Remarks by Erin Enouen
350 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 14
“That was a hold. There's a planning board meeting that night, so that's why we did Sunday. We do not have a meeting on that day.”
“Okay, I'm going to call the Town of Rochester Town Board October workshop meeting to order. If you could all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.”
“Supervisor Nowlin. I am here. So tonight we have on our agenda a public hearing for Local Laws B. So that's where we'll start the meeting. That is a local law that is amending the zoning code Kennel chapter. We've had this public hearing open at a few meetings. So I'm gonna go ahead and open the public hearing for Local Law Z of 2026. Is anyone here to speak on the local law amending the kennel regulations tonight? Yes.”
“Is there anyone else that would like to speak on local law? I will entertain a motion to close the public hearing.”
“Any second? Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstained? Motion carries. So I had accidentally put this service recognition at the top of the agenda. That is actually going to be at our next meeting. I had both agendas open at once. And so we do the acceptance of the agenda. So I'll make a motion that the town board accepts the agenda as prepared by the town supervisor with the following amendments that we will be moving the acceptance of the abstract till the end of the meeting so the board can audit the bills. And I'm requesting that you consider authorizing me to submit a grant…”
“Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstained? Motion carries. So first, we have two departments are here with us tonight to discuss budget. First up, we have the building department code enforcement, and we're joined by our code enforcement officer, Keith Rusa. Thank you for joining us. Does everyone have your budgets? So for the board in front of you, I did like a little, little, I did a cost analysis to analyze permit fees. And that's what you have in front of you. The spreadsheet for that is also in the backup folder for the board. So you can see the... the formulas I used in…”
“That's already factored into the straight costs. So I just wanted to share that. So I did indicate with the department, we had some ideas for how some of the fees should be restructured in terms of knowing that those fees aren't currently covering the work that goes into them. So I'm going to work on those numbers a little bit and have a working draft on Sunday when we look at it. But I'm not going to raise the revenue from the department revenue for those permits more than 10% in our budget projections.”
“Well, I did the 2026 because the department is operating very differently from how it did in 2025. Current last year, the department mostly just process.”
“Well, it's not right now because we had to catch up on fire safety inspection. So there's been a spike actually Um, so then we just wanted to look at expenditures and we're going to be looking at the detail which is on each Fifty-five. Okay, so I already found something right off the bat. So equipment should be $3,000. I believe. Hold on. Let me pull up the Department of Office.”
“Oh, I turned yours to where we're at. It's that. Yeah, it's that one. Okay. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Okay, so the department request was. HAB-Masyn Moyer- For 300 can you keep talking to a minimum in the audience, please I can't if you need to just if you need to talk, you can go outside. HAB-Masyn Moyer- and HAB-Masyn Moyer- The department request was for 300 on that one, as long as we expand what we have budgeted for this year. anything that we, if we're not going to extend the 3000 that we have this year, we will move that forward so that we get what we need because we still have to get the radios…”
“Was there anything else that, so the 300 is supposed to cover, it looks like a small desk.”
“And has anything else come up since you guys submitted the?”
“um so then we go into we're at the 8664.4 these are contractual services um so we put in some of this the department didn't request that i put in um so we because we um had discussed the uniforms and it wasn't HAB-Masyn Moyer- wasn't in here, so I wanted to make sure that we had that because we have staff that won't have anything. HAB-Masyn Moyer- So we have 600 for uniforms. HAB-Masyn Moyer- office supplies. HAB-Masyn Moyer- 750 it looks like we're going to be more than that this year, but I when I spoke with the department, they felt like they'd be able to keep the office supply. purchases…”
“So the professional services that we that is for structural engineering consultants for the building department. The building department can charge escrow for applications, but if they need the opinion of a structural engineer for a violation or for a fire safety inspection, that is not something we can charge escrow for. It has to come out of the department budget. And that has come up a few times with some of the more complicated structures and businesses to really do a thorough inspection on those. Do you feel like 4,000 is enough?”
“That also includes the... process server.”
“Software, that's our contractual software costs for GovWell. So that's what it'll cost. Actually, that 600, I think, should just be deleted. Because I think I had added uniforms in, and that's not. So that 600 is going to turn to a zero. Education conference, we budgeted 1,000, hoping that we'll have another attendee at the conference. Correct. And then a little for any other sort of online courses and mileage.”
“So this is when the code enforcement vehicles were both out of commission.”
“It's in Central Garage. Postage fees, this is to, as it has gone up significantly, the reason being is that the department is utilizing certified mail, which it had not been in the past.”
“Yeah, and with the return receipt, it's over $7 per letter.”
“And we do think, so what you see in the budget so far year to date is as of May, that's the postage as of May, because the postage billing is two months. No, September, August, it's July. Our postage is two months behind in the budget. And this budget only goes to the end of this document only goes to the end of September. So that's it for those expenditures. I did want to just ask, Keith, for you to maybe give an overview of how the department is going. Right now, I budgeted for staffing of basically four full-time positions. We are about to launch GovWell, so we'll have a little bit of time…”
“In terms of the staffing levels, how do you feel the four full-time positions works for?”
“And in the analysis sheet, we roughly estimated, so the number of violations is on this handout and it's also in the spreadsheet that I shared with the board. And I show the weekly hours and then the percentage on permits. So the remaining percentage there would be what's going to violations. And in the case of the zoning coordinator, that time is for FOIL responses. And then the remainder of the time for the clerk is actually the time it takes to send everything that's being done to the assessor. So I think we have an opportunity to create an efficiency there, but that currently, that's what…”
“Yes. So yes. It varies. Like there are some weeks where it's like 25%. And then if there's not a foil, of course, then so we kind of did a middle ground there.”
“Did you have anything else you want to share with us, Kink?”
“And I currently think I have budgeted for if another tablet, if so, if you guys were interested in that for, I know there'll be more field work.”