NORWICH – Asking taxpayers to pay for a portion of Chenango County’s code enforcement efforts doesn’t sit well with at least one town supervisor, but despite his lengthy and often personal objections last week, Town of Pharsalia Supervisor Dennis Brown was outvoted.
Finance Committee members representing the towns of Greene, Guilford, and Lincklaen voted to place whatever balance is not covered by fees collected in the department onto the 2008 general levy. Permit fees have traditionally covered the department’s personnel and operating expenses.
Finance Committee Chairman Lawrence Wilcox, R-Oxford, sided with Brown on several points, but did not vote on the measure. Chairman are only required to vote in the case of a tie.
Wilcox urged the department to concentrate on completing the more than 882 fire inspections outstanding in order to cover the approximately $37,000 shortfall anticipated by year’s end.
Armed with a national magazine survey that showed most county level code enforcement offices receive 75 percent of their operating budgets from permits fees and 25 percent from the levy, Chenango County Code Enforcement Officer Bruce Bates deflected the committee’s questions for more than 45 minutes.
At issue were complaints Brown said he had received from horse barn owners who said codes officers were investigating their properties without permission and were often rude. Bates pointed out that owning a horse for recreational purposes does not necessarily qualify a person for an agricultural exemption.
“If the farmer is engaged in farming, there is no permit needed,” he said.
Brown inquired about the codes department’s demand for “too much” information from individuals wanting to build garages. “There’s more than just a drawing requested here than in other counties,” he said.
“When a building burns down and the fire and insurance people come in, they are going to ask us to prove that the building was built accurately,” Bates said.
The debate was finally halted when Schlag said he, too, had heard complaints from his constituents about inspectors being “overly authoritative,” but he said that codes inspectors “have to deal with people who may have to spend more money than they have (to comply).”
“We can’t ask these people not to enforce the law. This committee set up the cost of the permits because we demanded that they have to pay for their department,” Schlag said.
Bates, who said his office receives more than 60 calls a day to do inspections, said the complaints Brown and other supervisors may have heard “have more history than you hear.”
“We are going out of our way to work with the customer. Every day I reanalyze this whole system to see how I can do it more efficiently,” Bates said.
The committee was acting on a referral from Safety and Rules to put the department into the levy next year. Safety and Rules Committee Chairman Alton B. Doyle, R-Guilford, made the motion in Finance. It was seconded by Outwater.
“This whole effort is for safety first. I think that there has been a lack of understanding on codes that safety comes first,” Dolan said.
County Treasurer William B. Evans asked the committee for budgeting direction in order to separate out the handful of municipalities that have their own codes enforcement. “They could decide to spread those costs out by per capita, assessed value or individual work project,” he said.