Town Board - Regular Meeting

Um I The ball. All right. All right.

Okay. Good evening everyone. I'm going to call our meeting to order. This is the March 12th uh Town of Rochester Town Board business meeting. If you could all stand for the pledge to the flag. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Councilman Alva here. Councilman Coleman here. Councilman Snees here. Councilman W here. Supervisor Noan, I'm here. So, first um I just want to welcome everyone. I am going to encourage those who are standing to um sort of come this way. It's okay to stand next to the board on this side. Um I just want to be aware of us not blocking the the uh ingress and egress door. So, you can come a little closer to us.

And there's some picnic tables if you'd like to sit. Um the occupancy of the building is 150. So we do have people keeping tabs on that. If we reach occupancy, we do have to adjourn the meeting. Okay. So just order. You were given 72 hours notice for the meeting. You had time to change the venue. Why didn't you? I It is not time for the public to address the board at this. It may not be the time, but I asked a question and it's a valid question and I'm a taxpayer. I don't know what you're talking and a former member of that board. Um, you need to think

you you need to you need this is very inappropriate. This this is a town of Rochester town board meeting that was scheduled in January. I the public is welcome to come to our meetings. This is the meeting location and if we reach capacity we will have to adjourn the meeting. Okay. So, the first item on our agenda is the acceptance of the agenda. So, I'd like to make a motion that the Town of Rochester Town Board accepts the agenda as prepared by the town supervisor with the following amendments. Um, we will add a resolution to um authorize the um uh town supervisor to sign the supplemental agreement and the resolution authorizing the uh um amendment to the funding of the Bridge New York project, plus three additional discussion items of the um ambulance contracts and two ECC uh discussion items. Do I have a second?

Any discussion? Can we move the public comment um to follow through? Sure. Uh does the board have an issue with moving the public comment? Okay.

Um so we've got the four amendments then. So all in favor I opposed abstain. Motion carries. So, for everyone that didn't catch that, we're going to start with a um presentation. Then, we're moving the public comment portion uh immediately following that so that um we can let everyone who is here to address the board address the board. But first, um, I prepared a short hopefully 15minute presentation to that will hopefully clarify some questions that that people might have and answer some general questions. Um, we won't be able to talk specifics about uh specific properties tonight. That's not the role of the board, but I thought maybe just we can break down some of the um the facts about what's going on right now. So, um, okay, great. So, I'd like to welcome everyone. Um I you are our uh constituents, our neighbors, residents, community members, and we welcome you to our meeting. Um I want to start by saying that I also got an assessment letter in the mail. My assess value went up from 275,000 to 620,000. I felt the same sticker shock uh when I saw that letter. Um and I just want to reiterate that tonight is not about the town board against you, the town. Um it's about making sure that we all understand the process and what process that you have to make sure that your

assessed value is accurate. Um and that's what hopefully we will all um leave here today with that knowledge. Um

so first I want to share the timeline of this project. So this is a um planned legal process a project that has been in the works um for uh four years. Um we in 2023 is when the town board appropriated the funds to fund the hiring of GAR associates to um do the majority of the reassessment project. So that was in the a very public budget process and was adopted in the 2024 budget. Um, in 2024, the board again in public meetings, we interviewed Gar Associates in public meetings. We had them come to a couple of meetings and then we ended up um executing the contract with them for a three-year um reval process. In 2025, um in October is the first townwide mailing that we did, and that was the property inventory data mailers that were sent to all property owners. There was a time period in those mailers to take a look at what was on the property card and contact GAR or the assessor's office to correct any data that was in there. And then in 2026, um we have uh probably talked about this project at every single town board meeting.

Can you speak it a little louder, please?

Sure, I'll try. Thank you. Um and in uh February we held an information session. We only had 30 people attend that information session and then uh two weeks ago is when the disclosure notices were mailed. So it's this has been um many years that we have been um going through this uh process. So, I also wanted to address why why we might conduct a reassessment, why the board might go ahead and give the green light to to do a townwide reassessment. And um there's a couple reasons. One, um there is state mandate that all properties be assessed at a uniform percentage of value. Um this is where the equalization rate comes in. Um when we are thinking about how county and school taxes are distributed correctly across municipalities. The main reason why we wanted to do this is for um equity and fairness. We all know that there had been a lot of changes um in our community uh in terms of property um over the last six years, particularly since uh the COVID pandemic. And because of that, some property owners are paying more than their fair share of taxes and some property owners are paying less than their fair share of taxes. So, what this the goal of a rebal is to reset the fairness meter. Um, and that's really what this is all about. It's about accuracy, equity, and fairness of distribution. So, roles and responsibilities, who does

what. So, I want to make sure that it's really clear. We welcome you. We welcome hearing from the town, from constituents, but there is nothing that the town board can do tonight to change any assessed value of any property. We do not have authority to set assessments. So, I just want to make that clear that the board tonight there's like no action we can take to um to take any responsive action to anything that you say with regard to assessments. So, what we do is we set the the budget for the town. Um all taxing districts are responsible for their own levies. These are separate pro uh processes. The school sets their levy. The fire district sets their tax levy. The town board sets the tax levy. So that is the total town budget minus all non- tax revenue and that is our tax levy. It is not connected to the assessed value in terms of the amount of taxes that we're raising. So it's its own amount of money and that it's not tied to assessed value in terms of how the levy is set. We also like I mentioned before we execute contracts and we are the appointing authority but we cannot set or interfere with your individual assessment. In fact we have the same recourse that you do if we have an issue with something. Um the assessor is the one that oversees the uh reassessment equity project. So that's what we're doing right now. They also oversee all assessments in town. They review property data. They keep all

the property records. They determine the market value. Um and the assessor publishes the tentative role and the final role. The assessor does not determine the tax levy. So the assessor what the assessor does does not have an impact on the actual tax levy. So this is just um a way of thinking of what the assessed value related to um taxes is. So a higher assessed value does not directly equal higher taxes. So those two things can that can happen but it's not it's not like a oneto-one relationship. So when we are doing a townwide reval everyone's value goes up and the thing that's changing is the piece of the pie that the tax levy that your property represents in the overall tax levy. So, as you can see, this is just a visual, but on the left, we have what I'm calling outdated assessments or current assessments. And then after a reval, you would see on the right, it's the same colors correspond to different percentages. So, some of them get smaller, some of them get bigger, and some of them stay the same. Um and um it's about your relative slice of the pie, not the overall number of the pie. So um for example, this year or uh for what we are now, the total assessed value for the town could be $1 billion, right? After the reval,

it's could be $2 billion. but it's the relative percentage of what your property represents in the overall um uh property value is what determines what your tax rate is going to be. So this is just another way of understanding it. So just going off of that, it's we're we should be understanding that there's a baseline rule. So, this isn't about the number that your new assessed value is going to be. It's going to be about how it compares to the average assessed value. So, some people um might see that your value went up 20%, others 30 and others 40. So, this is just a simple way of understanding,

right? Yes. Yeah. So, um, another way of thinking about it is the increase of the market value. So, if you're looking at your market value, for example, my market value, my assessed value was 275. My market value was uh 579.

My new market value will be 620. So, I'm using these numbers as examples, but it's really about the rel your relative percentage. So comparing what your percentage increases to the average. So if you're under the average, your slice of the pie gets smaller. If you are at average, your slice of the pie stays the same. And if you are above that average, then your slice of the pie is bigger. But not it's not every not everyone is bigger. We are all coming up at the same time. So,

the other thing I wanted to do is just um there have been a couple of uh larger rumors that have I've heard of and one um is with regard to a class action lawsuit um against the city of Troy or Gar Associates regarding a 2012 reval um project. And I wanted to clarify, we could find no evidence of any class action lawsuits. What there are, what does happen, and this happens every year in every municipality, but particularly after a townwide reval, this happens. There were aiary um settlement agreements, which the $11 million was of um assessed value going down in a total of $11 million. the same thing or you just say the same thing.

Not not a um I would like to say this is the town board's time whether you disagree with what's being said right now. We will be yielding to the public after this presentation, but if the public would hold their comments while this is happening for public comment. Thank you so much.

So the point is there was not an 11 million payout in any um class action lawsuit. These are settlement agreements that happen after in at the end of a due process um in terms of uh contesting your assessed value. And the city of Troy has a $3.2 billion um at that time had $3.2 billion of assessed value. So that was a relatively uh small amount of um change in assessed value that some property owners saw. Um, also the rumor that this is an illegal tax hike. So there's not there's no tax hike happening right now. What's happening is uh a revaluation of town property. Like I said, that does not cause a tax increase. And this is a statemandated process that is here to ensure um equity. So now I just want to turn to like what should you do if you got that letter and you feel that your assessed value is inaccurate. There is a process um that you have in order to address that. So the number one is everyone got the mailing um that that was a draft basically. So that mailing was a draft. It said after all this data collection um here's where we're at and there's instructions on that mailing for how to um address the issue if you don't think the information is accurate. So number one to think about is how what I said before like how does your new assessed value compare to the rest of the town because it doesn't necessarily mean that

your piece of the pie is going up. Second, if you're looking at that new market value and you really think it's not right and you don't know what data that's based on, you can call GAR and you you can also call the town. let you guys know that you can also call the town assessor's office and you can clarify um what you think it should be and I've seen this happening all week. It's been the assessor's office has been very helpful and has been making adjustments all week.

So the deadline to submit to GAR the application for an informal review is March 31st. You may also up through March 31st, actually up until, you know, into May, you can visit the assessor's office to take a look at what your assessed value is and see if it's inaccurate and if adjustments need to be made. So, the deadlines for March 20th and March 31st, that's just for for GAR. Um then after um this process, there's the property inventory is ready for public inspection. That's usually around April 1st. Um since we're in a reval, those dates might be a little um later because um it's a little earlier and a little later because we did the letters of disclosure. On May 1st, the tenative assessment role is filed. So that's a public document and once that comes out that's when you can still visit the assessor's office. Um but if you are unhappy with what that final assessment is going to be that's the next that's when you go to the next step of your due process which is grievance day. So grievance stay is an opportunity to address a board a p of public officials of your peers and have them hear your case about why your assessed value might be wrong.

Um that is the second Tuesday or the fourth Tuesday of May. It's a public meeting and we expect that it could be a a lot this year because that's what happens in a revalure. Um July 1st is when the final assessment rule is filed. That's what your tax um that's what that would be the role that the taxes are based on. So the first bill that would apply to that would be the September 1st school bill. July 31st though is um so if you go to grievance day and you don't like what happens at grievance day, the next step is to do um the small claims assessment review. So that's a the further step in the process to have your assessed value addressed. Um so I also just want to again reiterate you are welcome to be here. We are will stay as long as we need to hear from everyone. But

coming here and telling us about your assessed value will not change the your assessed value in the same way that following the process that I just outlined will. So that you know if you're here and you haven't yet contacted the assessor's office, I encourage you to do that. Okay. Um, so number one, if you haven't done that yet and you if you're not happy with that number or if you have questions about that number and you haven't done that yet, I really encourage you to do that because we won't be able to do anything um for you at this time.

Um, the other thing is is that I would encourage everyone to get accurate information out there. So, um, if you didn't or if your neighbors don't know to call the assessor's office or if they don't know how to navigate the GAR website, that's I think we should all be um helping to disseminate this information and make sure that everyone is aware of the deadlines and the process. And I'm just here to say that I want assessed values to be accurate. If something is wrong, I want you to reach out to the assessor. I want you to file for that the application for the informal review before GAR. We do not want anyone to um not to be paying more than their fair share of taxes just like we don't want anyone to be paying less than their fair share of taxes. I think

so. Why did you hire guard? So we will how much it cost? Point of order. Point of order.

Okay, it's my Charlotte. It's my job to keep order. I'm almost done and then we will open it up to comment. Um, so my next slide is just uh again, you can take a picture of this. This is what was on the mailers. If you don't agree with that um letter or if you have questions about it, um here is the information for um contacting GAR. You can also call the assessor's office directly or visit the office during our open office hours. Um their number is below. And that is it. So I'm going to stop sharing and open it up. So, first before we actually um I'd like to set the ground rules for a public comment portion of the meeting. Um I the tensions are already high. People are already um calling out of order, yelling at the board. So, I just want to we are here to listen to you. Okay? This is a formal meeting. So, it feels a little stiff in that way. But what we when we open to hear from the public, there are some ground rules that we have.

One, you are here to address the board. Okay? We won't tolerate big back and forth conversations among the public because what we want is for your comments to reach the board and that is also part of the public record. So, we need to be able to do that and you're here to address us. Um, the second thing is that we do not engage in a back and forth discussion during this time. I know that that's challenging. It can be challenging for us, too. Um, but what we do is we allow you to talk. If you have questions, you may ask questions. we all are constantly taking notes so that at after after this portion of the meeting we then take the time to um answer questions. So that's something that we implemented that we found helps keep things um really straight and clear. But I just want you to know if you're asking us questions, we won't answer them right now. But if you stay um after everyone has spoken and you want to hear if the board has answers to your questions, we will do so in the next agenda item. Okay. So, we did have a signup sheet. So, we're going to start with that. Then, if you didn't sign up on the signup sheet and you'd like to speak, we will give you the opportunity to do that. But first, we'll get through everyone that signed up. And um there is a microphone right here. So, you can either speak where you're at or you step up and stand at the microphone. And uh again, please address your to the board.

I just ask if there's anybody that is reading anything into the record if they could um email that to me. Um I I'm looking here. It's going to be about 28 people talking. It would be very helpful um to make sure we have the accurate information. If you're going to be speaking of a letter that you've written, if you email it to me. Um the first one is Clayton Hogan. Thank you Erin. Thanks for that presentation. Appreciate it. Did give some information. Unfortunately didn't address a lot of the questions I got.

I can what I said was I thank Darren for uh for the presentation although I probably didn't answer a lot of question that folks here have. Um so I'm going to make this statement not to incite anyone um or lay blame but to discover for the public how did we end up here? How did we end up at a meeting with so many people? This is very unusual for the town. Um, I know it's not a question to answer, but unfortunately in order for discovery, I have to present these questions. You don't necessarily have to answer them.

Um, town was recently reszoned. I have property that was changed from private forest to residential greater than 10. What was the reason for the reszoning and how does that associate to this reeval? I think everybody here would agree that an fair increase is needed to support the sometimes unnecessary government and it subsequent costs. So saying fair is one thing, but what these letters are stating to these folks is not fair and equitable. It hurts. It may hits in people's stomachs. It hurt a lot of people, especially those that don't have the knowledge, like you stated and showed of how to handle this process for grievance. So, that's one of those things where maybe this problem shouldn't have been the cart in front of the horse. Maybe it should have been addressed with knowledge given out to the folks in a mailer outside of this mailer. And maybe that would have helped. I've listened to people with fixed incomes, elderly, lifelong residents, some of which establish the town laws that we currently have. They're telling me a 400 800% proposed increases. If that doesn't make your heart stop, I don't know what will. I mean, that's that's it's beyond ridiculous. And this, I feel, is all because we failed to get in front of this 100% assessment. How did we get to to this point without realizing that we were getting to this point? I mean, during the four-year process before the town agreed to contract Gar, did anybody ask Gar associates about their proprietary algorithms that several people have called Gar and then told that that's what they're using to compound these figures? Did anybody ask does it consider things

like terrain, location, public services like garbage pickup, fire hydrants, uh, electric access, water? Does it address the condition of people's homes, the age of the homes? I I don't know if anybody asked that, but was it was never presented to anybody out here. We don't know. We don't know what's considered. We don't know how to find comparable evaluations because there's no way of telling until the assessments go in because you can't use last year's figures. You you have to use the new figures because those are the numbers that are being used. So, how do you do that? I consider myself a pretty smart person and I still can't figure it out. Navigating GAR's website almost impossible. Yeah.

All right. You try to type that in. Don't go to a search engine because it's going to send you to Gar's actual business site and you can't log in from there. You can't create a login. There's nothing available. So, you have to contact Gar. When you contact Gar, hang on to something because you don't know what you're going to get. If you're going to get somebody that's going to be helpful or somebody that's going to be dismissive, that's a problem. That's something that probably should have been asked. What's their resource value to people that call in? But we once again the cart in front of the horse. um town at local at the recent YouTube video had a gar associate who made the statement that the company uses assumptions to make assessments. Wait a minute. When you're dealing with people's livelihoods, the last thing you want some company to do is to assume value because that can have a huge impact on whether a person can survive or have to leave. Are they going to eat hot dogs or are they going to eat hamburger? Now, during that video, it was also stated that the town had been broken down into neighborhoods. Okay, what are the neighborhoods? Who made the classifications? What was used to determine the boundaries? Was zoning law changed to reflect the need for neighborhoods? Is one neighborhood more valuable? And if not, why have a neighborhood? There's got to be some correlation to the the need for neighborhoods. That's the only reason you would establish that is in order to establish a higher value one place versus another onto another problem. How do we go about seeing everybody's assessment? How do we see somebody out here that doesn't have the ability to do the research themselves? How can I help them? Because

you said we need to get it out, but let everybody know that, hey, this happened. I'm not trying to pinpoint you. I'm just saying as generalization. How do we get access for ourselves to help these people? You can't leave them stranded. Pretty soon the tax bill is going to come and they're just not going to pay the bill. Now, land owners that go to the assessor's office or they file through guard, they're being required to prove that they shouldn't have to give as much of their hard-earned money as is being requested just so they can own property or a home that may have been passed down from generation to generation and their hard work to stay here. Now, you shouldn't have to prove it. It should be up to Gar to provide the people with the proof that then they can make an educated decision. Once again, cart in front of the horse. Nobody discussed this. Nobody asked. Nobody asked any large tract owners, homeowners, retirees, fixed income folks. Nobody can any of us. Nobody asked us a thing. We just found out about it regarding the letter that was sent out back in October. I didn't receive one. I had to file through Guard to get the paper. And once I got it, it reflected from a Google Earth view which showed a quen hut. I had to look up what a quansen hut really the definition of was. And I sat here as the chair of the zoning board of appeals. And I'm like, "Wait a minute. I know what they're doing. They're looking at my temporary greenhouse from an aerial view and they're saying that that's an out building." No, it's not. It's really not. It's not right. You're You're making people sick to their stuff. Not you, but Gar in this whole process without the review that was necessary before you established the contract with GAR, it's making people sick for their stomachs

spot here. Now, town board have to keep one thing in mind, and I'll close with this. Land is only valuable to the town if the people here can afford to pay the taxes. Otherwise, it has no value. Amen.

Okay. Now, because people are selling, they're further advancing the cost of things through a title called rural gentrification. And if nobody's familiar with that, please look it up because it's going to lead you down a rabbit hole of some sort and it's going to show the next step that happens after this. And everyone at this table can kiss themselves goodbye because they're not going to be able to afford your property. It's called super gentrification. Okay. So, keep that in mind. When when all of this is happening through a lack of communication, we end up with this crowd. We end up here right now. Now, you said there's a grievance board. I do have one last question. Who currently is on the grievance board? Well, several questions. Who's on the grievance board? How many openings are there? And how does somebody here get put on the board? because there is a lack of people willing to step up for town boards. Okay, we all know that. Thanks for your time. Uh good evening everyone.

Evening evening. Uh my name is Miles. Um I wrote down few thoughts hoping that uh cooler heads can prevail. Um I'll keep this simple. I think most people here understand that reassessment itself is part of how towns update values and I don't think residents are arguing that values should stay frozen forever. The concern is whether these new numbers truly reflect where the market is now, especially after what this town has experienced over the last few years. During the pandemic, let's face it, the town became a boom town for real estate. Demand surged, inventory tightened, and many people from the city were able to relocate here while still keeping city-based jobs through remote working. That specific pressure is no longer operating with the same intensity it had during those peak years. I think what many residents are asking for is simple transparency. What sales period drove these assessments? How much weight was giving to those unusually volatile years and how parcel specific real realities are being considered in a rural town like ours. things like slope,

zoning changes, septic limitations, and the fact that no two parcels are the same. In my own case, uh my wife and I, we owned a vacant 30 acres that was reassessed substantially over 1,50%. even though the zoning changed from R2 to R10 which actually reduces the development potential. That raises a basic question many people here probably share. How are these practical realities being weighed against market assumptions? People are willing to accept difficult numbers when they believe those numbers reflect reality. What creates frustration is when the process becomes really hard to understand and when paper values begin to tell a story about this town many residents know is only partly true. Because according to these numbers, many people suddenly look really wealthy on paper.

While the financial reality for many families remain something different. My point is this market value is very complicated especially in our town and the reassessment must reflect that complication. A proprietary algorithm must not be the tool for this job. Thank you.

J Martin. Good evening.

I'm Jay Martin. I live at 18 to path road and I like both of you here experienced sticker shock when I open that envelope. You heard words tonight like uh fair, honorable, equitable and so on. And I think there's a lot to doubt here. Um some of these valuations I believe are arbitrary and whimsical. I did visit the uh assessor's office. He was not there. His assistant was. I told her my sad boy. And she said, "Oh, he'll get back to you." Well, my house went I guess I'm a half millionaire. My house went from 380,000 to $555,000. And I never put a coat of paint on it. How did that come? I get the call from the woman who is Cesar's uh assistant and she says, "Well, he decided to lower you down from 555 to 535,000." Now, that's why I say some of this is whimsical, arbitrary, and capricious. Without a visit to my place, all of a sudden, I'm not quite half the millionaire I was. But just over a phone call that was knocked down few thousand dollars.

There are unknowns that never show up from the satellite view. I happen to have a 50-foot uh right of way that has been deed to central Hudson that took place some years ago. There used to be a 50 foot rideway, 25 ft to each side of the center line. Central Hudson decided to go the standard of the industry to a 100 ft ride away.

Well, that 100 ft right away. 50 here, 50 there. But 50 on my side, goes within 8 ft of my mom's bedroom window. I only had 8/10 of an acre there. But the 20 uh the 50 feet by 400 feet long denies me the use of approximately onethird of an acre. I cannot put a structure on it. I cannot put a pool on it because it legally deeded the central Hudson gas and electric that has come through the years but most recently the increase to the so-called standard of the industry. And if you want to see a lot of mud right now, they're going up and down there putting these new uh metal poles and the substation which was decommissioned has now been cut into scrap metal and that's no longer there. But that's an unknown that was uh oblivious to the the gar company and anybody else. There's certain other unknowns that people don't uh mention often enough. whether you have a wet land on your property where you may not build because of federal regulations. Was any of this any of this considered in guar evaluation? I really curious how you evaluate or how one evaluates a place without even stepping foot on the problem.

So this is all been done via satellite as was mentioned. that they were concerned about not only the increase but the amount of increase as that gentleman had an increase in his woodlock. I have a small woodlock. It went and it's been in the family for years. It went from a $2,000 evaluation to a $17,000 evaluation. That's about an 800% increase.

That's not sustainable. I think we have to have strong community support. I don't know what we as a community will do. I don't know if there's anything we can do, but surely something must be looked at, not from binoculars, but from the microscope and see what's going on. Something is not right. Otherwise, these good friends and neighbors wouldn't be here tonight.

You can ch again. There are several points I would like make and several questions I have regarding this property assessment. I'm D. How Calvin Du and I live at 191 Samsonville Road and I used to sit on the roof. We have an assessment. What does it do? We pay him $90,480 per year as a full-time employee. He became full-time in 2025. Prior to this, he was a part-time employee from 2021 to 2024. From 2011 through 2021, the equalization rate in this town remained at 100%. From what I have read, it is the assessor's responsibility to maintain the 100% equalization rate. Under Mike Dunham, who was a part-time assessor for this town, he worked from February of 2015 through December of 2021. He maintained this 100% sessment rate. From the time Mr. Baraka took over. From 2022 to 2025, the equalization rate dropped from 100% to 53. I could quote from the law, but I'm not going to. I have it printed here. Um, what it part of it what it says is the assessor is required to keep the physical descriptions or inventory and value estimate of every parcel current in order to maintain a uniform role. Each year, your assessor will need to analyze all of the properties and municipality in the municipality to determine which assessment needs to be changed. Where assessments need to be changed, in some cases, your assessor will be able

to increase or decrease the assessments of a neighborhood group or group of properties by applying real estate market trends to those properties. This is possible only when the assessment to be changed are at a uniform level other than the municipality stated level of assessment. In other cases, the assessor will need to conduct a physical inspection for all reappraisals of property. Every assessing unit should be kept should be keeping all assessments at a fair and uniform level each year. The assessment role shows assessments and appropriate exemptions. Every year the assessor makes a tentative assessment role available for public inspection. After the board of assessment review has acted on the assessment complaints and orders any changes, the assessor finalizes the tenative assessment role. Each year during his tenure, Jeremy Baraka knew the equalization rate had dropped during his tenure. Why wasn't he working on a on reassessments each year so we wouldn't have to hire an outside agency? This is neglect and incompetence. How was Gar Associates chosen to do this job and at what cost to the taxpayers in addition to Mr. Baraka's $90,480? As a taxpayer and resident who promptly pay my taxes, I'm asking my assessment alone shows inaccuracy, unfairness, and inequity.

I have a lot in the back of my house. It's 1.07 acres. It's been in the family for 90 years at a 53% rate. Okay. Explain to me how $900 went to 17,000.

$17,000 and I am on social security. How is this equitable? I do not feel this assess this reassessment is accurate, fair, or equitable in any way. Mr. Martin stole my line. It's arbitrary and capriccious and it's illegal. Because of this process, because of this, this process and by the town board should be further investigated into the extent of unfairness and inequity. This town board should pause this reassessment. The process should be stopped. you, not you as a board today. I sat on the board when Jeremy was hired. I did. He was hired part-time with Marvel Town and maybe Rosenale and we didn't pay any $90,000 because we couldn't afford it then and we can't afford him now. He's not doing his job. L. Kelly Johnson daily.

She's not taking notes. No, she's doing something. Hey, order. Hey, we're it's we're here to listen to the public. Yes. She's not free. Hi. So, a lot of what you said are right there. A lot of what you said. Yes. And you go, girl. I was hoping for all of them.

Well, you know, I did want to say you made a a statement about uh inheriting property. That's me. My mom and dad had property here for 50 years and they recently passed and I inherited. So I found the letter that I received in October exceptionally frustrating because there was information on there that I did not know. I just I don't I don't know. It was 50 years ago. It wasn't my property. It was my parents' property. I don't know all of those details, those specific details. So I called up Gar and I, you know, I asked, um, how did you find this information on this sheep? Um, I I think that she was annoyed.

Capriccious.

Yeah. um and therefore told me that it came from um flyovers um uh cars with cameras on top and uh the town's records. So I said, "Oh, okay. Well, all right. All right, no problem, I guess." Except there was issues on there like I have a fireplace. does it and you know it said I had aluminum and I don't have wood and stuff like that right so I corrected what I knew I have since found out other things that were not correct on the form I'm so sorry um so I think what I'm frustrated with there's a lot that I'm frustrated but one of the things to start is the fact that I have to do so much homework Okay.

And I I you know what? I guess ultimately in the long run it's not a bad thing because then I'm going to know more about my property. I have I have 8 and a half acres of woods. I'm up at the top of the mountain at the top of the town of Ro Rochester. I don't get services from the town. I don't get your water. I don't get you to come and pick up my garbage. I got to drive all the way to hell to um um town of Rochester, you know. airport. Airport. Thank you. It gets me off the rock. I'm happy about it. Okay. I, you know, hey, um I I don't get your septic. All of that I have to take care of, right?

Um so, but the thing is I have to do all this homework. Like now I have to go through all these comps to find out that first of all, nobody they didn't classify me correctly. But yet when I look up Zillow or Red Fin or the 50,000 other sites that want to sell my property, they all clearly says mobile home,

it says it, but yet I received it as a single family residence, which back in October, I didn't know better. I And I called up and I said, "Listen, I screwed up. I didn't know. I just I didn't know. I had to go to new yorkstate tax.gov and find out the new code. I'm supposed to be not 210. I'm supposed to be 270 because I have a chassis under my house. Oh, and by the way, and it's 40 years old, which means nobody's getting a freaking mortgage on a 40year-old mobile home. And you just put me from 120,000 to 47,000. They have lost their love.

Yeah. So, I have to do all of this homework, which I I have to because I gota I have to I have to somebody got to do something about really for real. So,

and then the then the other issue is now I call them up. I was lucky. I've heard from other that they did not call back, but they called me back and they this week they were really nice. I had a lady this time who was very nice. She wasn't annoyed or capriccious. Okay. She was actually really nice. And she told me that I can fight my land assessment. They went from I don't even know what it was assessed before. Now it's up to 165,000. Oh, but it's wetlands. I have the creek that runs right through it that goes into the round out which I can't even build up. Oh, and I can't cross it to gain access to my other four acres that's on the back end of my property. But you know, right?

So, she said that I can fight that. I can I can do the informal review and ask them to reassess it or re-evaluate it. I have our neighborhood is a very small neighborhood. I don't know how many families. No, less than less than full time. Yeah.

Yeah. Full-time. So, it's about 15 a little less. Maybe 10 families. Okay. as a neighborhood that he claimed because I watched it online. I know I've been the one who's been on your Zoom, right? Watching and I come to your meetings until you've paused them on Zoom and now I can't do that. But um because I live all the way up at the top of the mountain and I get snow like you have not seen before. Um, so I have a lot of older people in my neighborhood and since I just relatively retired three years ago, I'm relatively probably the Well, no, now we have another young couple that's coming in. So, I'm kind of the young one who goes onto the computer and calls everybody and says, "Listen, this is how you do it. This is what you do next. Um, I talk to this when I talk to that when I go on and do all the website stuff, make all the phone calls, talk to everybody, all my neighbors because, you know, like the gentleman here said, we have to help everybody who can't do it right. I'm just annoyed because I don't understand how this is full market value when I feel like you didn't you I'm sorry Gar did not do their homework and when all you did was fly over my house that you couldn't tell it was a mobile home. Okay. And and I know you didn't come down my dirt road. There's only six families on my dirt road. Okay. So, I know they didn't come down with their car with the little camera on top because every person who comes on our road is stuffed. What are you doing here? How can I help you? It's to drive the road. Right. All I'm saying here is it's frustrating that I have to go through all these hoops and now I still got to go through all these hoops. And I only came here today to find out if there was anything else that we could

find out in order to be able to do a better job because I don't see how this is full market value for a mobile home on 8 and 1/2 acres of woods. Straight up. My back 40 is the State Forest Preserve. There's nobody coming behind. No, I just I I I just I don't get it. And I don't understand how guar gets away with something like that without doing their homework.

But now I'm expected to jump through the hoops to do my homework and everybody else here has to jump through these hoops. And and with all due respect, I don't know how you're doing it, especially the older people. I'm sorry, no disrespect, but I I listen, I did 30 40 years with the New York City Police Department. I'm tired, okay? And I'm not even 65 yet. And I look at all of this stuff and I'm like, you have got to be kidding me. Okay. So, if I'm saying that Mhm. at my age, I don't know how you're doing it quite honestly. Okay. So, that's it. I'll shut up now and thank you for hearing me out.

Dra Miller. Okay.

Becky Collins. Becky Collins Brooks. Um, I'm speaking on behalf of myself and my husband, Barton S. Brooks. Bart couldn't distinguish between Barton O. Brooks and Barton Sbrooks. There are two in this town. This is Barton S. Benjamin Franklin said, "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes." Oh, God. We are not here to glee our assessment. rather we're here to speak viferously against the process that was followed in this townwide reassessment. We had the dubious distinction of likely being the first household, one of the first households to see our reassessments because Barton is a postman and he opened ours at the post office on Thursday morning. I received a phone call that told me he was sick to his stomach. I made the round of phone calls that I know how to do. I first called the assessor's office. This is very difficult. I don't like to speak in public. I first called the assessor's office. Then I called Gar because I was told to. Then I called the assessor's office again. I yielded nothing but a runaround. I was told by the assessor to contact Gar, then Gar to contact the assessor, then back to Gar. I was asking a simple question. How was our property evaluated? No one was willing to give me the answer. No comps, no data, no conversation. To add to the communitywide problems,

GAR has hired temps. The people who are getting on the phone are not employees of GAR. They are temporary employees hired in a phone bank to handle us. Most of them cannot even help us navigate their own website.

The process already underway isn't something you can really change. But it is something for which you are responsible. First, you outsourced the assessment process to Ghana, an impenetrable barrier between the assessor and the small town that office supposedly serves. Secondly, you provided poor communication to the community you serve. townwide notices in every mailbox, emails to those who signed up for communications through the town website, public information sessions. These are small steps that could have engaged the community, informed and educated us, and prepared us. No matter how much you think you've done transparently, it was not enough. You represent us. We the people, while we understand you cannot speak for the assessor, you absolutely do oversee him. I'm gonna go off script for a moment. That guy's rude. Likewise, you don't represent car, but you have the power to remove them from the process. We do not know who thought up hiring a consultant from way outside of our community to form a re-evaluation at this town, but it was a terrible idea. We already pay an assessor, plus others in that office to do this work. Our assessor personally signed off on these assessments and proudly told me so. While GAR can be used as a convenient scapegoat, the bus stops with the assessor. As an example of just how flawed this process has been, we don't even have an idea from any of the paperwork that we've received whether this is a preliminary or a tentative assessment because it hasn't been specified anywhere.

Your lack of communication combined with the insertion of DAR into this process has caused huge distress in our community. Few topics are more emotional than the taxation of one's home. It has been horrifying on a personal level, not about our assessment, to hear and see the distress that is that has been caused by this revaluation. Elderly people without a clue how to use technology. Young people trying to stay in the town where they grew up. And farmers whose greatest wealth is simply the land they farm. This change isn't scary. As I heard once someone say in a public comment that change isn't scary, this change is devastatingly sad.

The day our reassessments came in the mail, we also ironically received this. It's a pocket-sized copy of the Declaration of Independence from the Smithsonian. It contains an introduction by the founding director of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. It begins with this. In response to the massive debt resulting from the Seven Years War with France and Spain years earlier, Great Britain's increasingly draconian measures to tax the American colonies incited the Revolutionary War and turn sentiment toward becoming a sovereign nation. Whether you want to admit it to yourselves or not, the town of Rochester is currently in a similar circumstance. Our properties are now subject to a 1.5% real estate transfer tax thanks to the brand new community preservation fund. We are about to bear the commercial tax burden for one of our wealthiest citizens in the form of a payment in lie of taxes or pilot through the industrial development agency at the county level. These are only two examples of taxes you are asking us to bear on top of these egregious erroneous assessments. You have literally you have us literally coming and going and we have precious little to show for it. And so I end where I started. Nothing is more certain than death and taxes. It's a shame that the town of Rochester feels the need to literally tax us to death. I'm Tom Russell.

Hi, I'm Tina Russell. Some people know me as Woodbury. Um, I live on 300 Queens Highway. And last year, a lot of people weren't reassessed last year, but I was because my husband and I renovated bottom of our barn and made a little apartment for ourselves. We were the first people in this town to ask for an ADU while the town board was deciding the ADU laws. Somehow, I don't know how, but now Gar has decided I'm a multi-resident property and I don't have an ADU. My zoning has magically changed that I no longer have an ADU. I'm a multi-resident. And this is my personal grievance. I have lived in the town of AORD for 25 years. And now somehow I live in the town of Kernson. Don't know about how that happened. I don't know if it's this neighborhood thing, but I don't know how it affects my property value or my taxes. I just This is the new thing. So, the first thing I did was go on Gar's website because that's what the paperwork said to do. And I started on my mobile phone and I realized, oh, I need to upload documents. I can't do that from my mobile phone. I'm going to go upstairs to the computer. Well, I'm going to tell you this. If you don't have all your documents and you don't have all your comps and you have every your site evaluation and whatever thing you need to prove what your house really is, do not start the process. There is no submit button on the GAR website. The minute you start typing in your address and your name, it's already automatically submitting it to GAR. And once that happens, you cannot go back in to upload documents.

So I was frazzled. I called GAR. Yeah.

And it's not necessarily a phone bank. These are people working remotely from their homes. I talked to women whose children were screaming in the background, dogs barking, and none of them I talked to four different people. None of them knew what to do for me. They said, "We've never encountered this problem before." And then she even had me try to log it out. One of the ladies go back in, restart the claim, but you can't restart the claim. You can't restart the claim because it's automatically been pushed through. You can't upload documents because you're already under review. So once you start the process, I'm telling you all this, make sure you have all your docs, all your papers right there. Do not go to the bathroom. Do not leave your computer because that's it. It's automatically going and you can't go back and edit anything. So the other thing that happens is once you start at the bottom of the Gar thing after you put in your documents and is comps when you if you try to do it from your mobile home you won't be able to see all the comps. When you click on the comps on the computer, it'll show you. For me, they picked a house on Bull Road to comp me to a house on water with a stream and a pond. And it had been completely gutted. And the only reason I could see this is I looked up the address. Then I had to go to Zillow, look at the house on Zillow. I could see that my house that was built in 1987, they were comparing it to a house that just got gutted last year and it's probably an Airbnb with a stream running through it on Google Hole stream, whatever that is. So that's not comparison to where I live. You've been to my house. You've been to my house. You've been to my house.

All right? So you can't compare it. So there's no comparison. And I realized as I sat at my computer for hours on end looking at the comps that Gar said were comparable. So I'm going to go back. Last year when I got re-evaluated, my house was appraised at 235. Same number as you, right? Pretty close. This year I'm 789. I can't stay in my home if I'm 789. And don't tell me that that doesn't go into taxes because I know on paper things look one way but in reality they're something else.

So I got so frustrated with Gar and they said a supervisor would call me back. I never heard that from a supervisor. So I went to Jeremy's office and I'm going to steal a word from Jay Martin because everybody's stealing J. Martin's words. Whimsical is a nice way of putting it. One of the first things Jeremy said to me was, "All right, I'll knock it down to six and 600 and something." I was like, "What? How?" Like, that's not first place. That's not acceptable cuz my house isn't worth that either. But I just walked into your office and you're taking a hundred over $100,000 off with my assessment.

Does that make sense to anybody? No. I've been walking again.

So I said, "This is crazy. What are you comparing me to?" And he said, "Well, all the other Cape Cods in in the area." I don't have a Cape Cod. All right. All right. Let's look at them. And my husband and I had taken pictures of all the houses that we thought he would compare us to from Zillow. Every single one of them had been a gut job, complete renovation, painted black, you know, river running through it, mountain views. You can't, they don't come. Nothing comps to us. So, where are you getting your ideas from? So, he said, "Can I come to your house?" He said, "Yeah, come out." We showed him everything that was going on on our property. We've got two porches collapsing. We need new doors. Ruffco did insulation and they did it all wrong. So now all the insulation needs to be redone. And he said, "Well, house looks like it's a good shape to me, but you know what? It's not a cape. It's a ranch. So now I'm going to compare you to all the ranches in the area. So now I have to go back and do my homework. And now I have to go to Zillow and look at all the ranch comps because you can't just look at the comps that Gar has. You can't just look at the comps that Jeremy is using that Gar has because in reality they do not compare like um I don't know that gentleman back there talking about like what year are they using? Are they using COVID money? Are they using what happened during COVID? A lot of these houses they're not even full-time residents that they're comparing us to. their Airbnbs, their third homes, their second homes, their We have a neighborhood house. It's just a holiday house.

So, he's got How How big is that pool house? He's got he's got a full house. I'm not I'm not exaggerating. That's bigger than our apartment and my son's house combined. and he's got this huge stone house with an ingground pool, pickle ball courts, stone hedge, and they think he's only worth $300,000 more than us.

So, I don't I don't My point is the comps aren't working. Gar's not working. I'm with E. I think you should put a stay on this until you can figure it out. Yeah. My name is Fred. You know, a lot of people probably don't know me. I got a few now. I'm 87 years old. I was born in a house that I live in now

and The house was The house was built in in the early 1800s. My uncle did some upgrade, refurbished it in 1941 and since then they never really was finished because I don't have a front door, you know. I just got a a back door with a vestibule 510 over the house and the fire insurance was cancelled on me because my rope shers are more than 20 years old. So they cancel it. But now I have no fire insurance in the house. And uh uh last year last year those they sent me a form to fill out there. They some somehow they took pictures of my property. They had two mobile homes there. There was mobile homes. I got I didn't pay for I was taking a US farm. Most people know I um I own a old antique farm in front and uh back in 19 back in 200 was I had a ball that cost me less than $11,000. Did you know what they told me that previous replacement value now? 24

$246,000 and I only paid less than about $11,000 for it. I mean, that is ridiculous. And one other thing that uh mentioned before this power line going through center Hudson, right? That's a safety hazard. use in metal the next engine electrical engineer. You know I went for 30 for 30 years on on I was a riy engineer and um that line going across the properties that's a safety hazard. They have a survey of the people who live under the power lines have a have a greatest chance of getting cancer. So right now you there's going to be a building there that's going to have storage there. So someone's going to work there eight hours right underneath the wires. I mean I don't know how things got so mixed up. And also my house still today. It has no installation in it. You know, it hasn't been hasn't been painted 100% over the last 40 years. I live a simple life. I enjoy simple life. I enjoy like it used to be 50 years ago. And I could I could go on and on, but I suppose I'll only take two minutes. I think I use two minutes. Thank you.

I joined the joined the Patrick Fire Department. You know, I've been the first responder for over 65 years. God bless.

And I55 had a fought myself and Chad Sher went around and pumped sellers out. I was pumping cells out for over 25 years. This is 1955. Yeah. So, you know, I'm a long resident here. I I'm retired over 30 years already. And how and these taxes go up and up. So, just like for example, these mobile homes, they sent me a they sent me a letter and in the uh in the last uh November, I guess, or whatever, and and I took pictures of these mobile homes. No, I just used them to take apart, you know, and they all destroyed. They can't live on it. They still wheels on them and I I took pictures and I sent to them and I guess it didn't do any good. There still

Linda Bradford.

Linda left. Oh, she left. Sorry. Um, David Lindscott. David Lind. Um I I was my question is about misrepresentation of money. Um in in why is a Kass car sit on Queen Highway 247 KS first a bus and I and I serve Kass for 24 years myself and that's all I have to answer. Mar Marcel Bern is it Berland Bernard or Bernard

Yeah. Uh I really don't have any questions because I'm not prepared. Uh but I do want to thank everybody who spoke so far. So that's that's all I have to say. Scott, Brett Freeze. Freeze up on Peoli Road. A lot of my answers or questions have been uh brought up already. Um I did call her um because on the unless I missed it on the flyer, it did not say to call the town assessor,

right? I didn't have that number like you had up on your screen. It just said call. So I called Clark. Um, and cuz I have a lot of reasons why my house is not worth the 460,000 that or 490,000 that they say it is. Um, so my question to them was, how did you come up with that? Oh, well, we compared with other houses like yours. Um, I said, okay. Um, where are they? My house is a cement block house. Like not not a nice decorative cement block. It's cement block house. Um, I went through this process trying to get a mortgage and having to find houses like mine and I couldn't do it. And so, okay, what are those houses? Oh, well, you know, we have a bunch of them. I can hear her going through the computer. Oh. And she's like, um, okay. Uh, oh, well, I can't find any, but uh, I'll have somebody that's smarter than me call you. So, a while later, I get a call. Um, I was on the line, so I didn't get it from Syracuse. Um, and they left a message. Um, this is, uh, you know, so and so from car. Um, couldn't get a hold of you, return your phone call, call the number, and it's the number that was on the paper. So, I called them back and said, "Well, why are you calling us?" You know, uh, um, we didn't we didn't call you though. Then that conversation when and she was not friendly at all. First one was friendly, second one not friendly at all. So I call um the number that uh the caller ID and call that number and it was car and they were not friendly and oh we had lots of places that we

compared you to. Um, but you have to go on the website

and and you have to fill out the application. Well, I had talked to other people that said, "Don't go on that website because you're going to have trouble navigating. It's, you know, if if you pause or get off all the things that you had said, and they assured me, actually, everyone I talked to that day assured me when I mentioned that to them. Oh, we've never heard of this before. That doesn't happen. We've had thousands of people went on that website and have been helped by that. So, uh, so I got nowhere with that. So, I figured, okay, I'll come to the meeting and I will see, you know, what is said here and see if there's a better way. I I asked her, well, um, is is there a paper form I can fill out? No, you have a computer. You have to do it by the computer. Well, what if I didn't have a computer? Oh, but you do. So, um, it's frustrating. I I I mean, I I've tonight's not the night, but I have a lot of reasons why my house is not worth what they say it is.

Um, I've experienced trying to find comparative houses to mine.

Um, and, uh, you know, I I had to buy my house. I I couldn't get a mortgage because they wouldn't, you know, a mortgage wouldn't touch it the way it was. And so now they're telling me that it's miraculously worth $490,000. I'd like to know how they come up with that. And uh and how is that fair? How is it fair for for people that have owned that property and you know have paid uh you know whether it was given to them or they worked hard to get it and they scraped every nickel and they own this house and now all a sudden because other people are coming and paying four times what a property is worth

for their second home and somehow we have to be equitable and make it fair. Who is it fair for? Is it fair for the residents that have lived there their whole life? Or is it fair for the people that have come in here, inflated the market? Is that who we're making it fair for? Because it's not fair to us. So, this needs to be addressed. Um, it it's it's not fair

and I'm curious to see what this brings and hopefully everybody that's here will not just leave here and then that's it. They will continue to pressure you and everyone else involved into fixing this problem because it is a problem. This is not just something that uh you know can just go away. It's it's going to ruin lives. Gary Kitchen Hilton Pervvis

Hilton here. Okay. Joe Roc. Hi. Let's keep it brief. Um, I agree with pretty much everything that been said tonight. Uh, the frustration, the confusion, the aggravation, the, uh,

pissed off, scared, all that stuff. Um, totally resonated with all of it. Just a couple of technical things I noted. Um, I did go on the website. I work in technology. One on the website. You do have to create a login there, which for a lot of older folks who may not have a computer, may not be computer literate, um, might not be the easiest thing for them to do. There's also a verification process on that website that is not necessarily intuitive and easy for people who are not computer literate to follow. Um, I also had a hard time locating my property on there. I use multiple versions of my address. I live on Stony Kill Road. Um, and I had to do it by the numeric value on the notice rather than my actual address. I called Gar and the assessor's office multiple times. um they were quote unquote helpful and friendly but basically just pushed me to the other office or said you have to go online. Um I think it's as many people here have said ridiculous that you've given the entire community homework to do where they have to prove um reality through by filing a process and providing substantiating documentation and logging and creating a log and all this jumping through hoops to contest uh a piece of information which uh doesn't seem realistic or accurate and somehow the people who produce that number do not need to prove their accuracy.

Right. Right. that

um just a couple of uh yeah that's basically GAR I mean I don't know what the criteria were for hiring them or vetting them or what their track records been and why this could not have been performed in house by our own tax assessor um just as a data point um I do work in tech and I took the PDF file that they provide on their website with the sales of the last year of the whole community and fed that into three different AI engines. Um, and the numbers and said basically from my house, which is exactly like the age, the number of bedrooms, acreage, all that. Um, what would you say based on the data that Gar used should be the assessed value of this property?

And that number was $200,000 lower than the number they came up with, no matter which engine I put. And that's using their data. That's using the data that they say on the phone with you is the basis for the number. So when you ask them, how did you come up with this number? They say you use this file. Here's the, you know, you can look at the comps. I looked at the comps and I fed it into three different AI engines and they all came up with a number 200. So that immediately makes me ask what algorithm did they use? What intelligence did they apply the data that they gathered because it's not substantiated by even a cursory analysis of it. Um, and then the other thing just as an example,

uh, when I bought my property a number of years later after I bought it, um, the bank called me to tell me that my property was underwater and I owed more on it than it was worth the loan that I owed. You know, it's basically the bank more than the property is worth. So, I had to, you know, get higher insurance for that. Um, so it's kind of especially stinging years later to be told, you know, that, uh, now your value is whatever, three, four times what you paid for it and you owe us taxes on that. So again, everybody here, I'm sure, has had a similar experience. Also, with a refi, which I did years later, when the bank did a refi with me, the assessor came in the house, took photographs, went through the entire house, and took measurements, and insisted on coming on site. So that's the requirement the bank has to give you a refi. So if that's what they require in order to give me money to pay off my mortgage, right, why doesn't the town do a similarly, you know, scrupulous analysis when trying to figure out what people's homes are rather than a driveby or, you know, a general analysis of 50,000 pieces of information generalized to the community. If the bank cares that much when they're giving you a loan that they want somebody in there with a tape measure and photographs, why does the town not feel there's an equal pressure to do a a legit analysis?

Thomas Ward. Hi, my name is Thomas Wardsville. I have a very similar problem to what this young lady over here spoke of. I live on a private road. No service in the town of Rochester. Water, no septic, no nothing. My bug goes bad. I fix it. I don't get water from anybody. I don't get any help. Nobody the road. Nobody's maintain. I also live have a a mobile home on my property. So my assessment went up $37,000. Anybody here want to tell me how a mobile home Thank you. is worth $37,000 more than what they say it was worth. And on top of that, now if you go to try to get a mortgage for that place, you can't.

You cannot. If I ever decide to sell my place, I have to sell it for cash only because you can't find a bank to hold a mortgage on a mobile home anymore these days. That's it. So, and again, my daughter, she can't afford it. She cannot afford just to walk in and take over my property right now the way it is. Can't afford it because this town has made it impossible for people to live here. Amen.

Bernard Moran live pound down road not about talking about the company. So when you give a contract out I know it's going to be answered later. Is there any directive telling the company how to do it or they just left on their own to do it? Because when you see the evidence on a computer, they took the lease past the resistance. They took your check and then they hired a company of people to answer the phone calls that don't have any answers and they didn't realize probably they were going to get tons of phone calls.

So, they took our money and they out to another company to just redirect you back to the town. And I think we we should be able to see that contract and see what the contract says of did the town give them any directive of how to assess all these properties.

Mcdala Serrano, she's left original Gary Fernino. Thank you. Good evening, town board. Remember me? Little House on the Prairie. You found a way to get the community to come on a meeting night. Congratulations.

I congratulate you and I hope that the folks standing here in the room continue to come because some of these things need to be more regularly discussed. Um, by the way of introduction to the people behind me, you all know who I am because I am your emergency management director. And I assured you the last time I spoke. I will remind you all that I took the job and said I will not have an emergency while I am your director. However, this is the second time. The first time we had an emergency was when we were talking about what Charlotte affordable housing and that brought out a whole lot as well as I think we ended up with that one and a half% Becky. Thank you. And this now is the second time. This is obviously an emergency situation. And so I'm here representing the people in the town because as I said when I took the position, I'm not representing any of you, but I'm representing all of you and all these people behind behind me. I'm sorry. So I have a couple observations and I appreciate everything that was said here. I I wanted to say that I had what I believe was as good an experience as I could yesterday. Believe it was. Excuse me. I've not been sleeping well because of this whole situation. And I don't know if anybody else has that, but um regardless, I spoke to Jeremy Baraka and went through I have a total number on the tax holes of six

properties. And just so everybody is aware, three of those are all connected and the other two are and there's only one separate. Um and that's what I have. So it sounds like a whole lot. No, it's really not. However, going through some of those things and I just did some of the added some more notes there. What I have Gar which I did not contact I in fact after speaking to our town clerk like Katie go talk to Jeremy. there was nobody in there whenever I went in and Jeremy was very polite and we sat down and I simply said okay I want to discuss my properties and the situation uh that's going on and we agreed that he would look at that look at some of these things with some of my observations objections and so forth and we I agreed that if I were going to accept it for now for this and I do quote this hypothetical estimate. This is all very scary. Hypothetical estimate based on prior year taxes which we sure as heck aren't talking about here tonight and does not and that is very much highlighted not represent your actual future tax liability. Boy, being somebody who spent 32 years working for the United States government, I don't think I've ever knocked on a door and said, "Hi, I'm with the government and I am here to tell you this is going to be a hypothetical interview and we're going to estimate based on prior things you may have said to somebody else and does not represent what I'm going to do when it comes to prosecuting you arresting you. This is

that term right there. This, by the way, is what came out of the town of Rochester. Anybody wants to correct me on those six forms I got, it's right there. So, getting back to the GAR situation again through the help with our town clerk, $350,000, give or take, was what this program cost. When I just did my quick math on that one, approximately 5,000 homes, we're talking about 4,900 something. So, I'm roughly looking at 775 per residents to do this via the on the air, satellite, whatever it was that was used. And there are a number of issues, some of which you heard. And I assure everybody in this room or I I I beg everybody in the room to definitely re review that sheath because the more I looked at it, in fact some of this was after I sat down because with six properties and some other issues include this morning hearing from my daughter can't get down the road because the road washed out and we're on a private road. That sounds great until the private road disappears. These are some of the things that a lot of us in this room have to contend with. We heard a lot of those things. So, we have to contend with every place. That's the hardest thing is to do a direct comparison because it's really hard to compare certain some of these things. But some of the problems I actually found and I have the proof right here in my hand is the land size. For the first time ever, and I'm going by what I have in previous uh assessments, wow, I didn't know that

property uh that I own with a house on it could actually grow. And the property grew and I'm looking at it and if anybody likes to take the bet, I will bet you $100 right now cuz I'll go home $200 richer. The property grew from officially 6.3 acres to 6.6 acres and that is with again the sheet that came through. That is a problem. The size of a brand new which I just am not even done. It's an outstanding permit for a garage interest enough on that same piece of property. The garage grew. It grew by Okay, not a real lot, but it is an odd thing to have a garage grow and it went from 32 by 40 ft to 32 by 42. So, my whole point in that and that's and there are other ones on here as well that are extreme discrepancies. And and by the way, I think the worst one in so far as the assessment I've not heard one better if there's somebody I would ask that person to speak to all of you properly and that is

this is what I had to deal with here in which I said are you what that is in 25 assessed value $1,000 in 26 It went to 20,300. I can tell you I was pretty good in math in school. That is a 20 time or 2,000 plus% increase. And when we talk about certain things that include market value, by the way, that particular piece of property and this was all discussed and I explained this to Jeremy and he listened and understood and I said, "By the way, I in fact signed off, came before the planning board. I didn't even have to show up. The property was a line adjustment when I literally took that property out of the five acre and somebody was talking about having a property of 10 acres. I believe the board corrected that. I hope I'm okay. I agree that that was the right thing to do because we should never have done that. Oh, by the way, if there's any question about my knowledge of that, my name would be in this book, which is and it should be available without Boy, am I dumping on you, Katie.

This is called the town of Rochester comprehensive plan zoning code ma map task force. I didn't know how powerful I was back on the 11th of May, 2009, but there were 10 of us. My name is in there as one of the members of the town that went through all of this. And interesting enough, as a point of transparency, the former predecessor to our present supervisor actually was on that board with us, on that committee rather. And that same person was brought up different things while he was in the position of supervisor about things like the grandfather clause is not permanent. Excuse me. That is exactly what it is because otherwise what do you do with a piece of property that's a viable useful piece of property if it's now removed from that's one of the problems with this whole thing. Yeah.

Is there needs to be a real methodology of going back and looking because when I signed off to give up my rights to protect the 2acre parcel by doing a line adjustment to my attorney did the whole thing and we signed off on it. that property of the two acres cut down an acre and a half could never be built on again because I gave up that right which I had no problem doing. But that's why that property it sounds like a great deal. Terry, you you got a piece of property that's only worth a thousand bucks, can't have a build on it because I signed off and gave up that right. And they would throw that up to me in the ZBA if I attempted to get it zoned backwards. And I know that because I know other people who have tried to do that and it's not something you can do. I don't want to do it. But that did turn into again market value from $1,887 under that $1,000 to the whopping $20,300. All right. And again, it can't be used for anything other than protection for myself or my heirs here. So that is one of those issues that we brought up. I will tell you this that nobody had because I had to bring it up with Mr. Baraka and I'm just going through land size. I said it was brought up before about wetlands. They are very important because I have the certified letter going back to 1986 showing some of my properties are indeed under the VL swamp wetlands designated

state wetland. Anybody in this room who has a wetland issue, you have better show that because that definitely changes and it did change with the discussion we had. However, I have to bring that forward. This is all wetlands and and a lot of this crop. So, that's some of the things uh there. One of the things that showed up that I didn't know I owned, I heard this more than once. I didn't know that I owned. And if anybody would like to buy it from me because it says I own it, but I can't find it. So, if you can find it, you can buy it. And that is a 1960 54x 10 ft trailer on one of my properties. Now, I've been here for 52 years. So, a little bit less than the 1960 year of this trailer, but I can tell you there is no 1960, nor has there ever been. That's a scary thing because it shows up on these documents, right? Um really so I now and I'm trying to speed this up and I thank you all of you because you guys are being very respectful I think and I thank you all for that and I thank the people behind me because I think by and large they're being so too. However, one of these things that also comes up is I use this word um Jay, I hope it's almost as close as your words, and that is this is very subjective. What we're looking at when you talk about a market value. Here's my problem. And I brought this up the other meeting we just had Sunday night at the firehouse. Approximately 190 people were there. We're going to have a followup one. It's coming Sunday. And some of this that's

taking place is going to be discussed. I hope the people who weren't there the past Sunday might show up and then they could actually wish me a happy birthday Jerry. So anyway, I don't remember but call it out. I think that sound right. Anyway,

so when I say subjective and hypothetical, now I'm using the word right here. Here's the problem, and I'm going to ask this in response, and I'm not asking for verbal at all, but can there be for the board to see this a show of hands? Who who, barring the fact that they may not even be able to afford to keep their property, but is there anybody here, because I'm not one of them, who is looking to sell their property? because if not this number that is going to be placed on that property could s change dramatically. And now this is a question to the board and that is okay where do you go to get a refund if you sell it for 5075 $100,000 less but you already taxed on again the subjective hypothetical amount of whatever you don't ever get to recoup that and I could tell you when I started doing some of my math on the taxes that I paid paid. I can prove this to anybody in this room. I have paid more more in taxes in my 52 years. Yes, I was 20 years old when I bought my first piece of property. 22 when I built that house up there. And if somebody like to come up and paint it so it can get up to the level of the course, I would greatly appreciate it because I can't convince my wife. Anyway, the bottom line is that we need to fix some of these things because here's the issue with all of us in this room, including all of you. We are not in fact the landlord landlords

of our property. We are all tenants. Every one of you, as our supervisor said, she got one of these same notices. You don't pay your taxes. you don't own your property. That is absolutely a fact. Three years, I believe, and the property goes on delinquent tax roll and somebody comes in there to that auction and buys up your property. And guess what? Sorry to say, the state, the county, the town of Rochester, no offense to you, but you don't care because somebody else is going to pay those taxes. That's very sad. And that is a guaranteed way of destroying. Yes.

That has been a great town that I've loved living in for 52 years. And I will leave you with this um for somebody else who wants to speak. And that is just something that kept going through my head when I couldn't sleep last couple nights. a guy that some of you may have heard of called Paul Simon, a songwriter and singer. And the quote from the song, if anybody recalls, nothing but the dead and dying live in my little town. Do we want Rockchester to mimic the words of that song? Nothing but the dead and the dying. Because what are you gonna have if all of these people disappear? You have nothing. Thank you very much.

Lewis Warf. Troy done. Pardon me for not coming forward. I I uh had a little conflict this week. We can hear you. And uh Can you hear me? All right. Fine. Stay right there. I can see the other guy.

So my opinion on this for what it's worth is everyone has very salient points here, very personal experiences as do I. However, rather than I share my personal wos, which pretty much reflect everyone else in this room, I'd rather see if we can come to a solution of can we rectify what's not already happened, but the path that we're on. In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with the process. And a lot of you are probably saying, "Whoa, Troy, wait a minute." Well, this is why I say that I'm very familiar with the process because as any of you know who I am, which I apologize, I'm Troy Dunn. Uh, many of you probably knew my father. I've witnessed this process since I was a little boy. Uh, my first recollection of an assessor was Mel Leser. So, I knew these folks. I saw my dad speak with these folks and I was very fortunate because I got to tag along with him and I and that's probably what's formed a lot of my philosophies as a as a young man now turning into an old man and I'm proud of that because I was raised by a depression era and a a World War II veteran. So, a lot of those values were instilled in me. And let's get back to the process. New York State Department of Taxation and Finance Law has this process of how we update our assessments. And in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with the process. The process is valid.

So, what happened in my opinion of hearing a lot of my neighbors And looking at my personal assessments, I think the process broke down somewhere. So I went back through and looked at the step of each process. Gar, I really don't care about Gar because Gar is nothing but a third party entity. Gar has no authority to change anybody's assessment. None whatsoever. And neither does this town board. Correct me if I'm wrong. They do not have the authority to change your assessment. Who does? Correct me if I'm wrong. There's only one person I'm aware of in this town that has the authority to change your assessment and that is the dully hired and placed in that position of authority is the town assessor. Is that correct? Thumbs up. Thank you. Okay. So, what happened in the process? Gar was hired. I don't flaw you folks or anybody else for hiring Gar. I have to assume until proven otherwise that you have a valid subject matter expert. In this case, it's real estate values. Doesn't matter. It's like asking somebody's opinion. All guar did is give an opinion to our town assessor. So, so far we're on board, right? Process is working. The assessor now gets this information. Then what does the assessor do with this information? This in my opinion is where

the process starts to break down. The reason why I state that is because I could only place myself in that position and say, "What would you do?" There's a lot of folks that say, well, you always ask, well, and pardon me, hope I don't take brief for this. My intent is not to bring a religion into it, but some people will say, what would Jesus do? My wife, she had one on me because way back when I was in the military, you know, you should ask yourself, what would Vinnie do? That's my father. And I said, that's a good one. That really is. So, I did. I said, 'What would Vinnie do? If I started receiving data for a process that I'm responsible for and I started seeing numbers of the magnitude that we're seeing here. Now, we're all smart people whether you call it in percentage or whether you multiply it times a time. It doesn't matter. Mine go from a high of 20 times. So that's 2,00% to a low of 300 and some percent or 3 point sometimes the value that reflects what I'm hearing here from everybody else. So the question is would a reasonable person think that this is normal? Let me say that again. Would a reasonable person think that this is normal? I say no. That's my opinion. So this is not normal. I should question it. So what I would do

is I would go back to the person that's giving me this advice and saying, "Are you sure about that? Because I live here. I probably drive by some of these places. How could the value increase like that? So I would question the data is what I would do. Now that wasn't done. And even if the data and I'm not claiming I believe the data is flawed in my opinion. Even if you thought the data was valid, what would I do? I believe I would have went to the board and said, "We've got an issue." Because I had no idea that we were going to have the magnitude of increases that we have. So that warrants communications. No good comes without communication. We have to communicate. You folks, the town board have to communicate with us. We're here to work together. We're here to solve problems. We're here to help. You have always heard that from me and I will always stand by that. And I truly believe everyone in this room is here to help as well. But this data, I believe we have enough data points. This is just a fraction of the town. There's exponentially more people that are sitting in this room that have the same experience. So now that we have a process, we think the process is valid. What happened? It's the execution of the process. In my opinion, the process flawed in its

execution. And where did the breakdown specifically happen? My opinion is that the breakdown happened when this data hit the assessor's desk or office or inbox. However, where that happened, that's where it happened. I believe we have enough data that we can say is use whatever adjective you like. It's flawed. It's erroneous. I think the time is to say let's take a breath, folks. Let's take a pause. In legal terms, let's take a stay. Let's get a stay. There's nothing that sliding down the streets. There's nothing wrong with saying I have enough information that I think we got to see maybe we took some inappropriate steps. And this is not unprecedented. This has happened several times before in the state of New York and other towns. There's been cases where they've said, "Yes, we have some improper data going on here, so we're actually going to implement the tax role from last year till we get through this." Read me loud and clear. I'm not telling you to go implement this process. No. Once again, there's nothing wrong with the process. There is something wrong in the execution of the process. Thank you. Hey.

Okay. Thank you everyone. That is everyone that signed up on the list. I'd like to see if there's anyone that did not sign up on the list but has not yet spoken who would like to address the board. So the first hand I saw was this one and then we'll go to you Barbara. short name short Walsh. Uh been living in town of Rochester and the better part of 75 years. I used to work at the PL for 10 years and I was a local elected official in the town of New Balt when I went to college there. Um I just wanted to make a couple comments. Um mainly uh I want to just say that uh I've been here for long enough, not as long as many of you have for generations, but it does feel like the town is at a crossroads. Uh this assessment, there's a couple of really big projects and developments that are coming in. Uh and also this cell tower on Granite Road, which I've been very concerned about just literally in my friend's backyard. um that I want to say a couple things about and um to this gentleman's point uh I don't have you the town board at this point uh having to deal with this but uh it is it's quite uh apparent that this assessment is has not been done correctly. I mean I have a a one acre parcel that uh you can't build on that was assessed at $10,000 and now it's assessed at $90,000. I mean it's just asinine really like the the numbers that we're hearing here just they're totally unrealistic. Um and so I would like to say that the town and the lawyers should look into passing a moratorum on this uh to work out all these issues and that you know

specifically for our um our elderly people that there has to be something put into place. you can't, you know, force people to try to go through this electronic process here when they don't have the means to do it. I mean,

uh, it's just, I mean, it's it's so inappropriate. Um, and so, yeah, I think that, um, that there should be a moratorum that that you can vote on and keep the taxes as they are right now. Um, also, I mean, there are other ways that that towns have passed um, hike hiring taxes for people who have second homes. Uh, also there's different laws that have been on the books now for people who rent out uh entire homes for Airbnb that are unlivable. Uh, I tried to rent years ago and couldn't uh rent this house for longer than three months because a person was going to rent out the entire home and they live next door to it. It's there's just not enough uh affordable housing here and we have to make sure that all the people that that do live here do not get forced to leave have to endure significant economic hardships to deal with this uh tax assessment. Um, the second thing I wanted to just say and I will keep it short, but we'll have uh some more information to share with the board is that I've been attending about a dozen hours of planning board meetings, which um definitely appreciate the volunteers that sit on the planning board, the zoning boards. Uh but there are very significant problems with the self that could be proposed for Granite Road. And we're at a moment right now where uh the planning board seems to be moving ahead even though there's been significant uh evidence to suggest that there should be a full environmental and economic uh impact assessment under the state environmental quality review act. Um the two consultants that were hired in that project uh both worked for the cell

phone industry um one who uh was responsible for talking about the impact of the shed and for those that don't know uh this thing is going to be about eight stories taller than the Granite Hotel right across the street 147t from the apartments of the people that live there. Uh the planning board and the federal laws say that you can't take into consideration the public health impacts, but I know anybody with any common sense can tell you that living less than 150 ft from a massive cell power is not going to be healthy for you. Um and you know, basically that that consultant said, you know, there's going to be an impact in the viewshed, but it's not significant. Well, for those of us who have to live here and look at this freaking thing from 209 from 4455 for the rest of our lives, I would beg to differ. And then secondly, the other uh the other consultant that they hired who was hired to go through this like insane amount of data that the telephone company's been throwing at them with, you know, all kinds of radio frequencies and things that no normal person would understand anything about. But basically their job, this consultant's job is to just basically say whether or not this is going to increase cell phone uh like that this was really needed in the area to cover gaps in cell phone usage and um it's not I mean Verizon has come forward several times saying it's not going to cover the gaps and that it's not needed and you know the company won't even give over data about the cell phone drops that they know of um because they said that the town has to require them by law to do that. They will not give us

information on plan board. All this is to say that there really needs to be a full study done on how this is going to impact our communities, the environment, uh the cost to our our businesses here and the property values for people that are living right under there. And there are a good number of people who are saying that they're going to leave the community if this thing is going up in their backyards and they can't stop it. I mean, they'll sue all the things, but we're, you know, this is just one project. I know many people here are interested about the assessment, but I think it's just a moment where we all have to work together. We want to stay here. We want our kids to stay here, our grandkids to stay here, uh to figure this out together and and make sure that the things that we love about this place that why we live here uh that we can stay and we can continue to enjoy them. So, thanks so much.

Okay, I think Barbara put your hand up. My name is Cornell and some of you I've lived in this town for 38 years now. My assessment was $235,000. It went to $479,000 and I didn't think it was enough because all the homes going up around me are million dollar homes. So I thought it was going to be about 7 or 800,000 to be honest. My taxes were low. My neighbors other neighbors

want to pay mine. They were lowered. Why? Because that pie that the supervisor showed in the beginning, I was paying the people who were paying their fair share. So now the pie has to be equal like she says it has to be equal. Mr. John referred to as a process. Yes, it is a state process. This everybody's pointing the finger at the town board. The town board is the state. Go to all of them. All of you. First of all, I want to say that I empathize and emphasize I come on.

Everyone got a chance to speak. Please let him speak in Newberg. My parents were taxed out and had to go to North Carolina. My husband lived in Cornwall. They were taxed out. They had to go to South Carolina. I saw this in that time. I live by Sto Edward's face which was like here. If any of you have been to Storm's face, you know what it's like. It was like here. I hunted and fished with my father and trapped in those woods. We could not stop capitalism that came in and pushed everybody out the old time. Then I became a school teacher. I taught in a school district that it was school budgeting. I saw seniors crying. We're going to lose our homes. I saw it there. I came tonight because I knew this is what was going to happen. I've seen it many times. I've seen also where people went down because every time I did an improvement on my property, I went to the town and got my specially used permit. I went to the town and said, "I want to do this." I've lived here for 38 years and I know there are people here that have been off the books. They found houses here that have never paid taxes in their life here as recently as the past couple years. So, for you to be pointing a finger at this town board

when it is not their problem, or her order. She could point a finger at somebody and you know what I'll hand one time my husband said to me, "Watch out pointing that finger at me because we are pointing back at

Yes, we we we are going to allow everyone to speak. I just want you to listen it. Just because you're someone is saying something you don't like doesn't mean you have the right to yell at them. We're everyone gets a chance to talk. Just please be respectful. Okay. Okay. Sure. Go ahead. So there's right now I'm seeing three hands. Go ahead.

So this room here we have one person that said they didn't pay enough. They're they can go to the assessor and ask it. I want to ask the other people here, did anybody else's taxes go down or do they feel like they're not paying enough? Okay, thank you. Well done.

Good evening everyone. My name is TZ Ba. This is actually my first board meeting. Um clearly we've heard from everyone there are significant inconsistencies in with a lot of questions about process about accuracy about the burden being placed on the residents the transparency of the process there's like enough uh we've heard enough information to really indicate that the board in an ethical stance should cause the process to be re-evaluated um and we may as residents consider legal action Yeah, I mean

um and I want to propose suggestions because my question is uh number one, how much money does the town actually need to provide appropriate services? And is money the only factor that should be considered when we look at residents who have been here for generations? When we consider quality of life, when we consider the impact on rural gentrification, can we become a community that models something new and something very different? Something that is humane and generous and does not raise taxes uh but instead creates a model where we care for each other, for ourselves, and for our neighbors. Amen.

You've been waiting. Oh. Uh, hi. Uh, my name is Paulo. I've been up here for about 45 years. I've been listening to Rev. There's a lot of pain. There's a lot of hurt. And I've been to meetings like this before and people speak out. They open themselves up and nothing ever happens. Yes. Now, my question is, you've heard everybody uh I heard stories that are much worse than mine. What is an you? It's obvious it is flawed. It hasn't worked. The calculations are off. Almost everybody's got, from what I hear, everybody's numbers are off. So if it's not working, what happens now? Do we make a stop to it? Have you actually listened to what the people have said?

Yes. Do you take it to heart? I mean, seriously, that's all I have to say. Is anything going to happen now? That's my Yeah, my name is Devon. Uh, like many of you, my girlfriend and I were shocked. I mean, I appreciate the mention of the word because

I appreciate the mention of the word whimsical because we were shocked when we saw the assessment. It seems to be a joke uh based on something out of thin air. And so my question is as many people have mentioned right now what we have in terms of dealing with this problem is an individual you know go and show your documents and fight back and my question is in terms of the contract with GAR which has already been in place and has been for some time often those contracts include something like the work being done in a workmanlike manner or good faith. There are elements in the contract that it isn't just you hire somebody to do a service and they can do whatever they want. There's a workmanlike manner standard that they have to do something that is equal to what a reasonable person would expect, which is showing good service, showing expertise. And we've all heard many stories here tonight that do not reflect this workmanlike manner standard. They don't reflect good faith. There are many other legal avenues that could be um enforced that like the town would not need to pay for these services because they haven't been done in a workmanlike manner. And it would be very easy to get legal exhibits showing I mean we've heard here tonight I mean anything already in the record would show very clearly to any you know legal entity to any jury or judge that this has not been um done in a in a manner that is in what the town can expect based on professional services. So even granting that there's this need to have a reassessment and if the goal really is it is to have it be done equitably that's totally fine and understandable but it can't just be things made out of thin air. There is a professional standard here. So I would my question is is the town of the town or is the town willing to investigate not paying or trying to claw services back or as a part of this stay of the whole process saying this uh obviously has been done

in an unworkmanlike manner and therefore the contract is not invoiced. Yes. My name is Richard Denver. I've been here 58 years. Quite a few years ago, I trying to buy an affordable housing double wide. Uh only probably only one person knows I had to get the mortgage through the owner, Mr. Dennis Colette to buy my property because the bank would not finance. Few years ago, life happens. Went through a divorce. Mr. Post back in the county clerk's office did my appraisal court order. I had to pay him.

I actually just got it uh today. Printed it out. $174,000. Now it's at a 400,000. This was just a couple of years ago. It's more than double. You can't get a loan on a double wide and it's been reszone too. Single family. So it's not affordable housing no more. 400,000. How's the kid going to start out? Young family. That's how I started out. So my parents said build a house. said, "No, want to be able to live a little bit. You know, why pay? I could have built my own house. I built houses before." So,

he actually did he Mr. Pback actually took it was excellent every photo, everything and walk boots on the ground. So, and this was just a few years ago.

Thank you. Uh, good evening. I don't know if everybody can hear me. Um, so when my dad got the letters in the mail for the assessment, all this was very upset and I couldn't believe the assessment amounts and such. And when I from my perspective, I don't want to be anywhere else. I'm 24 years old. I've lived here my whole entire life. And there's unfortunately it's like this way anywhere and everywhere you go, which is another reason why I just want to stay here. I love the community. I know just about like every person in here. Um, and it's really unfortunate that like we don't have the whole affordable housing and I feel like this is somewhat the reason why because people my age, we can't go out. there is no rentals. Even if we wanted to go buy a house and actually pay for a mortgage and stuff with this assessment, that's going to affect that and everything. So, it's really hard and I know we're not pointing fingers at the town. It's all of us together and such. Um, but we're you're representing us and I know you probably have felt the impact as well with the assessments as well. And I'm still in college, hopefully graduate, well, I'm going to be graduating in May. Um, when you do research

or even when you do a project of any sort, you have to have references and they have to be legitimate references. They can't just be Wikipedia that everybody can put their own intel on and it can be so fake and lies. You actually have to have and whenever I do a project for an assignment you have to have at least six references 10 references based on Garve don't think references were legitimate and based on what everybody else has said clearly they weren't. So I feel like with we have to find a better uh way to do the whole process like everybody else said as well. Thank you. Uh, yes.

Hi, Lucille. Uh, just wanted to say that the gentleman in the back um was saying it sounds like this gar company is incompetent. So, can we fire them? Uh, so in the red shirt in the back and then I'll get my name is Arn and the information is flawed. Stop payment on the check. See if you can back it off. You're going to redo it something. The information is flawed like everybody said.

Question. Does the board have the authority to tell the assessor being that he's full-time to make and physically like this lady you've mentioned go around and reassess all these properties being that he's full time you could have the time to go and look and see what better yet step down instead of passing the buck I don't get my job I get fired there was another yes you didn't ask my I will answer them at the end. Jack Duffy, full-time resident. I don't see I don't see any weekenders here. These are all these are all hardworking people who live in the community here.

I I wanted to sort of mention, you know, everybody just felt the squeeze. We all just got over being squeezed by Central Hudson. The dust is finally settling on that. And now yet this is like yet another hurdle for the community. You know, you got to know your audience. I look around, I see a lot of work boots, a lot of people who get up before the sun comes up. A lot of people who are retiring here, not because it's easy to retire here. You know, a lot of us don't, like everybody said, we have to provide our own services. You got to be sort of self-sufficient to stay here. It's because these people wouldn't want to be anywhere else. They could have cashed out during CO. They could have like, you know, we all laughed and joked around about it. And I look back on it now, it's like, you know, we started calling it the Kur Hampton's cuz like a house that would have normally been 265,000 was selling for 675 and people were getting into bidding wars on it and everything else. And it's like now we're paying the price for all that cuz it's like all these houses that normal people who live here would never be able to afford these houses now. you know, we we live next next to Hudson Woods, which is like million-dollar houses, you know, and it's these aren't normal people who live here, but yet we're being sort of judged by those people.

Um, you know, it's it's just an unfair, you know, when when we were talking about the word equitable earlier, it's like, you know, there's there's almost nothing equitable that anybody has brought up about any of this process. And it's it's uh it's completely slanted to one side and I I hope it the whole thing stops gets reevaluated because none of these people are happy and as people said this is this is a big turnout but this is only a small percentage of the people who have been in an uproar and talking about this whole thing. So, you know, if this is what it takes to get the town together, good to meet everybody. But, you know, it's a shame that it has to come to something like this to rile everybody up enough to give up your evening to come in and talk to the town board.

Thank you.

So, I I want to get to people who haven't addressed the board yet. So, um Yeah. So, so I just want to say for those of you who have hair the same color as mine, I would like to just say that this is scary. So, we we can talk about the facts. We can talk about that it's not fair and we can talk about all that and I agree with everything, but this is scary. Okay? Like, I'm scared. Okay? And why am I scared? Because suppose we have this meeting, boom, and suppose it doesn't change. Well, what do I do now? Okay, my taxes went up $4,000. Where am I getting that? That that adds on to my central Hudson bill, which is exorbitant. Oh, well, let's talk about my Paracco bill, which is exorbitant. This was some winter. Okay. So, we could talk about all that now, but the bottom line for me is what do I do? What do I do if this doesn't change? Because maybe those of you who get up in the morning and work I don't. Okay. I mean, I work somewhat, but I don't work as hard as you do. And what do I do now? And what do I do if this doesn't happen? And it's really scary. And it's really scary. And and no, I don't agree with what you were saying, ma'am, but I do understand the what something that you did say, which is that if that your your family had to move somewhere else because they couldn't afford the taxes, as it happened in Kingston,

right, during the pandemic and all, all of the city came up and bought up Kingston and suddenly when you've already paid off your mortgage, you didn't have the money to pay your taxes. Uhoh, I guess you better sell. I mean, people say, "Wow, your house, Jerry, is worth so much. So what? So if I sell it and I get all this money, what do I do with it? Where do I get what I have, which is actually gorgeous, and I'd like to stay there? I'd like to die there." Well, I want to put die anytime, too. You know, but you know, but it's but it's really true. And so let's just take it past the the the the facts that we're laying out and just talk about the human part of it. The human part of it is it's scary [ __ ] man. This is really scary stuff. And if and if and if it doesn't like work out for me, let's have a let's have a uh a barbecue. Okay. Five or 10 years. Well,

you haven't. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, I'm Richard. I live over on Chrome Road. Like everyone else here, my taxes have gone up $6,000.

Yeah. Uh hopefully everyone can hear me. Um yeah, my property value went from 200 to over a million. So yeah, uh I'm battling cancer. I got a lot to deal with. Um uh I guess my big question is what when do we do we hear back from the town? Do do we show up at the next town meeting and get some answers about next steps about who to talk to? Like what what are the rules of the game? like where do where when and where do we get the answers for some of the questions for tonight?

Okay, so it's 900 p.m. and I just there anyone else who hasn't spoken yet that would like to speak? Yes.

My name is Amber. I grew up literally on Tobacco Road. My father still owned it. My father is a disabled veteran. half of his property is actually the road because the town says, "Oh, we own a portion of your road which takes parts of his property." He owns 34 of an acre. He went from 345 to $80,000 with the town having half of his property for the road. And on the back of him is a canal, so he can't do anything with that either. But he went up to $80,000 as a disabled veteran. That is absurd.

Hi, my name is Sarah. Um, I've been here about 20 years. I chose to come here because I knew that this was a great community to raise a family in. I've met I don't know a lot of people that are here, but I've met a ton of great people here. My son is in college. He would like to come back here with his family and live here, but there is no way that he could even begin to afford a home here. My property went from 275 to over a million. True.

I live in a manufactured home on a slab. You cannot get a mortgage for that. You can't. It's impossible. How is this equitable? How is this fair? And what are you going to do about it? We We deserve to know something tonight. We It's It's unconscionable. It really is. My name is Diana White. I'm a fourth generation resident and I have two generations behind me following up here. Excuse me. I think everybody's concerned is that something needs to be done to kind of halt this because everybody's in the same position. And the other concern I have is that the onus on proving that they're wrong. This GAR survey is left up to the individuals and there's many people that don't have the resources to tackle this and we can't get to all of them in the time frame that's necessary. I really think you need to take a look at this and maybe get your money back from this company and put it somewhere where you can get a fair estimate for your fuel tax. Hello, my name is Pam Robinson and I come from a family that's lived in the town of Rochester for many generations. I currently reside with my 96 year old father. He has a stake in this community. And what I'd like to say to the board because I realize that you're not in a in an answer situation right now. What I really hope is that the board says we have listened, we have considered, we hear you, and that you reply to the community in a substantive way. That is my hope. Thank you.

I think we can take one more. Martina, you had one thing you wanted to say.

I have a question. I want a question for the board. Would the board be willing to uh give community um center time so that we could have clinics for people um I myself and another person from the firehouse meeting. We can come with our laptops and help people get on the GAR website and help them work through it. But we would need to use the internet here and facilities here. Okay. So, I think that it see it seemed like everyone who wanted to address the board tonight had. So, with that, I will close the public comment portion of the meeting. Um, thank you all for coming. I know that it you were taking time. Um, like many of you had said, you're here because you are um upset and I understand that that is it's not an easy thing. Um, and I I just want to thank you for spending the time to to come here to be respectful to enter into this this course with us. I know that this is um it's it's a lot and aside like I I hear all the details and the the um of what you're sharing but baseline this is a really complicated thing. So it's really difficult just to begin with. So I want to thank you for being here. We the next thing I just closed the public comment portion if you need.

So it's the nuance. We're not upset. We're desperate. Okay. So all right. So we um so the next thing that we do after this is what we call town board member time where we can address some of the concerns. I I don't think that we'll be able tonight to address everything prepared that I would like to read

everything that we have um heard tonight but um we we have heard you I don't know why but I just want I didn't have a single person reach out to me personally so many of what much of what I'm hearing tonight is the first that I've heard from any of you directly. So, I just want you to know that we will look into all of these suggestions and requests. I am thinking about how we might be able to communicate best with the community about what the next steps are. The the what I will say is Tina, I like your idea. I had a similar thought. We also um we also this is I understand that the mailers were not clear but what you received was not a final assessment. So no final assessments have been made. So I do encourage you particularly some of these very um drastic increases to please contact the assessor's office and set up a meeting and take a look has a right to stop this right here. I I do not I I do not actually all just listen for the past two and a half hours during public comment. I have been waiting very intelligently and right now to all of you that

let's hold on to able to do that. You've asked us to respond several of you to your questions and we can't do that if everyone talks over while it's our time to respond and speak to you and give statements. I have a fully prepared statement that I for the entire community that I had about this that I had to wait this whole time for this. Okay. Okay. So, if I gave you guys the respect to listen to over two and a half hours, can we have five of

Okay. about this response to the outdoors. Okay. All right. There's a motion. Is there a second? Don't be rude to people. It's people's homes. Sarah my story. You guys would have understood that I've lived here my whole life and my house were closed because of these exact circumstances. So I enough taking two minutes.

We're going to take two minutes. We're going to take two minutes by generation. If anyone needs to bathroom, if anybody would like to go get fresh air, please. Cuz everybody wants to be sports. We are all neighbors at the end of the day. Okay. And the only way we're going to get anywhere is communicating together, not screaming at each other. Let's have two minutes. No, that's okay. Because it's not going to make sense if it doesn't.

We're taking a twominut break. Thank you for Um, I So just thank Yes. I have to get Okay.

is so Yes. So trying to develop. So not so much. East people

It sounds like Right. Very nice. Thank you. Thank you. That's my

heart. Yeah.

I know. I have a visual breathing. What's happening? All right. Hang in there. Home. I haven't seen him [ __ ]

Yeah, I know. be in the meeting again. If you'd like to talk, you may go outside, but we're going to continue with our meeting. Great.

Okay. So, we're

we're continuing the meeting. Um we were in we were having town board member time and um I was just taking some time to acknowledge that for most of the board this is the first um we've heard directly from a lot of residents. So it's a lot for us to process and a lot for us to look into. Um this is the first time we've gotten any feedback about this type of feedback from GAR. Um the um it is true the contract is a public document and um we will take a look into a lot of the things that have been brought up. So I just want to let you know that now I'll just open it up for um town board member time. Uh, I just wanted to say that it's it's difficult listening to everybody's um pain and anger, but I'm I'm kind I'm glad that everybody's here um you know, giving giving back to us the information that we need and this is democracy and action. So, I I'm really proud of of my community today. This is not an exhaustive list, but the things that I've heard from you today um is that you're worried about implications for future tax levies or implications on insurance coverage and mortgages, errors in property descriptions, rudeness and inability of GAR representatives to handle your queries, uh communication breakdown with the town and other elected officials and appointed officials, data integrity from GAR and how is evaluated by the assessor. uh lack of comps to your properties, inability to afford and keep your property. And again, this is not um comprehensive and I have more notes, but this I'm just trying to absorb what everybody's saying. And I and I think as somebody who also received a you know doubling in in um the comp of my in the

valuation of my property I I would really like to know how many people have been affected by this and can we get an explanation of data how it's gathered and interpreted and applied and um you know we'll look a little bit more into this and this is not an excuse. I've only been on the board for a year and I wasn't around when this um contract was uh initiated and it's not an excuse and I'm not making excuses for myself but it is homework for me. So I I promise that I will put uh my attention and effort into this. Thank you everybody.

Just like to echo what I just said. Um there are definitely a lot of um outliers in terms of uh increases evaluation and it's something that uh I hope to be working with uh to look at a sort of a successful analysis for across the sea. Um the extent of them um is sort of um some of the some of the stories we heard from tonight were very disturbing um and uh sort of uh I too kept listening to said but certainly not very closely.

Yeah, I'm not going to read I think I had like five pages of notes uh here. I appreciate everyone coming out. I appreciate everyone speaking. I whoever said they hope that board says we hear you. I absolutely heard everyone here tonight. Um I think there's a lot that the board needs to consider and look into. Uh I agree it it appears that there is a lot of confusion. It's capricious, whimsical. I don't know what other kinds of words people were were throwing out. Um, I have not seen the Fulgar uh data in a way that we can actually access it and look at it. I know they have they have the website up. I've been poking around on the website and doing searches. Uh, I've also only been contacted by one person. Uh, I encourage anyone who needs help, you can contact me. Uh, I'm actually going to go down to town hall uh tomorrow and sit outside the assessor's office if there are people there uh because you can go in. Um, but depending on how many how much uh how many people show up and how long they need to talk, uh, you may be waiting there. So, I'm not an expert. I also have no power to change anything, but I'm happy to talk to people or try and answer questions or at least point them in the right direction. Uh, I also hear a lot of people talking about seniors and I know the tech industry and when I hear people saying that the website is confusing, I agree. I was on it. I couldn't necessarily, it took me a while to figure some stuff out. needing multiffactor authentication. You know,

I I have people that uh I have to walk through using the remote sometimes. My mother is constantly trying to get me to help father not change the channel and not deal with something that shouldn't be dropped. So, uh that right there is is something that needs to be addressed immediately. And as everyone has been saying, I encourage you if you know people that are trying to navigate this process, please point them in our direction. Uh my information is up on the the town website. I'm happy to talk to anyone. I'm happy to go to people's houses and um help out people that need uh to understand the the website. Um and I think in general I don't I actually don't know the process. I I remember reading the contract. Uh I will look at the contract again, but I don't know from a state perspective what actions the board can actually take. I'm sure everyone here is actually going to look into that. If it is possible to uh relook at something, if it is possible to get more information from GARP, I would be more than happy to to work with the board, with members of the community to figure that out. Uh because I do think it's important that this is done correctly. I know this is horribly technical and it's very confusing how taxes work. I was trying to figure out the equalization rate stuff for hours and it's still confusing to me. So, uh, I just I want everyone to understand that we as a board hear you. As Aaron pointed out, you know, the assessor is the one that ultimately is going to make the assessment decisions, but anything that I can do to help work through that process or make sure that this is done correctly and that uh it's not going to negatively impact uh people unnecessarily, I'm willing to do that. Thank you all for coming out. Um, all right. So, just checking with the board. It's 9:30. Um, we can

put all of our board reports and that sort of thing to the workshop meeting. Does that sound good? And then we can um we can get through our resolutions that we need to discuss tonight. might I ask that we need to help with any? Yeah, we will. Yes, we will. Yeah, thanks. Um, so we'll just we're going to skip over the reports. Um, um, do we have some list of uh, email who were on distribution lists or was that lost when we lost our email system? That was very difficult.

So, we don't have a list. Uh, the old email distribution lists are not in our under our control anymore. Um, so if you'd like to add yourself to a list of people to receive information, um, send Kate the need and she'll she'll coat the list and we'll make sure that we distribute updates as they become available. So, we're going to move forward in our resolutions. Um,

there's another public comment period, but I I'm just asking for personally for myself. I work 7:30 to 5 Monday through Friday. I don't have time to make the assessor's office. Me neither. Is there any way that we can maybe extend his hours one day a week or have him open a little later so you can stay or Yeah. open later. Is that I I I will be speaking with the assessor. If you could leave your contact information. I'm a diamond. I'm a diamond. I can't miss. Okay.

All right. Um, so we're going to uh move forward with our resolution. So the first item on the agenda on the resolutions is the acceptance of the minutes. So I'll move that the board accepts and approves the minutes of the February 12th, 2026 business and the February 26 26 oh uh workshop meetings as circulated by the town clerk. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed abstain motion carries.

Um next we have acceptance of the donations. Um the town board accepts the donations as received for town purposes as presented. Um we have uh $153 of cash donations for the Valentine's Day dinner. If you're going to talk, can you please go outside so that we can conduct business?

Thank you. Um $87.65 from St. Paul's textile, and $84.91 from St. Paul's textile, $25 from Mel and Elaine Tapper for the Valentine's Day dinner, and $10 from Carol Waxman for the Valentine's Day dinner. Do I have a second?

Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I oppose. Abstain. Motion carries. So the next is the acceptance of abstract 3A of 2026. The town board accepts abstract 3A of 2026. Um and I'm going to add and 15A of 2025 and authorizes the claims to be paid totaling the following amounts. General fund $15,000 $105,26346 Highway fund 27,924.33 capital fund $1,7852 street lighting fund $457.15 uh for 15A general fund is $7,2938 8 and street lighting fund is $1034.

Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Abstain. Motion carries.

The next uh motion is the adoption of local law B of 2026. Um I'll move to um I'll move as presented on the agenda. Second. Any discussion? All in favor?

I opposed. Abstain. Motion carries. Okay, we're going to table the um procurement policy amendments because I would want to walk you guys through that and um it's late and then um Michael, did you want to do the ambulance contract amendment authorization?

Um yeah, so I think so we discussed the requested amendments for the KFS contract last week. I think the one point that we were talking with Mary Lou about was the change for the jury trial wavelet jury trial. Um it seems like that's important that they want to continue to have the option for jury trial. Um talked over it with Mary Lou. She doesn't think it's a deal breaker. Though my request would be I can make a resolution if the board's needable. You just accept the red. Okay. So, I'll make a motion to uh authorize the town supervisor to offer the 2026 Rochester Ambulance District contract to uh KPASS pending review and final approval by attorney Mary Lee Christristiano

with the amendments as presented. With the amendments as presented. Yeah.

Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed abstain. Motion carries because we'd already extended the comment to them. This is what the Okay. Um so then just for I in front of the board is the um local law regarding the um moratorum that you requested. So this is the moratorum on the battery energy storage system. So um that's this was prepared by Mary Lou and circulated. Um so I um was going to make the motion to schedule the public hearing on this. Um if the board is comfortable with that. So for before we make the motion um do we want to do that at our workshop meeting or at our next business meeting?

Okay, that's going to be March 26 at 30. And then um I will be declaring this I'm going to make an amendment to this while I'm reading it out. So, I'm going to be uh doing an amendment. So, I'm going to read this out. Um so I'll make a motion that um whereas the town of Rochester's introduced local law E of 2026 entitled a local law establishing a moratorium on battery battery energy storage systems and whereas the town board desires uh to hold a public hearing to receive comments from the public on the proposed law. Um and whereas the board um declares this action type two under seeker. Now therefore be it resolved that the town board of the town of Rochester will hold a public hearing on local E of 2026 on March 26, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. at the Herald Lipton Community Center, 15 Tobacco Road. And be it therefore resolved that the town board requests the town clerk circulate notice and um forward to the planning board and the Olster County Planning Board

um and adjoining municipalities and appropriate agencies for comment and circulate notice. any discussion or system all battery systems or just the uh commercial? That's the commercial. Okay, that's um Are you okay with that? Yeah. Okay. Um I'm just making sure that I got the date right. Okay, great. Um any more discussion?

All in favor? I opposed. Abstain. Motion carried. Um the uh I have a renewal for the coffee machine lease. Um I those were in the drive for the police, but I also printed them out. Um it's my recommendation that we move to renew the lease under the updated terms. Um we'll get a new copier. It's a five-year lease, which is how we do most of our copers. And um we'll be saving um a little bit per month in the new uh iteration for how they're doing the billing. So I did go back and check our bills to um confirm that. Um, so we get paid overages and so they increased our copy number to account for the overages that we paying for um, and it comes to a little bit less per month.

Second make a motion. I didn't make a motion, but um so I'll make a motion that the Town of Rochester Town Board um authorizes the town supervisor to execute the um to execute the um lease renewal for the with Atlantic tomorrow's office for the uh Reicho copy. Second. All right. Any discussion? All in favor? I

uh opposed abstain. Motion carries. Then I had um so just the the agenda item. So we're tableabling the playground supply purchase and the budget modifications. Um the there were three resolutions that I forgot. So just let me know. The local law D we I just that was the one for the vehicle and traffic law. Um, I printed out the version for you guys. This version is 1.1 and it's board member comments incorporated. So, it's based it's the same um except for this new comments. There were uh a couple that I didn't include in this version that I thought that might be something we could work out with the during the public hearing process. one I just didn't know how to work it in which was um Councilman Wyn, you had a comment that no uh unregistered vehicles could be parked. Um and I wasn't exactly sure where to work that in, but I thought maybe we could work that in during the hearing process. And then there were some questions about the permit. Um, and I had sort of commented back that I thought that the law gives the board the task with adopting the permit administration. So, we can put anything that you were concerned about with time frame and revoking permits after that, we could put that in the permit application rather than putting it in the law. Um, so if the board is comfortable scheduling the public hearing for that on March 26th, um, we can do that as well.

So, I'll make a motion that the town of Rochester Town Board schedules the public hearing for local law D of 2026. um a local law repeal law repealing and replacing chapter 132 vehicles and traffic of the code of the town of Rochester um for uh March 26, 2026 immediately following the public hearing for local law e at the Herald Lipton Community Center 15 tobacco road and request the town clerk circulate notice. Any discussion? All in favor?

Opposed? Abstain. Motion carries. Um so then the next thing that I was adding is um we I this was included in the backup for the board. I it was brought to my attention that there was a um agreement. Um you know what? I didn't print it out. So I think we should table it to the next meeting because I just realized I didn't print it out. It's a I'll make sure we do this at our next meeting. Um there was a supplemental agreement to amend our Bridge New York funding which has already h all of this has already happened but they need the paperwork and um I got it like yesterday so we'll just put that on our workshop agenda. Okay. So um we do have another public comment portion on the agenda. Um

there's a second there. Those were together. There were two. Um we want to go ahead and hold that. Yes. Yeah. So, um we always put another public comment portion at the end of the meeting. Um I know we just had that, but is there anyone who would like to address the board? Um so, Barbara, your hand went up first. Sure.

Uh I just wanted to bend the board from holding his own very disruptive meeting for 30 years. I've sat in these kind of meetings. You're lucky that she the supervisor being called state troopers like the old days try to also I just wanted to comment. I didn't want to make any fear, but I figured I would upset poor people before my father and my husband's father moved or forced to move because of not being able to go to taxes. They went out and got three jobs. That's what your husband told me to do. I already had three jobs. Okay.

You know, we went out and got three jobs in order and then eventually couldn't make it and they had to move. Also, I'm a former school teacher and the one thing that I stress to my students is personal responsibility for their own [ __ ] I'll put it that way. So, for the people in here, if you're making it us do the work, I see that as personal responsibility for what you have and what you own. So for anybody to make a comment that you've got to do the work and I don't have the time and I don't go for that. I'm sorry. And if little teeny kids could learn personal responsibility, I think adults can. So I want to commend the board for holding their phones because I've been in meetings like this that got out of hand. And so I commend the board and Aaron for the control. No, you're subject to know talk about sh.

Do you want to address? We will in our discussion. Did was there anything you wanted to say about it right now? I was going to bring it up. You guys were going to make a decision so I know what to do. Move. Yeah, we have our discussion uh next. Sorry. Okay.

Just quick question. Um I think to see Ward D on the agenda. I I must have missed something. Did you add that just now? Okay. And before I forget, the discussion generated one question. I hate beating a dead horse here. It was said that the total that's on the sheet of the increase, it's it may not be accurate. Why put it on there? Because it scared the hell. I think that's where a lot of people got scared. They saw that final number. They're saying, "Oh my god, I have to come up with five $8,000 extra, but if it's not accurate, you shouldn't put it on there because all it took was scared." So maybe if you're talking to ask what the significance of that number was.

Is there anyone else that would like to address the board? Oh yes. Yeah. Just really quickly, I wanted to say yes. I um appreciate the opportunity for public comment and also commend the board in terms of both providing some additional background and also the opportunity for everyone to get their input. Um that's what I appreciated. And second of all, in terms of the responses, um I did hear um some things that seem more focused on kind of individual or person by person uh responses, which I think it's important, but it's important to think on a systemic level given this is very yes,

on that screen earlier, you had a when you were given a presentation in the beginning, there was like a timeline or a or a process to go through uh the whatever It's called the appeal process with DAR. Is there any way we could get the time? It's on there. That process out or is it somewhere we could find it? Y but it's on computers. It's not

I'll answer that question in a moment. You had your hand up. I just want to bring up my uh suggestion again to ask your lawyer if you can enact a moratorum on the whole process uh and delay the change for another year until this is sorted out. Is there anyone else would like to first if everyone Oh, go ahead. Representative Gar come here and show us what the process was. I paid them So they did well in a meeting. We all come and we had a meet up. It's we could reserve the school. Um

I did you watch did you watch the reval with the public where Gar spoke? Maybe that might give you some clarity but well he show us how to use the computer. Okay.

We paid him. Um I just want to say uh I'm not a board member but I did receive an incredible amount of calls in the last several days and of all those calls I did not hear any of the feedback with GAR. So that is very new information your interactions with GAR um for us. So I think that's a lot for this board to take in tonight. So to have answers for everybody is not going to happen tonight. But I do feel like this board is going to discuss this stuff and see what what we can what they can do within their scope. Um, I also do feel that there's many of us here that are committed to helping everybody through this process because it is complicated. Um, my I have a concern of I haven't heard from seniors and um that to me if you are finding seniors that are in this same boat, please have them call us. Please have them come to us so we can help them. That I I I have a concern about everybody but especially the seniors because they don't have the internet. If unless you have social media, you wouldn't even have known all this uproar going on in the last few days. Also, um the one thing someone said earlier about no one property is the same. Absolutely. So, that's why it is important to come and speak with the assessor to go over your property. Um, there was another comment about uh due process uh or it was a comment Troy had made earlier in the day where something went wrong some in the process and I agree and I do think that was because we did have part-time staff for a long time in this town grew tremendously in a short period of time and we could not handle that. Um so yeah the the process started long before Gar. Um I also have spoken to a lot of people that got letters where there's actually did decrease and they don't believe it. They're they like proved it to me that this is a decrease. So I have seen all sides of this in the last several days

and mine also have gone up and it was a shock factor to me as well. Um but I I want people to feel like they were heard tonight because I know there was a lot of comments. Are you truly listening? And I do feel like this board was listening and there's a lot for us to have to go back and look into at the same time. And um I am committed to helping anybody any way we can and I I do believe most I don't want to speak for the board but I do believe this board feels the same way. So I encourage people to continue to come to these board meetings as well and be a part of the process with us.

Um that's it. It's been a long night. I want to continue on. Mhm. So, um we do have that the information on the front page of the website. Um and it is it it's digital. So, all the information that we have is digital. Um definitely not Rochester site. Yeah. Thank you.

Um and we do have a vacancy on the board of assessment review. Um it would be great if we could fill that. We haven't gotten any applications for that. We did take ads out in the paper. Um, the way to apply for that is to send myself or Kate a letter of interest. Um, and we would love to interview people and get you appointed at our next meeting because um, it's a really important board that I'm glad that people know about. Um, now um, so someone asked his who's on it and that's on our website as well.

Yes. Names. Yeah. Um, so did the board have any did you address anything else? Okay. Um, so for discussion items, how do you guys feel? I can go another couple hours. Uh, I I had two things that Okay. Yeah, smart ECC commission merger.

Yeah, we were going to do that. The two things that you had ambulance discussion that we're going to talk about there's the shed the clothing um the free clothing for all shed uh situation and the board's feedback on that. So, do you have enough information to talk about why I think um after talking to EC they're okay with um waiting another session just so I can go over the resolution with them.

Okay. So, I can give a high level update of the climate smart ECC merger. Um there is a memo that basically shows that if everyone we basically need like two people to decide they don't want to be official members and then in terms of the the people who are currently in the appointed pool um but assigning those the duty of climate smart to ECC is just a resolution. So it is just something that we would need to do at a meeting and then um I think the the biggest thing is is climate smart requires there be a public official so a elected official or a staff member. So we would still have to have that as part of the makeup and that's in the memo. The memo breaks it down. Um and then we put some uh Stacy and I worked on that. We put some recommendations um in there and uh if uh Alexis could you circulate that to both. Yeah.

Because we we kind of put some recommendations and a little bit of heads up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I know the questions that they're going to have is like um there are a couple people that specifically want to be on uh you know, interested member of the public status and you know, what are the parameters around what they can or cannot do in terms of serving on um subcommittees and obviously not voting, but what will they still be able to get involved in grant applications, that kind of thing. So, um I will we will get the memo and I guess follow up with you with

Okay. Um, thank you for providing. And then I John did come by. We had um the amphibian crossing signs made. Um, he came by to pick those up and said that he was comfortable also with the um the that the grant discussion for at our next meeting too. Okay. Great. Um, so do you want to give a you the next few are yours. So the shed. Did you want to talk about the clothing exchange or the clothes? And then um and then the ambulance. You wanted to ask about the ambulance.

Yeah. So I mean the shed is really more just remind everyone what we had been discussing. Um one of the things that's come up is sort of clothing exchange. The free clothing exchange has been growing, expanding, doing amazing things, getting stuff out of landfills and helping people find and reuse textiles and clothing, which I don't want to speak for the board, but Aaron and I met with several of the members and communicated that board is supportive of that. We obviously love to see that happening. One of the issues, the questions we've had is we've been visiting this, which is an ongoing monthly expense. Is there a more longer term solution that we can do as a board so that we're not paying this recurring cost and just get something that's more permanent? Um, so Tina and other members uh of the group that's been running this uh have done some work. They've been out trying to get some do some fundraising uh to support purchasing something more permanent. uh found a deal on a shed that matches the dimensions of the pod, will be a permanent structure uh that we we haven't signed any agreements, but could potentially be transferred over to the town and become town property. And so, one of the questions that she wanted to to pose to the board was, can they agree to that? Because it's a it's kind of a short-term deal and it does uh my understanding is it's we're allowed to pay over time. Uh, so it doesn't have to be the complete purchase restaurant. Uh, 4,500 I think.

4860, but I've raised over 2,000 so far. Oh, I thought you told me he gave you a deal, though. That that that was his deal. Okay. 4,800. Okay. I I think I sent you a picture of it. Yeah, that was what was on the price tag. And I thought you said he gave No, that's his set price. We can get him down a little. No, sorry. Um, not in the public meeting. Uh so I think the other thing is the just the little overap of the

Yeah. So the the logistics I don't know the logistics of because that would potentially be a donation to the town if the town would be willing to purchase it and then have that donation come after or how we want to work that. But I guess my question would be is the board supportive of that because Dina would like to at least sign a contract to put a down payment on. So I don't know how we do that from a town finance's perspective. So, I'll pause there and see if there's

I think the the biggest thing is um what what was proposed is that this would be a donation to the town tied to an agreement that they would use the space, the storage space until they're if they decided they didn't want to take it with them if they were moving somewhere that it could stay here. But we wouldn't be kicking them out at any point, right? of the shed. So the question is is that uh do we feel comfortable saying go ahead and start thinking about the purchase of this shed which is a a nice looking like I have a shed like this. Um the the the the pieces that uh I did speak with the recreation department about um having them involved in the placement of where it would go so that because we're getting a whole new playground and we want to make sure that it's like placed appropriately. Um, and I think as long as it's uh a safe, sturdy structure, um, it sounded like that would be fine. Um,

so I just have a question of the money. So it's 40 roughly $4,600. They've raised 2,000. Who what are the arrangements for the balance? They're planning on they feel like they can raise that. Are we making a commitment to push that? We have not made any commitment for that.

Well, there any wiggle room to appropriate like a certain amount if they like how what's the time period for raising that we want? It sounds like from what you were just saying that they will take a down payment and they're they have an active fundraising campaign that's going on that we encourage people to check out and that was a week a week Friday. No. Well, looks good then. Yeah. I just Yeah. I just don't know.

You would have to execute the agreement, right? We will we haven't we'll have we should have an agreement at our next meeting. I think it's the two things that I would want is before you do that down payment if we can check in um with the recreation staff just again. But I think really we just want to be able to let Tina move forward with So what we're committing to is to allow it to be used on is to Yeah. We're kind of saying like yes go. So we're allowing it to be used on our property. allowing them access to it and giving them the right to take it if they move elsewhere.

Or well, we we're saying that we'll come up with an agreement about the the the the uh free clothing for all use of the SP like we we think we think maybe it'd be good to have a more solidified agreement and Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So, the shed would stay if we should leave here to go somewhere else. Yeah. But do you want the option to take it?

No. Um because in my perspective is I'm getting older and I'm not going to want to keep doing this. I've been doing it for three years and maybe somebody else wants to take it over from me in a year or two and they have the shed and they'll have the the clothing and the whole thing has been already set up. Um, so I think we're just trying to get and see if the board felt comfortable and that give that reassurance to Tina and then we can have an agreement um before we have it installed. But I she just wanted to be able to put a down payment on it. But we're we're telling Tina that she can execute the agreement, put down a down payment, and that the board will come up with the structure.

Yes. But I can we check in tomorrow before you do that? Mhm. Okay, great. Okay. Um, so I feel good about that then. And then the ambulance contract. Yeah, the ambulance contract. So I checked in with town first aid unit. Um, they were working red lines with their lawyer and it was a request to see whether the board would consider updating and utilizing the contract from last year which was the contract done in the previous years. as opposed to having to go through multiple red lines. So I said I would I would bring it to the board to see what people thought.

So red line the prior contract well red line and that we would update fates and then so there were still reporting requirements for uh service level service level agreement getting certain percentages and uh they had to provide certain financials and then it's their call basically to ensure that they were meeting those requirements. Is there a change to the financial reporting reports?

It's the financial reporting that we put in the current contract was a lot different. Uh there was a lot more information there uh based off of what the county was the county's expectations for the money they're providing. So there is a lot more but there's still a requirement for us to get access to certain financials. So we can look at that contract. I put it I put it in the in the share, but I wanted to get a sense of the board so I could at least tell them what where the board's feelings were.

I don't have a problem with uh it's basically sounds like it's just a big a form rather than a new reddraft. So, can we can I break it down just more bluntly? uh they want to basically have the contract that they had in 2025, not the new ones that we that have the the more robust reporting requirements. So basically the question is is how does the board feel about having two different contracts for the two different agencies

and yeah and per state and they are orders of magnitude different in terms of the actual funding. So this is a significantly lower uh dollar amount that's being remind. Yeah, it's fine.

Okay. So you'll work on that and bring it to our next meeting. Okay. Anything else for discussion? We do have an executive session that we do have to do. Okay. Um, so we're about to go into executive session, uh, which means the confidential conversation. So, I'm going to make that motion. Um, that the town of Rochester Town Court enters into executive session at 10:01 p.m. for the discussion of matters that could lead to possible litigation and discussion of matters that could lead to the appointment of particular trust. Any discussion? All in favor? I

opposed to big.

Thank you guys. Thank you.