right? All of the short-term rental platforms have refused to comply with the state law and are not giving us the data. And that is the reason that we bought the Deckard software, because over time, we want to be able to get a handle on that and actually start winnowing out who is complying and who is not. I can tell you Jefferson County made a direct request to the Attorney General's office to investigate the fact that these short-term rental platforms are not complying. Where that will go, I don't know. Meanwhile, and again, I've got more to tell you on that, but it's my guess it's going to be another year before we really have a handle on are we getting everybody, who are we missing, and what are we going to do about it.

Thank you, Judy and David.

So the immediate question to Dan here is we are currently, the county is charging 15% of occupancy tax revenues to reimburse the treasurer's office for collecting the tax. In discussions with Al and Rebecca, and if the committee agrees, if we remove that tax, the question is, do we have to change the local law? It says not to exceed. Or is it just a policy decision by the committee?

It's a local law. Are you looking to remove the entire thing or just? We're imposing a zero amount. I mean, so again. Well, it says it shall not exceed. So as long as you don't go over 15.

Right.

Good.

Change that.

Okay. So we'll leave the motion to notice charge 0% instead of 50%.

I'll bring a motion forward that we charge 0%. Second by Phil.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

The next thing also affects the reserve account. That's another thing that has changed off and on, again, since that original occupancy tax law was implemented in 2009. were several changes over the years as to how it was calculated the most recent one was in 2023 that essentially says the reserve will and by the way i may all be aware so any revenues over and above expenses which we're about to talk about the definition instead of going back to the general fund at the end of the year goes into a tourism reserve account which was done as a way to make sure that tourism is sustainable without relying on general fund revenue over the years. So in 2023, that calculation was changed that says the total gross occupancy tax revenues will be both voluntary and regular, less than the amount that was required for the budget. So the problem with the calculation is what it says is budgeted amount versus budgeted amount will be put into the occupancy reserve. The reality is that's actually ended up building a pretty significant balance in the occupancy tax reserve account, which I don't think that we need to add to in this year. What I would like to do is change the language on that calculation to say we're going to take the actual revenues versus the actual expenses and any extra amount will go into the reserve account. Correspondingly, I think we have about $50,000 or so in revenue over what was budgeted because we've had a hard time guessing what we were going to be getting from these short-term rental occupancy taxes. So I'm going to suggest at budget time that as a one-time item, that instead of for this year only taking those fees and putting them into the reserve account, that they go back to general fund. And then next year, we start with actual budget, actual revenue, any excess goes into the reserve.

Mr. Budget Officer, do you have any comments on that?

It's a one-time deal. We'll just have to remember that. But no, I think she's on course. I think that's probably where we should go this year.

Well, how much revenue is that a year?

HAB-Masyn Moyer- And it's again until we get it's until we get decorate we don't know, but right now I am. HAB-Masyn Moyer- I'm thinking that it's going to be about. HAB-Masyn Moyer- $120,000 in occupancy tax revenue. plus the I Love New York amount, which I believe this year based on the state budget, we don't really know exact numbers until December, but I think that's gonna be about 50, which would give us a tourism budget next year of 275,000, as well as if we need to spend any more than that, it would come out of the reserve funds. But that 275 would be revenues and we wouldn't spend any more than that unless we took additional funds from reserve. That makes sense.

Our reserve fund is currently at a comfortable number. That's what you're thinking of. And do we have a cap on the reserve fund, or should we?

I don't believe so. No, I think the whole idea is the whole thing is supposed to be self-sufficient. And if there was more money, you'd put it back in. And that's where I know you want to go is support to business development. So I know, I think it's all to make it self-sufficient. So it's not something that's being added or cut from the budget every year. It takes care of itself and it just grows on its own. I think that's the whole idea. Is that correct?

It is. And so, so the reserve fund was started, One of the concerns over the years has been every year when the governor does the state budget, she pulls out tourism. And then the tourism lobbyists get it put back in and then it ends up being back in and reduce the amount. But every year it gets a little bit smaller. So the concern has been if that funding goes away, that would impact our budget.

And mid-year because their year is different than ours. So by having the reserve, you don't actually mess up what you're in the middle of that one.

Yeah, so for right now, when I do my budget, I'm putting in projected revenue of about $50,000 from I Love New York. That is based on the state budget that was adopted in this past summer, but they don't give you the actual totals that you'll have for the 2027 calendar year until December. So I'm always guessing as to what I think they're going to, and the only way I can do that is to look at the state budget and then hope nobody mangles it somehow.

And I imagine that you've been conservative and are conservative in your numbers.

And that's actually why the reserve account grew so much because I promised this committee that I would not draw on general funds. And so because There just isn't, we don't have enough data to make accurate assumptions, so I guess as closely as I can, but I tend to under budget revenue because we just don't know.

It's amazing how much this department is from, and it's due to your leadership, Laura, in my opinion. Thank you for that. I know that you're planning on retiring, and I'm wondering who is going to be able to do what you do. And maybe we should think ahead and think about the premise or something that could follow you or shadow you and make sure we can maintain this budget going forward. I believe we have a meeting tomorrow to discuss that.

We actually started talking like in May and they were trying to set up a meeting and just couldn't connect. Okay, wonderful news. Thank you.

We need a motion. I'll move that we suspend funds going to the reserve account for the fiscal year 2027. Is there a way to say at the end?

Is it based on the policy or is it trying the resolutions?

So actually, Becky, I don't know where the resolution, is it a resolution that actually, I think it was a resolution that created the reserve account, but I don't know what the language is. I can tell you that there was a resolution in 2023 that indicated how it was going to be calculated, but I don't know where the resolution, what is that first created it.

There might be a better way to do that. So there's a first year, so why don't we just make a motion that for next year, the money doesn't go into the reserve fund?

If it's for one year, why not take that money to do what Sue just said? Let's not even touch it. In the budget, we could take that $50,000 to offset whoever the shadow is, right? So you don't have to come up with extra money. That might be the best way to do it. That way it self-funds that too. Maybe we need to look at this a little differently. It didn't. Yeah. Just hearing it now gave me a little different perspective that that might be the smartest way. Other words, it looks like it's general fund money. No, let it pay for itself. Let it keep doing what it's doing.

It's also quite likely her 220 number is going to come in, I think, a lot higher, especially when you get the software and you start getting digital.

I've got more on that, so yes.

I don't expect some. Either way. I'm with either way. That's coming next. In every town.

I think that's the best, and we'll just do it in the budget. Do it that way as to what we come out of with tomorrow's meeting. I wasn't putting the things together. You kind of got to see where everybody's headed before you put that stone. We can always do it later.

Okay. We knew we screwed up something.

Absolutely. All right. So continuing along a similar theme, as you know, we've been working on getting all of the short-term rental posts organized, registered on the Deckard software. So the process to do that has been a little bit clumsy because of things that we've changed, things that happened. So it's taking longer than we originally thought. But what the Deckard software is telling us right now is that there are 310, and this changes on a daily basis, 310 live listings, that's short-term rentals that are currently actively advertising that they have rooms available on an online platform somewhere. In addition, there's probably another 100 or so of them that have rooms been active recently but are not necessarily active now. Of those 310 that are currently live, we have 180 of them registered. And they have paid the $250 registration fee. We originally set this up as a monthly payment system. So again, going back to the fact that the online platforms by law are required to give us the data, but they're not. Also by law, the ultimate responsibility actually belongs to the short-term rental host. So we can enforce that. We don't really have the capacity to go after the platforms, but we can go after the hosts. So the process has been all of the hosts that were identified received a series of three letters that said, we see you. You need to register with us. We understand that the online platforms are going to be collecting and remitting the occupancy tax. But we need you to enter in the data, which is essentially how many days did you rent? What was the rental rate? And just a couple of basics. You know, numbers so that we could ultimately calculate, OK, if this is the revenue that's being generated, this is the tax that we should have collected. And then ultimately, we should be able to go back to the platforms and see if those numbers match. But we don't, you know, it's actually I'm estimating it's not horribly off, but we just don't have enough under our belt yet to really determine. So the question for this committee is, if we think that we have about 130 short-term rental platform or hosts that have not registered, the letter basically said, if you do not register, you will pay a fee of 5% of taxes owed and then 1% per month thereafter. Now, the fact of the matter is that if they're, say, for example, selling through Airbnb. Airbnb is collecting those taxes and they probably are remitting them to us, but without data, we don't have a real way to know. So sending them letters, going to get there and sending them a letter saying you are in default, we're charging you 5%. The fact of the matter is that in many cases, probably those taxes were paid, but we don't have any way of knowing it because the host didn't register and isn't entering the data. So I'm guessing that's gonna get their attention. And in some cases it will, we have also found, so for example, up in Dresden, we found a, it's a family trust that owns like six properties right on the lake. They have their own private website. They are mandated by that state law to be collecting and reporting. But because it's like not one of the major platforms, They didn't end up on the Deckard software. So we contacted Deckard and said, can you be looking at these as well? So again, this is going to take us a while to find all of these. There are also some errors, like you might have a two family home and somebody is renting out one half and we find the address. And so then we'll get a nasty call back saying it's him, not us. So we're adjusting that as we get those phone calls. But this is why this has been such a, laborious process. But the question for the committee is, when and how far do we go to actually, because this is going to take effort, to follow up on the 180 or so who have not registered? I mean, 130, yeah.

180 registered, 130. Plus those that aren't even on the radar. I mean, there's a lot out there. Yeah. So again, if we have the legal ability to assess the state says we can do it and our local law says we and if they have a contract with a provider, this supersedes their contract with this is where this gets messy because I've talked to other counties who they're

The platforms are telling their hosts that they're collecting the tax where, so for example, Airbnb is not unless there is a voluntary collection agreement. So there is misinformation all over the place. And since the platforms are not providing the data as required, there's all kinds of lawsuits out there. The only way that we have to verify is to wait for the host to enter the data and then compare that against the checks that we're getting and say, does this seem about right? Until the platforms are actually providing data, we're never going to get it 100% right, but I'd like to know that the platforms are at least remitting about what we think that they should be remitting.

Just for everyone's edification, it says in addition to the penalties, this is section 23, I'll sort of prescribe herein, any person found to have committed any of the following acts shall be guilty of a misdemeanor or punishment of which shall be a fine of not more than $1,000 or imprisonment of not more than one year or both. Or number four, failing to file and register any certificate in such data in connection therewith as the treasurer may order by regulation.

Is there any fuel to the ILS?

You could put an angle where you suddenly stay in their own Airbnb.

So, again, I don't think that we in any way want to do this. All we're trying to do is get their attention and say, you're required to comply with this.

Some big taxes and interest may be enforced in the same manner as those by this local law. So, yes.

I had a letter written explaining why we're doing it, explaining that we're trying to help taxpayers of Washington County, and that by giving the data to... Washington County helps us to make sure that everybody's being treated fairly in the same way, rather than saying, $1,000 fine and this and this and this.

Well, I think your stick at the end is we really appreciate you doing this, but you should also be aware of that. Yeah.

And there are already three letters that have gone out that say, if you do not comply, you're going to get assessed 5% plus 1% they're active. So-

Earlier letters had Suze Carrick in front of them first before us. You mean explaining the background?

The letter basically explained that it was that the registration and occupancy is a state mandated thing and we are complying with state regulations and therefore this is what you need to do on your part.

If we said in the letter it can't be shown to us that you were

Platform is permitting to us the money unless you do this and I would suggest that they were saying you may well have paid the taxes But I'm not giving us the data. We don't have proof of that and therefore legally we have to tell you you owe us the money Your platform may be pocketing more money Right, there's also another kind of interesting Complication to that and that is that the platforms when the hosts register and They all have different ways of doing it. So, for example, with Airbnb, you can turn off tax collection. You can tell Airbnb you don't want them to collect taxes. So, again, without that data, we have no way of knowing what we're really being reimbursed for.

So if people don't somehow reinforce this, it's going to spread to where other people aren't going to reinforce it.

We've already gotten comments from people that say Joe down the road is laughing about the fact that he hasn't paid us and nobody's done anything about it. So yeah, that's likely to happen.

I have reports also that people have closed down their Airbnbs because they don't want to deal with all the unnecessary data.

Yes, we have heard that. There are some who, so we're charging a $250 registration fee that's good for two years. For example, Saratoga is charging $850 a year. There's a couple counties out in the western part of the state that are charging like $100 a year. So the $250 fee for two years is not egregious to my mind. But if you're renting a room out one day a year for $250, then it's no longer worth it. So there have been a few that have just decided that it just wasn't worth it to them, and we expected that. But on the other hand, there are some who are charging thousands of dollars a night and are not registered with us.

I think it's an abdominal effect, Laura, because just doing it ourselves and going through the quarterly reports and the monthly reports is in addition to what we were doing before. And it can be cumbersome. Al was wonderful, and we need to go through it because that's an important aspect of it. But in the meantime, you have to remember that these Airbnbs that people go to your local restaurants, they go to your local retail shops, they spend money in the economy that helps our sales tax. So we don't want to cut off or collect them. So I think the approach is we have to get a buy-in, sharing, and they're helping us get the data we need to know that the companies in the state are all acting uniformly for the betterment of Washington County. So, you know, the minute you throw in, we're going to take you to the thing, we're going to put you here and there and be in shackles. It's like, okay, this is too much. I'm not going to do it. And I don't think we want that.

I think some were also reactive. They didn't realize how it would be when people were in their house, did the image, and they never got caught. And you have to go and clean it and do this and everything else. Some people that I know have decided it's just not worth it. This wasn't part of it. The whole process just wasn't worth it.

And I will also say the difficulties that we've had getting the Deckard software on track, which is partly on them, partly on us, to be fair. There were inadvertently letters and emails that got sent out that shouldn't have because Decker didn't realize when we moved from the monthly system to the quarterly system that there were already letters in the queue and they didn't stop them. So first we told them, okay, we're shutting down the system. You don't have to do monthly anymore. October 1st, it'll reopen and you'll do quarterly. Then we sent them letters saying they were late on, so yes, it created confusion and I don't want to make people angry. None of us want to go down this road we're just trying to look for a reasonable way that says at some point if we don't start chasing these people and everybody else realizes there's no consequence you're right it's going to be a domino effect and people are just going to stop complying so i'm thinking maybe two letters the first letter says based on the fact that you haven't responded to the first letter is what you're going to owe if you haven't responded to us within 30 days or something like that and then 30 days later they get a bill we could do something like that that says this is why we're doing it and you know so that then that means that they would have gotten five letters and that's a lot of outreach what's the board's pleasure and that that would go to the inactive not active ones that you know that are not the ones that are live but not registered i think we're going to have to come up of the other hundred or so that are unverified there's still a lot of work to be done to verify so i wouldn't recommend sending out letters until we're more sure that they actually are you know in the in the chain of needing to be compliant i'm also thinking that um This is probably going to take us a while to do, because now we have to figure out how are we going to do these letters. We've got to pay for postage to get them out, all of the rest of that, which I can do out of the tourism reserve budget. And it's going to take effort. So I think Becky and I need to sit down and talk about how we're going to do this. But I'm guessing it isn't going to happen before maybe the end of the year. But the question for you guys is, Do we want to wait until then? Because this is the other thing. Short-term rental registrations tend to significantly slow, or rentals tend to significantly slow over the winter. So we could wait through the end of the year and then start this process beginning of next year. Because the next, there are some hosts also who are seasonal, right? So they may have registered with us in July of this year, and they've now got a two-year registration, so they're okay for next year. But there are some who maybe they didn't register this year, but they will next year. So, you know, the timing on this is not going to be before the end of the year, but I think we have to figure out if we should wait until beginning of next year or closer to the high season, which is going to be like April or something like that. But first question is, do we want to do it? Do we want to chase them?

I don't see the sense in having a law if we're not going to enforce it. I guess that's my opinion.

So do we want to do it directly from the county? Because several of the supervisors have some juicy areas, mine included. We know more about the local community. The letter came from the town and municipality. advising them about it, it might be an easier step to your ultimate goal, not to have to sound litigious at the end.

I think we could work something like that out. What I wouldn't want to do is put the burden and the postage on the individual towns, so it depends on how many you have to set out. Could you just play it off that?

Could you just, under your letterhead, put the town supervisor's address?

answer your questions or give us the town supervisors the list and see if they actually can do a triage quickly for you we should be able to do that yeah that's the best way maybe before they go off yeah and if you wanted to contact them individually before the letters went out absolutely we could do that and that that's good for everybody i like that help from the triage but i think consistency should be should we be counting this and yes for enforcement

Enforcement at the county, absolutely. And I think I would agree to send them out at a certain point. I don't know what we're going to set up, but some of these places actually rent for skin season, which is coming right up. Well, we didn't ramble. There's places that didn't ramble. Anything that's close to Route 4. So I think that's what we want to get to. But maybe there are more year-round

Bill? Can any of this be added to their taxes? Like if there's other things. Yeah, it does.

If they didn't pay. Yeah, I think it says. Unpaid penalties and interest may be enforced in the same manner as the tax imposed by this law. Well, I mean.

Wouldn't that get their attention if you put that in the letter?

Well, if that doesn't, it will when it's re-levied.

But, I mean, it's not fair to have people paying and other people laughing that they're not paying. Yeah. That's totally wrong. Either we tell the other people not to pay the bill, or I'll tell them they're going to get it in their tax bill. I have Sue. I'm Dan.

Yeah. I was going to bring up that, you know, as far as spring, having a letter born in spring might help to, you know, because they're going to be rented more from spring on, but then you brought up skiing, and I'm not so sure that happens in our area. But you said Granville and Fresno, that happens in that way for skiing?

We definitely get short-term rentals over the winter. They're just fewer than over the peak season.

So I was just not, I don't want it to be an excuse to shut down because the rural communities do get support from people coming in. It was amazing.

Dan? No, I was just making sure you got that.

Okay. Scott? I think it might be helpful to include the pertinent parts of the law with the letter or any letter.

There's both the state law and the local law. The local law was created in compliance and based on the state law. But I think one of the things that I would want to do is say, this is not just the county. This is the county enforcing a state.

Thank you. I think there's a lot of people that were applying that they were more aware of their obligations Because there is a lot of confusion about the whole platform, who's collecting, who isn't. And I think if you explain to the people that the host is ultimately responsible, and perhaps if you send out one of the first letter, please call this office or this number and talk to so-and-so for clarification about your status, you might get a little bit more participation. And then you can get them off the list so that you can narrowing the number to 180 down to 80. And then you can start to go with the increased pressure with the law and everything else. I think some people would participate if they were more aware of it. There are people that don't live around here that follow the county that have these properties. And if they were made maybe for what their responsibility is, But the responsibility side of it is a question.

There was some language in the letters that went out that indicated that, that, you know, it is by state law, it is the host's responsibility to do this. But we can certainly elaborate on that and, you know, make it a little bit clearer. I would agree with you that, and again, part of this is just because of the confusion of getting this implemented and the three steps forward and three steps back. Yeah. I don't want to penalize people for that, but at the same time, there are likely people out there who are deliberately ignoring it, and then some who are just, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do.

And I think if you can differentiate between groups, it's going to save a lot of work going forward, I think. Okay.

I think Laura's got her guidance from the committee and the board. When are we going to stop hearing about, like,

When there's something built on those parts. Or something removed.

That's the plan.

So this is just, I have a quick question to ask the committee. So through the Regional Planning Board, and I think I mentioned this before, we had some Brownfields funding that will do the phase one Brownfield assessment on the link properties in Salem. There is also potentially money if true contamination is found to go ahead and clean some of that up. So the consultants who are working on that have suggested that we wait 90 days to transfer title of the link properties to the land bank because it's a due diligence factor. If the land bank accepts title to the properties, before a phase one is done, we wouldn't be eligible for the phase two money. If the properties sit with the county for another 90 days, unless Dan has a different opinion, it shouldn't make a difference to us because we already own them. Right.

We just authorized. We can do it.

Right.

So as long as there's no concern with that, we've The applications have already been filed with EPA. We're waiting for their permission to do the phase ones. That should be done within the next two to three months. And then what it is, is you've got a 90-day window from the time of the phase one to transfer title. So it can happen within 90 days, any time after those phase ones are done. But the question for this committee goes back to the contents at Shushan Bentwood of length. The land bank is fully prepared and will reach out to the former owner to give them a 30-day notice saying, you know, please come and take the contents or we will auction them, whatever way to do them. The question to the committee that I just wanted to make sure of is, does the county want to send a notice to the length of the current the former owner, while the county still has title to the parcel saying, come get your property, or do you want to wait until the Lennon Bank does it? Just putting it out. Or do you want both?

I go for two.

What has least legal risk? I would say it probably should come from us before we trade it.

What kind of property are you talking about?

Anything contents in the building. What's in this building?

What's that? Furniture making equipment. It is loaded to the board. So I don't know if that's considered contents or not contents. In real estate, you can load and treat your building. Those are the buildings, right? Yeah. So the contents could mean 400 bags of garbage, A skid steer in an old Mercedes that has seen better days. I mean, it's been slept in and it's been broken up. Wheels are broken out.

We just don't know because we haven't been in the building, but at one point there were components of the bedwood furniture. If that hasn't been stolen, those components could have value.

I will send a letter and see what happens.

They're huge. I know.

They don't get it out in 30 days, and we dispose of them somehow.

I know. During the auction, somebody bought one of the main properties, and so he bought the building, not the contents. So what he did was he sent out a letter, put all the contents outside the building, and it stayed there in the blue dumpster. So that's history on the old Greenwood Station in Chisholm. That's what happened with those contents. he did due diligence which is probably what the county should do is due diligence right and then um but i don't know that you want to just take all the stuff contents of the building businesses no the land bank would take care of that because the buildings are likely to be demolished anyway so okay so we just want to follow legal process guidance we sent a letter asking if they would move the building 30 days we're

preparing to transfer the property. If you don't, we'll be disposed of accordingly. Thank you.

Any other business?

I have one quick final thing. So what I've passed out, for those of you who were able to attend the fair, it was hugely successful. These are one of the items that we had produced. They were produced by a small business in Whitehall. People are using them as keychains, little holes on zippers, all kinds of things. So I just put a few of these out for you. But that quilt was a huge attraction. We had News 13 filmed it, and they then broadcasted it repetitively. We had hundreds of people come by saying that they had come to see the quilt. And the thing that I have to tell you that struck me most is so many people from the area who stood there and looked at Washington County, New York's connection to the rest of the United States was pretty amazing. I think it just gave people just a huge sense of pride that we were part of that family. we haven't told ben bob yet but we drafted a letter for him to sign thanking the originators in arkansas for the ideas and all the participants of the quilt but yeah we'll get you to later thank you anyway that's it

Okay, mother, may I? I can. Okay, awesome. All right.

Okay, IT committee meeting. Let's see. We have a motion except minutes of June 21st. John Roselle with a motion. Do we have a second? We have a second from Brian. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. Minutes are approved. With no further ado, Terry has entered the building.

All right.

You sound like an auctioneer today.

Morning, everyone. Since I'm in the building now. Yeah. Well, I'll go ahead and start with the reports. We'll run through the reports, and then I do have a couple of other things. So from the report, it looks like we have the projects report first. Just a couple of things on there. There's a couple of projects that we're completing and moving off of those. The timekeeping software we are live on now, although we still have a little bit of cleanup to do, you know, the bulk of it's done. So I would take it off the projects report as well as our new mobile device management application that we've implemented. Anybody have any questions on this report?

Okay.

The next report that everyone has is the ticketing report. This is the monthly report we produce for the hours. Does anyone have any questions on this one at all?

What's that? He decided to let you slide.

Oh, OK. Cool. Cool.

And the next report is the cybersecurity report, which I will talk a little bit about because it's a little bit different this month. You all will see some different statistics. I know it's a little hard to read, and we're working on some different ways on this, but the top section is the normal report that we do go through for our cybersecurity overview from our cybersecurity tool. The second is an email tool that we were able to acquire by the grant award we had for cybersecurity grant for this year. So this is new, it's a new platform. So you'll see some different email statistics that we thought you might find interesting. Some are the most top attack departments that you'll see down through there and give you an idea over the last month of what kind of attacks have come in. And then the other are the top attack categories That is, it's very difficult, you know, to try to show that, but that kind of breaks it down a little bit, shows you the difference between gray mouse band, phishing and malware. And then we left a little pop up there just to give you an idea of the tool. The tool has a lot of power and it can break down even further inside. So I know it is really hard to read even with my glasses on, I can barely make it out, get any old eyes, but, but you can see how that even breaks down further. So, We just want to call it out. Email is the top vector into our environment. And having this additional layer of security, you know, I think I've talked many times. You probably have heard me say that security is like an onion. It's about layers. It's not about one tool that does everything for us. So having this additional layer on our email, previously we were using Microsoft's tool directly. And we just really reached its limit on what it could do and find it to be very cumbersome. So this new tool will give us a lot more and another layer to be able to stop homes.

Terry, in the top attack departments, is that referring just to emails attacked or going to their website? Emails. Just emails.

Yep. Those are all emails. And they're not surprising, honestly. You know, in my mind, I always think of purchasing, you know, purchasing. So you have admin and purchasing. We have admin and purchasing separated on here, but if you combine them together, they'll be right at the top and they will be in the future. But public safety, board of elections, IT, those are some of the most attacked departments that you see. So, you know, just being really diligent about that. But that gives you an idea of how many emails come in over a monthly timeframe that people get that are real attacks. And so it's very scary. The other thing is on the, we're looking to try to provide some value in terms of the notes that we make on the cybersecurity report. So the focus of this month was identity security because it really does play a lot of plays into cybersecurity, not only from accounting perspective, but also from a personal perspective. So that'll just give you some information to read on that. But really, you know, taking into consideration what are your passwords, where do you use them, don't use the same passwords. I know it sounds a little bit broken record-y, maybe hearing that over and over again, but it really is important. Yeah, it really is important. As a matter of fact, one of the things I just wanted to mention for anybody, I mean, anybody, county employees are going to see this coming soon. And actually, they might have already started to see the Microsoft emails. If you have a personally, Microsoft 365, either with your towns or personal Microsoft accounts. Microsoft is phasing out the use of texting and phone calls for multi-factor authentication. So they're moving to either a key or a mobile app. So there's going to be a few different options for that. Very thankful from a county perspective that we were awarded the grant for the MFA tokens because that will help us from a county perspective. So we will never require the use of a personal cell phone, for example, for an app to be able to do that. We'll be able to provide the keys to be able to provide those type. We'll give people some options. But that is coming. And we utilize that here. We definitely utilize phone and texting. And the big reason are all the scams that are out there these days with SIM swapping. I don't know how many of you know about SIM swapping, but the bad guys, the hackers can actually take control of your cell phone. Like they can literally take your eSIM card and put it on their phone. Now they have all your multi-factor, they have your phone number, they have everything that goes along with it. And so once they hack your account password, then they're able to pull that SIM and get into your account.

Does that take a certain amount of time when they're on your phone? And do you have to be on your phone with the hacker to steal that or how are they

No, you don't. I don't know the technical behind it enough to be able to tell you a lot about it. Ryan would know it a lot better than I. But I know that they don't have to be on your phone to do it, that they can do it. We actually had, maybe a year ago now, somebody tried to do that with our phones. And we got a call that came in, I think it was to purchasing over the weekend or it was an evening or a weekend and said, you know, we're calling to verify this from Verizon, blah, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't us. And so we were able to put a stop to it, unfortunately. But it happens. You know, people call and they pretend to be you. They call Verizon or whatever and set up a new device. And it doesn't take a lot these days, unfortunately.

I know SIM swapping sounds cool and you want to be cool like the kids. Just don't do it, right?

Yeah. And you can actually lock your SIMs as well. Like if you log in like at Verizon or AT&T or whatever it is, you can actually lock your SIMs so that it cannot be swapped without you unlocking. roll out that spot. So that can help with that.

Go ahead, John. In my county email the other day, I had a email from Zoom stating that my name was discussed in a meeting. Okay. I deleted it.

Is that a feature of Zoom? Yeah. I don't think so.

Not that I'm aware of. So it probably was phishing. That would be a great little report, you know, as a potential phishing email. They were probably looking for something.

That one should have been hooked. A smart social engineering guest.

Yeah. I got the same email. It wasn't the same email address as all my other addresses. Oh, okay. I went and saw where it came from. One of them.

Oh, yeah. You have to actually click on the address and see what it actually is.

I got nothing with the app.

Well, that's a good response.

They do have it because they actually have real emails that are like that. You have the right accounts and you get set up for those types of notifications.

Yeah, let's stick the logo on it. That looks all official. Yeah, exactly.

And then I have two other things. Three other things. One is from an oversight on my part. In April, I put on the agenda for us to accept the award of the cybersecurity grant. needed a resolution for it. Somehow we got to talking about other things and I overlooked it. So I apologize for that oversight, but I'd like to request a motion to, I don't know the exact verbiage, but to accept the award for a $50,000 cybersecurity grant that we were awarded. I think that's what we need is a resolution for that.

Does anyone, okay, John, willing to make said motion? Okay, we got a second. Second from everyone else, basically. Okay. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Okay, thank you. Well, everyone's feeling agreeable. Do you have anything else? I do.

So the other is, I would like to request, so our cybersecurity officer has been invited to a conference that is here in New York, in Verona, New York, and he... The vendor or the people, it's a different type of conference. So most of the conferences we go to are government-related. This is more of a private sector conference. And the people that invited him to the conference that are hosting it have comped him the cost of the conference. We think there's a lot of value to it, that it really kind of expands your perspective a little bit and lets you know a little more what people that aren't government are doing and are offering out there. They have a lot of really great workshops. So the only cost that we would have to pay would be one night of hotels. And mileage, so the exact total with meals and everything is $283. And we'd like to be able to send him, but it's not the travel plan. It just came up. So I'd like to request that authorization for overnight travel. If you're agreeable, I have the money in the budget to pay for it. We do have that in our training line. That was the magic phrase. Yeah, we don't need money moved.

It is stealing. The thing I would bring up is the $75 giving costs, if they're counting in registration fee.

Well, they're just making it so it's no cost.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's like a bump. It's about . Yeah, it's about . And it's also, it's education . Yes.

And actually, these conferences do go toward his continuing education credits.

Have we ever tried to, I'll let you finish one thing at a time.

Okay. So is that a motion to approve? We got a motion from Brian. Do we have a second? I second. Okay. A second from Sam. Okay. Got that. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Okay. So, um,

Melissa was there, too. We went to Fort Montgomery Community College. Did you go there?

I didn't go. The interim county?

Yeah. You didn't go there. They actually have a some kind of an agreement with IBM, right? It was IBM. It was IBM. And their niche is cybersecurity. And it might be interesting if there was kind of a back and forth with, I don't know if there's a way like for him to maybe teach a class or attend a class. It might be interesting that way that he might find different avenues and things where we could help our cybersecurity.

It's actually a cybersecurity tactical. Oh, really? It's a really great, I mean, you've got, And then they've got stuff going on in real time, you know, where all the ships and TV are and all kinds of crap on the wall.

Oh, that's cool. And they use ambient lighting for whatever, like if it's high alert, that thing might flash red. But if it's calm, they'll go like with a real light blue. And it was quite tremendous to see in the way the lighting was done. So it's a total dark room. The only reason there was a window was so the Kids going down the hall could look in to see to get excited about being in it.

Oh, wow.

That's cool. But IBM really pays for the whole room and everything. So it's very – it might be – I don't know if it would help us a lot, but there might be a connection we could make that would be worthwhile.

It is first actual cybersecurity program in the United States.

Wow. Okay. Wow, that could be interesting to look into.

Sniff it around and see if there's anything worth digging. Yeah, absolutely. I just thought it was a good idea to bring it up since it's not. Thank you, absolutely. Sometimes we realize after we get there that, oh, we should have brought someone with us. But we didn't know what we were going to do. You just don't know sometimes. Yeah.

You go and you're like.

Sometimes you say, yeah, maybe we should have brought less. Yeah, you sit there and you're like, well, I shouldn't be here, but somebody else should be, you know. Right. But it's too late.

Yep, absolutely. The last thing I have is a request to accept a fall intern for IT from SUNY Adirondack. Unpaid? Yes, unpaid.

That's your favorite cost.

Yeah.

Okay. I don't see, is there any downside? We're not looking at any. All right, we got a move from Brian. We got a second. Darlene? Okay. Discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? All opposed? Congratulations on your bouncer. Maybe in turn. Thank you. We were there when it was birthed.

Okay.

Anything else for Perry? She already leans towards the door. Hey, this meeting is adjourned.

Your motion for the minutes. There is. Dave second. All in favor for July 21st minute. Aye. Opposed? None. Motion carries. First up, we have a lease on. And we're going to I didn't want to slow down. We'll wait for us to get that. Dan, do you want to go?

Sure. My request is to move 3. Let's go with 1. It was $35,000 from salaries, which I still have time left between the interim position that wasn't filled this summer and deputy county attorney position. We're outside consultants to cover what I hope are going to be the remainder of fees for the year, which is basically the tax foreclosure litigation and the policy review that is currently underway with regard to harassment and workplace violence policies.

Do we have a motion? Okay.

Yep. So move.

May I ask for a second? All in favor? Aye. Motion carries.

Just a couple other informational things. The appellate division did approve our intern program for another three years. I got an order on that a couple of weeks ago. And Melissa, are you going to do the FOIL portion when we get to it, or do you want me to bring it up?

You can bring it up. Terry's here.

Okay. Before I get to Terry, I was appointed this past week to the NISAC Standing Committee on Children with Special Needs. So we have further discussions regarding EI earlier intervention or CPSC sending to me and I'll see what I can do. And I still have Terry here because interestingly, this is one of the few times where cybersecurity was a double-edged sword. And Lisa's next to me, so she's involved in it too. A agency sent a FOIL request to Lisa's personal email account, the name at Washington County. And we found out about it because seven days after it was sent, Debbie received a deal request on the FOIL because it was never responded to. I found that to be highly unusual. So I tracked Terry down. And we find that cybersecurity worked in that it took it as what appeared to be a spam email and forwarded to Lisa's junk folder. Therefore, meaning she saw it. So my question to the open government committee was given the situation, does our five days start from the time it went to the junk folder or from the time we discovered it? And in their infinite wisdom that counts, Many unopened governments said, no, it's from the time it goes, it arrives in the junk folder, that'll be the time it's deemed received. I don't agree with it, but as the case may be, and ironically, the email was requesting all of our FOIL policies. So what we are hoping to do, and Terry had a suggestion, I think a couple years ago we discussed having kind of a centralized form that would come in and eventually get it formed out to who it would have to go to so that we're not on the hook for any FOIA violations in the future. I think we've got this one dealt with, and hopefully the form, when it gets sent to the proper person, will have a little reminder. You must at least acknowledge we received this within five days. I don't know the rest of what we can deal with, but I think that will hopefully be a way to prevent us from having any hiccups in the future. As I said, this just happened to be one of those things, you know, we were trying to figure out, I said, well, I have a hard time believing at least I got this, that she would respond to it when it turns out it got sent to her junk folder. And as I presume, she never saw it. I just wanted to get, if you want to get a further explanation on it, that's- And talking to Terry, we talked about a web form, right?

That's what you recommended. But the way I understood it, that once you fill out that web form, it's going to go to a department and that one department is going to be responsible for forwarding that to the correct department or?

No, so I would just say like, Email inherently is just a bad way to rely on things because there's so many things you've picked up, sent to Joan, blocked, you know, sent as malicious. If there's a link in it, we don't have any control over what email address things are coming from and how it's going to get flagged. So the solution to that, and we found that too in personnel who are applying. If people are applying, they're sending an email with their resumes, got an attachment on it. We don't know what format it's in, what's attached to that. So you miss things. You know, things don't get through. On purpose, and it's a good thing, you know, that they're being bought by security. But the way I reckon that is to set up a web form. And so the form that we would be looking to set up or the process behind it, we'll have to discuss internally to make sure it's set up properly. But what I would propose is a place through the website that they would go to submit oil requests. And as part of that submittal, they'll select which department they're sending that to, whether it's, you know, county attorney, county clerk, you know, whatever department it is. And then there's a workflow on the back side, so we'll require certain information. And then that workflow on the back side will send an email, but it'll always be from our website, which will always be trusted. It'll always have the correct things on it. Still go through the spam filter, but since it's from our website, it'll get through. And then it'll go to whoever is designated for that specific department as the contact person. Could be one person, could be a distribution group with multiple people on the back side managing it. I would say it's probably going to be up to the department who within the department manages those type of requests.

From my perspective, I know I think most of the departments have a department at Washington County. I think you'd want it to go there just because it said if it's not going to expand, but it could go to somebody who's going to be on vacation for a week or two weeks and you run over that portion. And I think at least if it goes to the general email, somebody is going to see it.

Dan, can you put on that form that what Gary's talking about, that any FOIL requests that are forwarded to the county that are not used on this form will not be honored?

I mean, that could be policy. I think that we have to put into effect something of that nature. You know, there have to be some sort of FOIL request page that could have whatever verbiage on it that someone would like.

That way, if this happens again, go to a junk folder, that's on them, not on the county.

They send it in some other fashion.

Is it legal? What if somebody just sent it in the mail?

Right?

We'd have to check the law.

Yeah, I think you'd have to check the law. I think they can foil just about any way they want to, as long as it's in some form of writing.

It's got to be more about function than form.

So with email, I mean, how would they ever, I don't know how people would prove that the email ever got to us. You know what I mean? How do we know if everything got here? They sent it. They should have asked for a receipt.

You can ask for a receipt on email.

People can just say, like, I don't send receipts. That's a personal preference setting that anybody can choose whether to send a receipt or not.

And the laws develop to protect the person looking for the information, not the person giving the information.

But I even think if I want to be the one that foils and sends a FOIL request, I'd want some confirmation that I got it and You know, email is just inherently, it's bad for that. You don't know, what if I had a typo? What if, yeah, so many different things.

So when we do this web, that's what the committee decides to do. We do this web form. Can it be set up so that we have all of the county departments in it and the person just picks the right one? They don't have to come up with it on their own, right? Correct. And then it's linked right to the email.

Yeah, we'll have a drop down and just select from a drop down box which department they want it to be. We don't want typos in there. We try to do drop-downs any time we need something to not have typos.

Right. Is the danger in the head that we're inviting everybody to foil us all the time? They're doing it now.

It happens.

Well, they're doing it to a point, but the ones that want to do it don't know how to do it, and all of a sudden, here it is. All right.

We don't have to put it on our front page.

Right. That's what I'm worried about. They can have to look more at the market. Yes, there is. I know. We get them all already.

Chairman. Can we legitimately limit all these things we receive? Because we didn't want to get it by email at all. We said every 12 things have been on a hard top.

That would be ideal.

That would be ideal, but everything is, as you know, kind of geared towards electronic cleaning.

Why don't we put it out electronically? But would we not restrict the way they come in?

I'd have to look at it. My guess is I'm sure our friends down at the committee and say no. And I think, unfortunately, I think the vast majority of courts would probably say the same thing.

We're using the Latin case law.

It used to have to boil a little in rate so that they would change that law. Because electronic is not in writing. There might be still a way to do that.

It would be considered when we have all our contracts say in writing and half the time we say this address with this email.

That's how we get all these foils, the automated ones, lists of every one of the purchasers from us.

All right. But as I said, we can get foiled all the time. The question is, how do we respond? For example, if someone wants a list, if we don't have a list, we don't have to create you know, if they're simply asking a question, you don't have to respond to questions.

The good thing is the contact form would have a caption on it, so you'd have to prove you're a person. So it would eliminate false submissions.

It wouldn't eliminate malware and something that we have to accept, though, right?

Well, it would, because it would only be what they can put into a web form. And so we would you know, limit, like if they want to upload a PDF to a web form or some sort of attachment, they should probably, but if we decided that we want them to have that ability, they could, but we can certainly say no zip files, you know, no executables, no any of the malicious types of files should be able to be submitted.

So Terry, are you looking for a motion to move forward with this?

I think that's up to you all. We're ready whenever you want. We already have a motion.

I'm going to be Dave makes motion.

A second.

Sue makes a second. All in favor? Aye. That's all I got. Okay. Are you ready then? I'm ready. Lisa, you're up.

Thank you. So I'm asking the committee to replace a motor vehicle license clerk position that someone currently holds with a senior motor vehicle licensing clerk. The back story on this is in May, at the personnel committee on the 7th, we removed a senior motor vehicle license clerk and added a motor vehicle license clerk because we had someone leave our employment here for a better paying position somewhere else. At the time, we didn't have anybody who was willing to step into the senior motor vehicle licensing clerk position. And this gave us opportunity to wait until September to have five people who were eligible for the promotion. And we've been saving kind of the money from not paying somebody the promotion rate since April. So it's in our budget. And that's what I'm asking for, is to change an existing motor vehicle licensing clerk and promote them to a senior motor vehicle licensing clerk. So this is approved. It would go to personnel to change the staffing pattern, but it is budgeted. Is it changing? Is that changing the staffing pattern, correct? Yeah.

So what happened was she was asked to bring it back when she brought it to her son. that to, like, make it a lower position. So we did have to change the staffing.

So it's got to change.

And then it was to bring back in September to ask for it to be back. She did have it budgeted the whole time. Right. So it's just to do the staffing.

I think that's what I said, but I could be wrong. Yeah.

Are we saying the same thing? I think so. And then, but again, you'll need, it's a promo, so we'll need a backfill for the current overview.

That would be it. Yeah, we're not adding.

We're not adding. We're not adding. There are five. There are five.

Correct.

I want to make sure I'm asking for the right thing, too. So I think we're all on the same page. We have five people who are eligible to become a senior licensing clerk. We're not adding. We are just going to promote one of those five as expressed interest in being promoted to a senior motor vehicle licensing clerk. So you're not backfilling that position?

No. Okay. So you did have one senior for licensed clerks, and that senior left and dropped it down to five, and now you're basically going back to what it was one for.

We're not adding a person.

So would you be losing the licensing clerk from your staff competitor?

Yes and no. Because yes, you're losing them, but they're still working for you.

They're removing it. Yes, they're removing it from the title clerk. Then that title is gone. Correct.

Yes. So we won't be asking for a backfill or a licensing.

So your title would then reflect what you had last April.

Correct.

And now what you currently have now.

Absolutely. And usually we would do this a bunch of times. And you'd start in January, but you're saying you had it, do it now, just want to go back.

Yeah, it was all in the budget for, and then she got an opportunity that she couldn't pass up. We lost her, and we've been dealing right now with just having the super PACs and one senior, and that has been a lot on them. So we really, we're going to go moving forward, and we're planning on doing the mobiles, doing mobiles in three towns. We need another senior.

Third motion. Bill, please motion. Second. Sue, any more discussion on this? More discussion. All those in favor of the motion. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

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Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye take the clerk from down in archives and place them up in the clerk's office. We have hired that position and I was asked by supervisor Skelly if we were going to backfill the part-time position that we lost in the clerk's office. And we, I initially had put it into Danielle, but we had discussions and We feel that we can do without replacing the part-time. However, we would want the three clerks that are in the clerk's office to go from 37 and a half hours starting January 1st to 40 hours. That's a budget thing, and that's why I just wanted to kind of give you an update that we're not asking. We initially asked for the backfill. We're not Asking for that, but I make them 40. And I did do the numbers. If we had hired a part-timer at starting pay, you're talking $21,132.80 just in salary. And by adding, by taking the three people that we're talking about and adding two and a half hours, for a year, that's $9,127. So it's a savings of $12,000 by not filling that and making them 40-hour employees.

So you're leaving that request for the budget work trial. Absolutely.

That's it.

Okay.

Makes sense. Easy enough, I said.

Don't look back. Don't look back. Don't look back.

You won't at all.

So I'm going to just start with parks.

I'll let everybody know they close on Monday. Labor Day is the last day. We do have some events that are scheduled for pavilion rentals, I think through the month of September, where we have some of the time and staff that day, but the beach itself won't be open for that event. So you'll see people there, something that's scheduled ahead of time. Otherwise, the parks are in pretty smooth this summer. really no complaints and a lot of compliments, you know, on both parts. So we're staying at it. One update on the speedy permits, I think I mentioned it two months ago, the DEC, you know, we were 11 years overdue for the permitting thing, even though we've been paying for the permit to have. So the New permits were submitted on Friday. I know they're being reviewed with the engineers. So I expect to have them and hopefully 10 years from now when we talk about emails that don't go through, I just heard it, like their case was 11 years ago, we sent an email to somebody that said your permit was expiring and you needed to renew it. So 11 years went by before, you know, It wasn't brought to anybody. They let us pay for one. But we've got that under control. So that's good. So I guess that's it really with the parks. Next thing up, our buildings and ground safety days is scheduled for the end of the month. And every year I ask for permission to... spend some money out of our training budget for food to provide. We have two different safety days. We have a day crew one that's specialized for stuff they work on. And then we have a night crew one, which are cleaners, custodians that have a different type of safety days that's geared just toward them that they'll put together with chemicals and stuff like that. So there is overlap, but it is two different ones. I'm just looking for permission to spend up to $700 for the food for the day.

They make the motion. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Does that go to the finance or does that just go straight? Just committee.

I think it just goes to committee. Just curious. Next thing is the Fort Ann project. Just a little update. The water pressure system, they've started it, I think, on Tuesday, first day back. The pumps are actually coming, and they're going to be getting installed throughout the week. So the water issue that we signed the change orders for, I think, two months ago, that work is starting to take place in the last couple weeks, and we'll get into high gear this week, our coming weeks. The second thing about Ford Ant, I've been working with Sam, Dan, and Jeff Myers, and we've had no fuel system there. We have a disagreement with the contractor, and we've decided, the four of us, that we'd like to go forward with putting the fuel system back out the pit, just that part of the job, and let Dan and Jeff do their work in the background. The need for that is, you know, one right now, Sam's guys are traveling for fuel to other towns. You know, winter's coming up. We'd like to try to have that fuel system installed before winter, and it would require us to go back out to bid. I believe it's going to be in the $180,000 to $200,000 range for the fuel system that the fuel – That's diesel and gasoline and all our electronics that we took out of the old system and installed back in. So right now, I'd just like permission to go out to bid to see what we get. It only needs to go out to bid for a couple of weeks, so I should be back rather shortly. And the reason it should only go out for a couple of weeks is because these companies already have the plans. One of them actually was the one that designed it that we'd get the bids from. They've already seen it through the contractor. So without details, we're going to let that happen in the background, and we just want to go out to bid very shortly. I've worked with Barb and the engineers to be able to put just that part of the scope of the work back out to bid.

Do you think you can get it up there already before winter?

I would hope before the new year. A little bit of the bid process is going to slow us down to get started. I did put calls in to see what the lead time on the equipment was. You know, until we sign a contract, they don't pull the equipment. So, you know, right now they may have good lead time on the tank. You know, something comes up, they're going to sell the tank if we haven't signed a contract. You know, then they might be working for a certain manufacturer time or something to that effect. But I believe blaze first of the year would be a reasonable thing the other way is to wait for any you know discussion with the original contractor that we believe was in a scope of work um that could take a year i don't know you know like we don't know how long that could take so they gotta we gotta right and i agree i've talked to our dbw i've talked to sam's dbw staff and sam himself and there is a need to get that fuel going in that location.

Fair motion to move this. I'll move that. I do have a question.

A second.

Two seconds. Discussion. One question I have is that do they have the ability to use the WEX cards in case that our guys are set up with WEX cards?

Dave, I can't say that. We have been trying out for three months to get WEX organized and And it's been a complete disaster on their end. You know, we thought it was going to be a simple move. So they send you the first letter, says this is what they need. And then two weeks later, they're sending, tell you they need something else. And we got to the point where we just, we just actually, I sent a letter out, signed it last week, sent it back to the agency. We're changing the fees. We can't use the product. We had to try it. And that was a good recommendation because it seems it works for everybody else, but it wasn't for us for whatever reason.

Our wax cards for the county were taken care of years ago. We're already in the program, so they come and go.

Does highway have wax cards? Does highway have wax cards? Yes, that's what I'm talking about.

Our highway does have wax cards. Obviously, they prefer to fill up there. One of the solutions that I'm going to work with, Sam, just for the town, in the past, we've had problems with our fuel system, and we got a temporary skid tank in there. Um, it's a little more difficult right now because a temporary skid tank, you can't tell who's using what. So it wouldn't be for our guys. There would be a temporary skid tank and it wouldn't be purely for the town of Fort Ann's DPW. And Sam would handle that. The town would handle that all on their own. I'll give them a place and, you know, help them, you know, with the logistics of it, but it would be just for them. You know, our guys would still, our guys have a little more freedom too, because Like one guy's route goes toward gravel. So at the end of his beat, he could already be close to, you know, at that end to fuel up there. The next one, you know, they're at other places. The Ford M1 that comes south can stop here and fill up north. You know, so it's a little less on the county's DPW operation. The town, it cripples not half the fuel right there. So it's a lot of extra

This sounds like probably a different question, but could the county share a service with Fort Ann until this gets resolved on West Cards?

I mean, they could. Yeah, I could look into that to see how that would work. You know, we already, you know, we already, when they come here to fill up right now, his guys are driving to Fort Edward to fill up their fuel tanks. I could explore that. And if it's something Sam would, interested if it's just a matter of us adding them to our system that might be something that would help you out and we already built so we're already building it anyway so maybe the process is set up to smoothly do that I can't answer that 100% myself I would have to go down and talk to Amy Donnelly I think she's someone to handle something for DPW and see what it takes I was going to

suggest to Sam, he might even have an opportunity to go across the road and talk to those people and say, hey, can you sell us this tax-free at a certain price?

They can sell it to us. We've already tried to coordinate that. The problem is they can't take the tax off at their end. We have to file for the state to try to get that. And that's why the WEX card was selected. The other thing that affects, too, within our area is emergency services because the fire department, the pre-fire department uses it as well as the rescue squad.

So it's... If it is something we can help the town with, I will definitely do it. Well, it would be on their end. Like the skid tank on their end would be, you know, it would be up to the town, okay, you know, emergency squad comes, we filled up the 50.2 gallons, you know, fire company, so you could deal with that on your end if that's what you wanted to, you know.

And this is not a reflection on Matt. It's it was in the contract and the guy just, they just didn't do it. You know, it's just, it's something that, you know, and that's why we're going to legal channel on what we got to try to do to get that record back.

Oh, your fuel provider give you, give you free rental on a skid tank? Our fuel provider. We have already looked into that.

But in the past, our DPW has used another contractor. So what we'll end up doing is we'll reach out to them, see if they have their skid tank available. And it'll probably be diesel only type of thing. Yes, we'll have to worry about, I don't know what your emergency service is used, but at least the big trucks to be diesel. It's a little different. I don't think anybody's going to bring a gasoline skid tank.

I got to be honest with you, Nick. This is all I might own it, so I'm dependent on that too.

It's just going to be the rental of the tank, something that would be burdened on the town. You had nothing to do with this contractor.

Yeah. Contractor. In the past, the fuel provider provided us with a tank at no cost because we were building it. Gotcha. Now, that was the past. That hasn't... Main care's done that in the past. Yeah, main care was the one. So we're going to reach out to them, a couple of them, and see, hey, do you have a tank? If so, how big? And if we... Is there a rental fee? Is it free for buying your fuel? And it's going to be really, it's all, it's the town. You know, it's going to be Sam. I will help them through it just because I've been involved with this right through. So I'll make sure to see it through as part of the project.

All right, we'll go to Sue.

Just a curiosity question. Are they paid in full, Sam?

Who's that?

This contractor.

I don't believe so, no. No, they're not yet, but they're, We have to legally pay them. So the way they submit payouts, they submit that we've completed this work, this work, this work. We legally have to pay them for the work they've completed. So there's not a lot of, you know, if they're putting these fire, which they are, they're putting the fire pumps and the booster pumps in right now, we cannot not pay them for water pumps. That would be, you know, as we've discussed this already, but it would be, kind of illegal for us not to pay them for work that was served. You know, that was contracted for specific stuff.

Basically, you can hold back this much.

We don't know what this much is, but you can try. We're probably even past this. We're going to know. We're past this. The only thing that we can legally hold is a retage on the contract.

What do you want? Do you want to have the bid?

Yes. And my number of like that $180,000 to $200,000, Unless something's changed in six months, it's going to be pretty close to that. And I do know things change in six months, but it's going to be really close to that number. It's a little bit tricky putting it out to bid because you've got to remember the electrician has part of this, the site contractor has part of this, so we've got to pull out all the stuff out of these other contractors because they still owe us, like they know, like the The site contractor knows he owes this part of installing it. The electrician knows he knows like this part of it. So we got to just pull out what's in just the one contract. So there's, you know, take some work to do that. I was just on a meeting the other day to filter all those scopes and get them out.

Is there anything else? Any more discussion? All those in favor of the motion? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. But Matt, can you send Brian or Debbie an update for our finance meeting next month or next week on the big one out?

Yes, I can let you know. That'll be in a while. She put it out in a legal newspaper. There are certain things, but tomorrow was a deadline for the engineer to take have that stuff pulled out that we talked about and have a set of documents ready to go that Barb will put the funding on them and accounting stuff on, and then we can go from there. So I would expect by the end of next week, it'll be on the street. Okay, good. I could be wrong, because I could go down and Barb would be like, no, that's not right.

You're going to have to go to the other week.

But she'll be right in line on that. That's her.

It's pretty funny. Yep. Okay, we're going to skip over D1 and D2, and we're going to go to D3.

So I had put on the agenda to discuss the two departments, BPW and buildings and grounds, and the organization as far as where they are in the county being two separate departments. And since Matt's already up here, he has a proposal he'd like to share.

Give me one.

There should be a moving puck on the ground.

And before Matt gets going, I just wanted to mention the proposal that he's going to bring about combining the two departments. That is something that's widely done across the state. Most counties do have those two departments combined. They're not separate departments.

So in order to get all this on one page without going to some bigger paper that I got to hand out, We had to go down. This morning we were fighting with the computer and PowerPoint. I wanted the background to be white so you could actually read the letters, but it wouldn't do it. It just wouldn't do it. So fuel pumps are your thing and computers aren't? Well, I was able to use PowerPoint and make all this, but I just couldn't for some reason and it didn't show that it was black and red. in the screen, show it, and I'd print it, and it wouldn't come out that way. So maybe a patience lesson. We get in trouble for kicking the printer. This is fine for what we did. So first off, I guess the reason why we're here is what Molson just said. We have an opening for DPW, but it's built right now. So in thoughts and talking about it, I came up with this proposed public works board chart. I was kind of saying what it is now, but I wanted you to realize there isn't a whole lot of difference. It's just building some grounds that's separate from DPW. And my proposal isn't to propose to change the whole structure right away. It's to save some money in the budget by combining and cutting one position. And as you can see, it says on there, position cut. It's my current position.

That would have to be done by local law, believe it or not.

My position would have to be done by local law?

Yeah, your position, it's just to give a little background. Local law number two of 1988 established the Department of Public Works. That was amended by local law of 1990, which allowed the superintendent to designate a building superintendent and other superintendents. It's actually a fairly lengthy list. And then Initially, they tried by local law 1 of 1993 to create your position, and it was defeated. And the following year, effective January 1st of 1995, local law number 2 was passed, which established your position. So what you do by local law, you can only undo by local law.

I'll leave that to the law. There you go. Good call. That's not my board. Just so I don't have to hand out a book. I'm not going to fight that book. So in this proposed public works building grounds, the idea would be to reduce management costs and keep the same amount of people on the ground, people doing the work. Both departments made cuts to staff last year, both of these. Both of them are feeling the effects right now of the cuts and being on the low recruit. So in talking to DPW and in my staff, there's a lot of things that they do and we do that we could do together to try to help alleviate some of the stresses of the cuts that we've made. There's overlapping of duties that we could definitely kind of work together for the same goal instead of, you know, constantly always being apart and these guys do this and these guys do this. I've already, you know, throughout the building project worked with a lot of the DPW guys and their capabilities. Obviously, they have a pretty good staff that's, I think, willing to do a lot of stuff. And then same as my staff, there's a lot of nervousness from both staffs, you know, change and everything else. But the idea would be we've cut now and we're down, right? We're down. I just went through budget with Brian and Melissa. You know, our salary number is down. So the cuts we made definitely work. And I would assume in DPW, it's the same thing. But I constantly hear we're short drivers. You know, we're short getting recruiting guys with CDL. So I have a few guys, you know, this is just one thing, you know, example. that maybe they could get their CDL. So in a jam or vice versa, you know, we're short some people. They have carpenters that I know because I've worked with some of them, you know, that could jump right in and help us with a project to finish. And now, you know, is the time. There isn't necessarily a person being cut. We have an opening and it would be, you know, approximately $115,000 savings you know, right off the get-go of what I'm proposing. So I have a whole list of goals and, you know, but I just want to make this, you know, clear that there's not going to be a lot of changes. It would be, you know, it would be irresponsible of me to think that I could go into a new department and just change the way they do things without any experience. Like you would have to learn the people, learn the duties, and then, you know, throughout the next few years makes some efficiencies.

I guess this is Bradford D&L. So you talked about overlapping the positions. Does that become a classification union issue if we're trying to?

We would, yeah, we would have to look at it when or if the duties that you're wanting to combine, we would have to work together.

In the discussions we've had so far, And I've already had a discussion with the labor attorney. I don't believe there's going to be any union issues with us because none of the work is exclusive of the tombsters that would be overlapping.

I'm looking at interpersonal issues.

There's probably going to be reclassification.

Yeah, I expect there to be, you know, until it happens or, you know, if you decide to go this direction, you don't want to go down the road until, you know, but I think there's a lot of stuff we could work through, you know, and we would have to work through. It's not. And right off the get-go, it's got to stay the same. Like, it's got to operate until you can figure out what things are with personnel and everything else, what you could do.

Is there a deputy DPW superintendent, or is that an additional dude, one of the supporters?

This is, I had it on, took it off. And the deputy where we had a public's work manager position a couple of years ago, my idea, and this is just with me, my proposal would be that you would create that position, but you would hire from within. So it would be a promotion, not a new position. And I don't know, right? I mean, you could take anyone. It would come from DPW, obviously, being the bigger department and, you know, me transferring over that. I would probably, I would promote somebody from within this department, but they're already on, they're already on the seller's schedule. So they're on here somewhere. If it's not, It's not coming from the outside.

We have a highway supervisor three right now.

We have a highway supervisor three. And, you know, I don't want to speak, you know, I would talk to these guys, but it would be somebody from within there. So it would go like, say, let's just say supervisor three to public works manager or any one of those. Like we would see who was interested and if they were interested in the duties and then, but it wouldn't happen immediately. And one of the reasons why I think that would have to happen, you know, and maybe not immediately, is redundancy. You know, a lot of this project is creating a system that doesn't fail when somebody's out injured, whatever. So to just stick your kind of self up here, somebody here has to know these duties also. And I understand, like, and that's how I've ever met Ford. It's always supposed to be able to run. I mean, he's down or two people's down and continue, but I think we really need to stress that, you know, the same thing with the buildings and grounds, same thing with, I think in administration, you know, and by administration, that's the bookkeepers and the secretaries, if they could overlap duties, it would become a big benefit, you know, that's not day one, just changing everybody's, what you're working on, but when you start learning it. So everybody has vacations. Right now, on buildings and grounds, Jen goes on vacation, and she does a certain amount of work. I do a certain amount of work, and it's hard to mesh that. They have a little bigger staff. That would be a benefit to buildings and grounds that would have a backup. They don't come back with a pile of papers like this that they can't get help from underneath. It's a good point.

And I look back over the years and you've been an excellent project manager for Washington County. Are you considering this your new project?

Well, you know, it would be a project, yes. And, you know, me coming here today, you know, the risk that's to me is if you look, there's only one position cut and that's the one I'm currently, you know, I'm holding. So, It is, you know, slightly interview or your first chance at hitting me up to do this, but, you know, the only risk here is really to me by presenting this. And I'll just make a note of this because I'm interested in doing this project.

One more question. Do we have any capital projects that are looking that they're going to do in the next couple of years?

So,

I will probably give you this information.

If we do capital projects the size of 03 that we just did, if I was doing this, I wouldn't be able to do both. That would be impossible. That was a lot of extra work. It was very time consuming for the last three years to do that. And we're still not, and we're close. We're getting there. I can see the end. I worked with Becky yesterday afternoon for a few hours. I went over, you know, what contracts we can close out. She gave me my homework. I've been working on it all morning, and we're getting close. And we do know for sure that Burgoyne came in on budget, and Middle Falls came in about 350, between 350 and 400 on our budget. Fordham is out. So, well, we have a lot of, right. This fuel, putting out the bid, it might be the, you know. Well, that's right. It might go, but we're still talking within 1% of the whole project. Like if, you know, we didn't recoup what the cost was, you know, we're still within 1% of the overall budget.

Even if you look at the fuel system being $180,000, $200,000, you get $300,000 from Middle Falls on a set of those.

Yeah, so we're not going to be asking for, we're probably not going to be asking for a budget amendment. It might just have, you know, the final numbers, the way Al set it up, right, and they've loaned a certain amount of money to pay for their part of it and they're paying their payments. He can go up or down. If we save money, his payments don't go down. You know, the town 60% shares going to go down. If we go over, it's going to go up. We're going to be within 1% of that total budget one way or the other. I'm pretty confident in saying that because we've signed the problems. We've signed those change orders and we're contracted so that work's getting done. It's finishing.

Matt, I have a question. All these department heads in public work Have you shared this with them?

I've talked up to you. I've talked to your intern manager for a couple hours last week, but I haven't because it wouldn't have been right for me. I haven't even talked to you or presented it. If it was something that you guys decide you weren't interested in doing, there's no sense of... Now, We all know, you know, it spreads like wildfire. There's probably 100 views today. 100 YouTube kids are famous. But for the most part, I preserved, you know, really talking about that until I talked to the supervisors in the committee.

So the timing, I guess, is why it's coming to you today. We have an interim right now, as you all know, in DPW. we can't post a position or advertise for a position until we know what the scope of the duties are. So if we were to go out and advertise, we have to know if it's the entire two departments or one department. So we can't do anything with that. And obviously it would be a local law that would have to be changed. So that takes time as well if you wanted to do this.

Right. Now, like I said, I don't care about a title, like what the title is. You know, if you're giving one and just picking up the other, I don't, you know, that's, a title would be up to, you know, really. And, you know, and Dan and supervisors, it doesn't matter what you call it, that has to change.

So.

Do you have any other questions? Do we want to move this to next week, Brian? Personnel?

I think the structure comes out here. If we have all the structure ready, then I'm not sure where it goes from here. Well, I don't know.

This really is not a stop. I asked Danielle to be here just so you could ask her questions about that end of it. So I don't know how you would do it. I'm, you know, I'm.

It would be a staffing pattern change if you were to do this. So we'd have to go to person to change staffing pattern. I don't know if there's any financial, it wouldn't have to go to finance. I don't believe, right? Just the personnel.

You finance it right in next year's budget. So if you're doing it as of the first of the year, which I guess would be attainable. under the timeline to change the law.

So the start of local law would start on this committee. Well, yeah. I don't know. Do you change a local law if I'm assuming the position that's already there is a local law just to get rid of the position that they gave it? I don't know that.

Well, I think by definition you have to at least take care of that because by establishing superintendent of building grounds, that's when you effectively have established the separate buildings and grounds prior to that and was part of DPW.

So if we want to do this, why wouldn't we just have him draft a local law and Melissa kind of give us some guidance as to how it should work through our full-time system here and make it happen?

There's two things. You've got to repeal this one, and I'm not sure. I don't think we would default back to local two. I know local two has a whole what the DPW superintendent, which would be the surviving position, whom he can appoint, whom he can't. So you have to deal with part of the structural issue, emergency, if you're dealing with that.

Do we have to have a title of DPW superintendent, or can we change it to public works manager?

Or public works, whatever. I think I'll have to look. I think under the highway law, it might be.

Yeah.

It's specific. Andrew, the public officer's law may say superintendent. But I don't think we should change that. But I'll have to confirm that. I think that's what the county was doing.

Just in my review of other counties, I mean, some of them are called public support directors. Some of them, you know, they're not all superintendents. I don't know. But we have some work to do on local laws.

Fairly.

Yeah. We could probably begin on what Dave just said. It sounds like we're redefining a structural relationship. It's too separate.

So it's likely to be a local law in defining a structure for these two?

Because there was two separate local laws to begin with.

Yes.

Well, there was initially the one that established DPW's department in 1988. Then two kind of ferreted out what the superintendent could appoint, which included amongst other things a building works superintendent, also a subway superintendent, also, you know, have three or four different jobs. And then finally, as I said, they specifically separated out buildings and grounds 94th. Yeah.

So if we make these changes, kind of internal changes, does it have to get posted as an open job? That's up to you. I'm sorry.

That's up to you. As supervisors, usually the board decides in the personnel committee, if I remember correctly, on whether or not you want to post a position. We usually do. We usually post and advertise for department head positions.

I guess my concern is that's how, with this idea, it's going to save us over $100,000, and we go off to interviews, and that's not selected. You know, what happens to that? What if man doesn't even apply?

I'm doubting that very much.

I don't know how these laws, because if you're going to do the law and you're going to get rid of my physician when I got to go home for a month and wait for, you know, wait for an interview.

Well, it depends on the infection thing.

You've got to make it a law and make it a federalist and then have everything in place. But I don't think you can do one without doing the other. They work in tandem with each other.

Like I said, I'm not. We've always made practice of advertising propositions.

Well, I think this case is a little bit different because we're consolidating positions. We're not actually making a brand new position with different, you know, new scope of duties. We're actually limiting the position. Yeah, but we're combining. We're merging. Yeah. We already know the department head also.

It's not like someone new.

We're adding duties to what I'm doing no more. That's the way I was looking at it. You're adding duties to what I'm already doing. You figure out the title amongst yourselves. It's just changing the duties.

So I guess the idea would be that Dan figures out how we do it legally. But I think, as Nate said, binding duties, I'm not sure if it would require, because if a different department had brought something to reorganize their department, I'm not sure we would advertise theirs. Going out to advertising seems different. In this case, I've got to go with combining and deferment. But more importantly, I was questioning, do we need some kind of resolution so it's in the minutes that we agree this is what we want to do to go forward? You know, it's memorialized.

Yeah, I mean, you can say you're merging. You can certainly pass a resolution saying we're merging our public parks and buildings and grounds back into, you know,

Do we want to give it a date as of January 1st? I would suggest putting an effective date on it. January 1st gives us plenty of time, and it also gives us the new budget year.

And this starts before the budget workshop, so it gives us a little time to get the stage looking at. We're talking about different things.

By doing that, you give Matt permission to you know, it's glass, so he can actually work with Danielle to what he has to do for his department and job titles.

Well, that would be my request would be that I would, you know, obviously we're still doing it. It would take some preparation in my department to be ready to do this, and I'm sure it would take preparation on third part also, but that would kind of be my request is to be able to work with your current interim who's had, what, 30 years of experience in that department that I've like to draw from, you know.

I'm going to call the chairman to give us your opinion on this.

I see. Okay. I think it's a really good idea working model in other areas. I think that the fact that we have so bare bones and staff in both departments, that having something that would have some kind of synergy is probably where we're gonna have to go if we're gonna be effective in the future. It's a good move. I think that one thing we gotta think about is how we're gonna handle big capital projects so we can't make them do it anymore if we do this. That's the one loss that I see. But I think in terms of gain, I think we've gained a hell of a lot in terms of efficiency and just in, I mean, We essentially did this to create a position for a guy in our unit. We were in one unit. They wanted to give Stan a new place to work. But he was being appointed and unappointed, and they did the law to create a position for him. That's the history of it. I think this is a really good model, and I encourage Matt. I think it's the way we have to solve it. And I don't think we have. You're right, I think we're consolidating and adding to his position, not essentially creating a whole brand new thing. I don't think we've got to advertise it.

Yeah, he's still supervising buildings and grounds. Plus many other things. Is that what you wanted to do? Yeah, that was pretty good.

That doesn't have to do with ours, but this is just the time that we're looking at doing the consolidation. are we missing an opportunity by maybe taking a look at having, for example, this janitorial service is done on a contract, and what would that advantage be for having to pay the employees the benefits and everything else? You know, and not split up the whole thing, but it might be less that it would have to be moved into that if we could do that on an outside contract. I don't know.

Janitorial. Can we always be evaluating whether things we've been paying for are being effectively

That's what I'm bringing up. I don't think we've ever looked at that going outside because you've always tried to take. But as the budgets have gotten tighter and more things have come up and we look at what it costs for the employee aspect of it, there's only certain things that they could do, but it may be advantageous.

It was something that you had come up and I didn't get into the detail on it, but we talked about it during my budget thing. That crew probably is our most revenue generating that I have. Um, they get reimbursed for building seed cleaning every year through the court system, which is about a hundred thousand. They get reimbursed through a couple other reports for public health and leap. So that's just one thing to consider. And we did, we kind of, we just hit on a high level. Like that was, um, you know, some of the things that maybe you wouldn't know, or I haven't presented over the years. Like that is a crew that, um, draws in revenue for us. Does it balance out?

Have we evaluated this? The revenue getting, does that cover their expenses? Or for what they're getting covered back? In other words, is the money we're getting from their, money they're generating, giving us enough pay for those that borrow their expenses? Our operational budget? I don't know. I know a lot of the, I know a lot of corporations are doing that. They haven't got their employees, they're going to outside sources because they don't have all the external resources additional expenses that go with it. Contributations to the retirement accounts, vacations, and all those types of things.

But doesn't that come back to we have to do the prevailing wage again? I honestly don't think so. I think the prevailing wage is in there. I think the other ones even talk about actually privatizing the highways. In certain states, they do that, but here you can't do that because you have the prevailing wage. So it gets way distorted and your savings are gone. That's why New York still stays. And that's why I asked the question, have you ever explored that? I don't know. I think that prevailing wage comes in in everything.

The superintendent before me did look into that. I wasn't super privy. And the reason why it was brought up then was because we were cleaning... To Brian's point, I do know the high level part of that was they weren't required to pay prevailing wage, you know, that sort of stuff. So one of the other concerns, you know, and we're dealing with internally now is security issues. Our own employees, we have the ability, we do background checks and everything before they go to these departments. Whereas, you know, they make movies about cleaning services that do damage, right? Every bad guy comes in a cleaning van or a plumbing van. You're right.

They have security things that they put in place as well. They do. Just a thought. It's always worth thinking about.

Yes.

So again, so if you were to pass this from this committee, then Dan, tell me if this is correct, then it would have to go, we'd have to set a date for local law, right?

We have to do a resolution for, I have to write the local law. We have to have a resolution to set the public hearing. That's usually one meeting ahead. So if we haven't passed for the, for the, September meeting, we can pass the local law at the October meeting.

And then after all that's done, then I think it would go to personnel to talk about the staffing pattern. And then it would have to go back to the board to change the staffing pattern. And I think from what I've seen from other counties, it's either public works commissioner or superintendent of public works.

Who do you like better? All of them. Okay, do we have a...

motion that move us to instruct the county attorney to start with researching and filling the local law for the change, merger of the two departments.

I'll second that. Okay, Sue makes a second. Is there any other seconds? All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Motion carries. And does this have to come back in public work, government ops first? Or do it on the board?

No, all you have to do at this point is say you're going to pass a resolution for a public hearing. And if you're instructing me to do that, I'll have it ready for the 18th. That means I'd have to have it ready by the 11th. I'm going to get it done between the procedure tomorrow and Labor Day.

I want to confirm with Danielle, because you're going to put that in the local law.

We already have superintendent of public works. It would just be that we're eliminating the title. We're effectively repealing local law establishing separate title.

Do you need a resolution for public hearing? I think it's all wrapped up.

Thank you.

Well, that was good, Matt. All right.

Thank you. Thank you, Matt.

Okay. All right.

So on the agenda is my request to backfill deputy position and county admin. I've been without a deputy for a week and my I just slide this. Purchasing coordinator has been getting all the duties from the past deputy county administrator and it's a full workload, 40 hour week. I'm gonna pass out if you're interested, the duties that that position has been performing for about 24 years now. But I guess I'm really requesting to backfill the deputy Because I can't absorb a full-time job in my office and my deputy, I'm sorry, my purchasing coordinator cannot perform two full-time jobs. So that's where I am right now. And I'm just passing out. So you have it. My current organizational chart is also the duties that it's performed by the deputy And then now I just want to pass out, did I give you this? Yes. The last thing I passed out was the cost of what? Did I pass this out to the right people?

How many papers?

20 papers.

Over 20 pages or something.

I know. And then this last sheet, not a good shot. Last sheet I'm passing out shows you up until last Thursday when I had a deputy county administrator. It shows what the staffing pattern and what the salaries are. So I had a purchasing coordinator who's currently making $71,744,000. Deputy county administrator is in my budget at that current rate. You can read it. I'm not going to read it all to you. But it just shows that with the proposal, I would be asking to change the purchasing coordinator title to purchasing clerk. I think you all are aware how important that position is. for the county and the towns because everyone uses the knowledge of Barb currently and she gives assistance just about anybody and she's very knowledgeable. So I wanted to change the purchasing coordinator to purchasing clerk, fill a deputy county administrator position and that would take that back to base. So there is a savings of $17,586. by changing the purchasing clerk and putting a deputy county admin in at base.

Okay.

So, the past two years, we've gone to the treasurer's office and asked them to boast duties of guy coordinated with fiscal moved into the treasurer's office. You had a meeting with Barb, with several people, Becky and Al and yourself, where you went through the duties and said, these are really fiscal duties and log in the treasurer's office. I have no problems with filling these positions, but I do have an issue with the fact that you have all come up with, got the, finally found the information on the new position about what duties should remain in your office and what duties should go in the president's office. And I really think we need to consider this because these are fiscal positions, in my opinion, the only reason that it sort of fell into Your office, Kevin, created all the budget stuff.

It only did fiscal duties, right? Not position. Did some of the duties are fiscal? Right. Yep.

It's my understanding that everyone in that committee agreed to that. And I think before we fill a position, we should make sure we understand duties. And if those fiscal duties should be moved to the treasurer's office, they should go there. And then figure out what's happening. You know, so... You've made this a point past two years to bring that up. We have several meetings about it. So I think that the committee needs to really assess this. And I'm not sure we have the time today to look at that and understand all the ramifications of it, because there'll be ramifications in the treasurer's office, but I would like to make a motion to postpone this decision to next month.

Can I tell you what? what this is doing to my office right now by not having someone in this position.

But you're the one that one of those duties moved out.

There was a meeting or discussion with Al about a year or so ago, and we both agreed that there were some duties that are being performed by the county, deputy county administrator, you're right, that probably belong in the treasurer's office because of the fiscal part of it. And you're right. Sue was in that job for 24 years. So those duties just remained with her. With the duties that she had, she didn't have time to take on the deputy county administrator duties, which are participating in some of the negotiation work, the other things I do. So there were parts of that job description that could not be filled because she just didn't have the time to do it. because we agreed some of those duties did belong in the treasurer's office.

Well, I believe that if we're doing this, we should make sure that the duties are outlined to the person going to the job and everything evaluated. And they are. I don't think we should just make an automatic backfill because of that, because you're the one that raised getting these fiscal results. Now, there was one thing that I got that if I can pass it out to everyone, was that 75% of the duties are the kind It never happened. Mr. Raff?

It never happened. What never happened? The 75%, this is what you're stuck on, is 75% of the duties that Sue did would go to the treasurer's office. That did not happen.

Sue left. I'm not saying it should happen. I'm saying we should evaluate that now before we make a move. It may change who you put in that position. Cassie?

Was it that similar to what Al was talking about at the last meeting then? to maybe look at it from an overall view and see which duties could go which place and maybe then where was the person. I think that was about.

I can hear you. We've done. That's what we've done. I've met with the personnel officer.

And I'll never, nothing changed.

Right. We've met and discussed all the duties. We've gone through the proper.

Other things.

I don't think we're doing the proper.

Yes.

The other thing that I was thinking is that it may be. We saw what you were taking on. Maybe as supervisors, we wouldn't be able to say, well, we could help with that. Or we think you should, they shouldn't be coming to you for that duty. They should go to their committee chair or something else. Like maybe looking at what you've taken on, maybe we can help alleviate your help too. I mean, just since you're looking at the office and it's a different kind of change.

So now we're changing my job? No, no, no.

You're just acting that maybe there's something some extra stress they've just taken on that maybe we can help alleviate.

Because you said you're really busy. Well, I am really busy, and my office is really busy because they're down one full-time position. I'm not asking to change my duties or role. Yes, it's busy. Yes, I deal with the department, but that's my job description. That's what I was hired to do. I can't. If I'm just going to give you or the supervisors all of the direct reports to the do the department heads, you don't need it. Well, you do need a county administrator, but you're surpassing the county administrator as well.

Well, I guess that's not what I meant to say. What I'm saying is maybe you've taken on more than we expect you to take on. And maybe there's hope there that we can help you alleviate some of your pressure there. Because even if you get the new person or whatever we do, you still got to train people. So you're still going to be struggling in there. That was just saying, from an outside book, maybe there's something that you've taken on that we don't necessarily feel that you have to, so it could make it easier for you in transition or training or whatever. I'm not saying you're doing a bad job. If anything, I'm not saying that there's a way maybe we can help you. That was all I was offering. There's ways that we can help.

Scott? So Melissa just brought us her Her staffing layout for her apartment made a couple of very smart changes and saved us $17,000 something a year. And we're going to tell her, no, you just have to go over work and everybody's got to do double duty. She just laid out in three pages what the job is. And nobody's looking at that. More smooth.

Well, I have the job descriptions as well, if you'd like. I'm just not sure where we're going here.

So obviously, I've tried to read minutes, but most of this happened in my absence, I think. But I understand a person who was in Melissa's office with a significant amount of duties could be moved to controller. There's still purchasing, coordination, and all the other jobs. Also, what else is the next?

So are you talking about, Dave, are you referring to jobs and purchasing or aspects of purchasing that are? I'm considering duties in the office. Once you get the duties in the office, then you fill in what's needed for that. We're all done with those. But still, Melissa's brought this up two years. She wants those positions, those duties out of her office. So that's going to affect the workload on the county deputy town ministry and where you're going to call it.

Yeah.

I'm just saying that the board has got that information.

I never brought that request to the board. So I don't know where you got that information. It was a discussion I had with Cal.

And other people. Those duties belong in the treasurer's office.

Right. There was a discussion that some of those fiscal duties probably belong in the treasurer's office. And Al did agree on that. It didn't mean I wouldn't need a deputy position. It meant my deputy could actually perform duties that weren't currently being performed. I have a full workload for a deputy. I have a full workload for my purchasing coordinator. And I certainly have a full workload.

True. She might have left on us that why don't we, I think you've got the job description for the deputies.

Yeah. This is the draft that I've worked with the personnel.

I think that might be pretty descriptive of what she's...

It is, it's a full workload. I mean, the county admin deals with every department in the county.

Melissa, can I ask one? Just out of curiosity. If this goes through, then the work that is the so-called treasurer's office work, are we going to have to move that to the treasurer's office to be a position there?

No, because we discussed that that's where they would belong. It didn't mean, as it is right now, my deputy went to the treasurer's office. All of her duties that she performs would stay in county at McBrett, asking for a straight backfill.

Barb would be able to do those new duties and assisting the clerk.

Part of my job description and the deputy's job description is to oversee the purchasing part of the office.

So Barb would be able to stay there and mentor the clerk in the intricacies of doing the purchasing.

And honestly, I think the department could be stronger than ever and be a real asset to the county.

So she would be able to do those duties there. Sue was doing before, she would be able to fill them in this position.

And right now she's started to do that, but it's not fair to ask her to continue doing them because she's doing two jobs where the office is really struggling because we have this whole new workload and it's only been a week. But there's things that have to be done at certain times and we just don't have the manpower to do it.

Carolyn? I sense that we don't know enough and have it investigated enough really to be able to make a decision at this moment in time, at this moment. Because some of us have outside industry experience. We haven't looked at the duties of other administrators and other counties. And sometimes some things go more in the financial side than the administrator does sometimes.

It depends on the staff.

With the number of people we have, we should look at what an administrative role is that's doing both purchasing contract negotiation interventions, working with personnel.

It seems objectively very lean, but I want to know, I think it's lean. I'm not saying not that position. I'm saying let's review it to make sure we're making the right move and things have to be moved to the current office and you should go to the current office and then figure out what qualifications in person we need in that office.

And I think that's what I've done as a department head and county administrator. That's what I brought to you and that's what I brought to you last month.

Is everything that was to be moved with the treasurer's office that made sense and moved?

Nothing has.

Nothing has.

This retains those duties and should be in the treasurer's office by agreement of a number of people. That should be evaluated.

Who's the agreement of a number of people? Who had the authority to make that decision? I guess that's what keeps popping up. I think The thing that's confusing to me is, okay, this started back about two months ago. We had the meeting here when Alex was here as treasurer. He wanted to backfill a position that happened. Then we decided all of a sudden we were going to take and say, personnel, you don't have the authority to do the backfilling, okay? And Brian's concern was that there were positions that, you know, we didn't want to fill or whatever the case may have been. And that's fine. But do you realize that you changed that and there's not a damn backfill that you guys have denied until we come to this one? And we're making a big case out of this. That's ludicrous. We're not denying back, though. We're asking you honestly. Well, you are. You're trying to wait another month, Dave. You know, if you were just concerned about it. What you want to do is get back to micromanaging everything for the county administrator and for the department heads. And, you know, if you look at that, that's probably what got us into financial problems and things we have now is that we, not having the expertise and what their departments needed, tried to micromanage them because we think we know it all. Well, we don't. Okay? We don't. My experience, and I've had as much experience in things as you have at a different level, I don't have the knowledge to be able to tell every department head what they want to do within their departments. That's their responsibility that comes to us and tells us. We keep kicking this thing down the road. It's not fair to the county administrator. It's not for the treasurer's office who wants to get somebody in their position. And whatever responsibilities goes over to you, whatever those might be, I'm not sure what they are. Okay, I know what we said they are, but I don't, you know. if that's what you accept, if that's what needs to go there or whatever. But this is, this is, I can't explain, I guess, how I feel about this. This has gotten to the point where it seems more like the personality supervisors are wanting to have all control and not bring it up to the rest of the people. You know, you just said that we have a group made this decision. Well, who the hell was the group? It's supposed to be made in committees, not supposed to be made two or three people in the back room. And that's what it sounds like you're saying.

And to be clear to all the supervisors, I wasn't involved in any of those discussions that you were involved in. Nobody talked to me about restructuring my office. The small group of people decided that the treasurer's office was going to add another position and that I wasn't going to get my deputy. I was not involved in any of those decisions, which is, I don't think, appropriate.

Cassie?

I don't think I'm excluding anything based on Al's comments and Al's ideas and Al's experience of all the years is what made me start to question it because Al tried to present something last month and it went flat quick. And that's what's got me thinking about the question because we're supposed to be watching the budget. We're supposed to be thinking about how many people we hire. We're supposed to be trying to get it neat and efficient. And Al sounded like he had a good idea. And I think until we have time to flesh out if it is a good idea or it isn't a bad idea or it's a bad idea, That's the only reason that I'm hesitant to do it because that was a man with a hell of a lot of experience, and that was an idea he had, so that's making me pause to think about it. I'm not saying that I would never go for it, but I'm just saying that I just wanted to look at it.

So with all due respect, I have almost 20 years of experience in personnel and civil service and five years as county administrator. I think I know what to ask for.

It was just his comment about how things are financed.

This has become a personal thing.

Absolutely nothing.

That's not true.

That was a financial thing that he said.

And again, I wasn't involved in that conversation either. No. This discussion before he came to committee, I was not involved in.

I wasn't involved in any one either.

And that's when he came out with the idea to take some duties from my office. But never in that discussion was there me not to have a deputy county administrator. I don't know one state in this county. I'm sorry, one county in the state that doesn't have a deputy county administrator. It is a huge job. County administrators are huge jobs across the state. I don't understand why it's being diminished in that. I just don't understand, I guess.

Scott? I agree with Melissa. This really feels personal. I've only been here going on three years, but I have never in my time here seen the department had scrutinized as harshly as Melissa has been in the last few months. And it's telling what it is if it's not personal, somebody.

And if we have to go to an executive session, I welcome that because I don't know how to keep doing my job.

Charlie? I think we're out of process.

I mean, if

If you, the merging process, I don't think the process is to deny a backfill while we're keeping somebody overworked and overburdened and stressed. If you have an issue about the rules, that's a whole different thing than coming here for a backfill. I think you need to keep the function running as it is before you start deciding on whether or not you want to modify the function, which is a different process than filling a backfill and keeping it in operation with its integrity operating under, out of stress. So I don't know about the personality issue, but I do think operationally, you need to keep the operation running, fill the backfill, other issues you can deal with in a different way.

What part of that evaluation? Chairman?

All right. From an absolutely personal standpoint, I think that I think that that office requires deputy just because, you know, there's times when my experience, the County administrator is evaporated and there was nobody to do stuff except the chairman. I'm pretty adamant about having a deputy in every department right down the line. And I think that one thing, I think that Dave's point about what the duties are in this. I thought I was going to get something better out of the job description. That's a little bit, I think this has changed just the one I saw before.

That's the draft job description that Danielle's been working on.

Okay, so this is not the one that's there, right? It's not the current one. Okay. You might want to take out the physical conditions, certain positions a little bit. They all say that. Maybe they do, but I think that there's a need for an administrative I think that there's two decisions here, two discussions. One is you need a deputy. How are we going to appoint one? And B, what the heck is that person going to do?

And I guess that's where I don't understand because the deputy has already existed, already have a job description, it's been the same person, really, different titles for 24 years. So we don't need to come up with things for the person to do. I have a full job description for the person to do.

My feeling is that you haven't had a deputy in there because there were so many other duties that had to be performed and she couldn't be a deputy. So therefore, I think if you want a deputy, we've got to modify the duties.

Which is what you have on your on your lab. That's the modified job description for the deputy county administrator.

And I'm trying to sit here with these two documents, this new job description and what you've got. So the past deputy. And it looks like this one doesn't allow half the stuff to be done.

So that's, I guess Daniel can speak on what a job spec is, but those job descriptions do not state every duty that the person does. They're extremely general.

I understand that. They do. I'm not trying to argue here, but to do all this stuff, I don't think you can do a lot of the stuff that's in the job description because you just won't have time.

That's what I'm saying. It's a big job.

That was the point before.

It's a big job, and that's county admin is a critical part of county operations.

I absolutely understand that. It just seems like if we're continuing business as usual, you're still not going to have it yet.

I'm not going to have a deputy to the role, to the level that I would like. You're right. Because I do feel that there's probably three duties that could probably be removed and put in the treasurer's office.

Which kind of negates the savings to have to hire somebody in there to do it, right?

And that's why I'm saying we'll just take it on. I'm not asking, you know, for, I don't think the treasurer is asking for another position right now.

No, unless we have to take on more duties.

Right.

Thank you. But right now, With everything her office is doing, you know, the draft, you feel comfortable with that, staying in that office, and it's not going to impair the treasurer's office, right?

No, it's not going to work closely with all the stuff that we need.

It just means nothing changes.

It's going to be 24 years. Okay. But if you do decide that some of those jobs do need a treasurer's office, then, yeah, we're going to need a person, too.

We're going to need a person. Which brings me back to where my original comment was, is that there's too much stuff in your office and it needs to be moved. So maybe you do need to move some of the finance up and we do need to hire an extra person. That's what the question is, is there too much trying to be done out of your office? And if we move some there, will there still be too much? I mean, that's, yeah, take an overall view and make a real thought about what needs to go where and how many people we do need.

I've taken a little offense because there's been a lot of thought put into it. I've worked for the personnel officer. I've worked with the staff in my department. We've had conversations with Al. I think Becky may have been in one to try to figure out the duties and where they should go. And so there has, all that work has been done already. All I'm asking is for a straight back bill of a deputy County administrator to then later on if we feel that there's still too much in my office and i mean i and we need to transfer some of those you know duties over what i'm saying is i'm willing to sacrifice some of the duties of a deputy county administrator that i have never have so therefore i'm not missing it right i've never had that assistance to that level so i'll continue doing without so the question the question i brought up is not that back to the deputy

I want to make sure we got those duties out there and we'll put them where they belong so they can use a county administrator or a deputy for what she's supposed to be using.

I still need to fill this deputy county administrator. I don't know who's going to do these duties. As of right now, I can't have an additional 40 hours of work put on my office. without the person to do it. And I can't have one full-time person absorbing two jobs. I can't.

I'm not disagreeing with what you said, but let's pull those duties out now and figure out where they're going to go. We can do that, sure.

But then I need to fill my deputy county administrator job to do that. And then if we want to take some of those duties, which we would discuss amongst us, it doesn't come to the board usually. We would discuss if some of the duties, if Becky, the treasurer, feels that she needs to add a position to her staffing pattern, then she'll bring it to the committee and ask for that.

And we've already sat down.

We did. Went through all the duties and decided, but then it didn't happen. Right. Because I don't know where that conversation is going, but I think some of it was back when Al was here. to add a full-time position, promote someone in the office, and then it started to turn to and not fill the deputy county administrator position. Well, they're two different departments. They're two different departments. So that's why he withdrew that short discussion.

So I guess you're saying that, you know, obviously you're not opposed to filling it. Well, why don't we just vote? Why don't we, why does the committee vote to fill the position? And then while the petition is being filled, she can be working on the other stuff to take out and break out what needs to be broken out. And the position's filled. And we're accomplishing everything that needs to be accomplished.

I mean, we all do over, right? We all do above and beyond. Most departments are going to tell you they do above and beyond. So if my department has to continue doing above and beyond, if it saves money by not putting an extra person in the treasurer's office, then my department will do that. I'm not asking to change that. I'm just asking to backfill my deputy county administrator role. which has been budgeted at a savings for next year.

I have a comment about this, and I think this is a forgotten bonus to this, is what Barb does for purchasing is critical to this county. And to have her expertise, to be able to mentor a new clerk so that person also can purchase safe is a huge bonus for the county. So we're not losing that. skill that she has in doing that critical job for the county. And I personally think that if we do this backfill now, if there are amendments or tweaks to this program as presented today, then we reserve the right to do them at a later date. Right now, we're not moving anywhere. We have to do something about this now. I think we have to go. I do think it warrants a further or deeper look at this right now, but not today. It's not going to happen today, and she does need to have a deputy today. That's where I feel we are.

It sounds like you're all saying the same thing. We're understaffed, and we're understaffed, so we shouldn't be holding on being understaffed while there's a vacancy that we know we're going to fill, get work done today that's going to just build more difficulty in the future if we don't build it back filled today. That's what it feels like to me.

So what time frame do you think you can review the duties to figure out what has to go where?

We've already done.