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Supervisors, county manager talk shared services

By Joseph Abraham
Posted 9/3/21

SULLIVAN COUNTY –– The task at hand for the County-Wide Shared Services Panel is to develop, approve, and submit a County-Wide Shared Services Property Tax Savings Plan to the State with …

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Supervisors, county manager talk shared services

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SULLIVAN COUNTY –– The task at hand for the County-Wide Shared Services Panel is to develop, approve, and submit a County-Wide Shared Services Property Tax Savings Plan to the State with new shared services actions that achieve demonstrable taxpayer savings.

The panel includes the mayor of each village and the supervisor of each town. A representative of each school district, board of cooperative education services, and/or special improvement district may also be invited to participate.

The process normally takes place each year (since the Shared Services Initiative was started by former NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2017), with the exception of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last month, the panel held their first meeting of 2021, and this past Wednesday, County Manager Josh Potosek, who chairs the panel, attended the Sullivan County Association of Supervisors meeting at the Thompson Town Hall on Route 42 in Monticello, to talk about the shared services initiative. Representatives from the Monticello and Fallsburg Central School Districts were also in attendance.

Previous countywide shared services panels have proposed and/or implemented shared training and shared staffing initiatives. The former was proposed in 2019, where personnel throughout Sullivan County could attend State-mandated training and benefitted from management and leadership training. Trainings can be contracted through the county and provided remotely via its IT Division. There was a savings of $40,800 based on interest expressed by six towns in that initiative.

As for shared staffing, which was proposed in 2017, through an intermunicipal agreement with the Town of Liberty, the county provided one of its own staff to perform administrative oversight of the town’s parks and recreation department. They paid the county $12,000 for a year of services, instead of over $92,000 (salary and benefits) for a Parks and Rec Director for a net savings of $80,314.

In another example given at Wednesday’s meeting, Town of Bethel Supervisor and Sullivan County Association of Supervisors President Dan Sturm complimented the county for assisting them when they needed help with tax collection in 2020.

“It worked out great for us,” said Sturm. “They did a wonderful job in a pinch.”

In addition to partnerships between the county and local municipalities, new shared service initiatives between the municipalities themselves are also eligible to be included in the plan.

Another topic brought up by supervisors at Wednesday’s meeting (relating to shared services) was the difficulty of finding people with the qualifications to fill positions like assessor and code enforcement officer as several local municipalities have long standing employees set to retire soon. There was also some discussion about the possibility of countywide EMS, which wouldn’t replace existing volunteers or private providers, but fill in areas of need.

Moving forward, three public hearings are required during the panel’s plan development process. Then a public presentation will be made to the county legislature in November. Legislators will return the panel’s report with possible recommendations in December. Then the panel will vote on the shared services plan by January 1, 2022. The deadline for submission to the State is January 31, 2022.

Plans that create actual and demonstrable property tax savings may be eligible for a one-time State match of 90 percent of the net savings resulting from new actions implemented pursuant to the plan.

While many of these shared service discussions have taken place on their own between towns, villages, school districts, etc. for years, according to Potosek, the state wanted a more formal process when it implemented this initiative and at the end of the day, is looking at how it can save the taxpayers money.

“We're open to having a dialogue,” said Potosek, “but this isn't going to be the county telling the town or village or school district that ‘we want this in a plan,’ it's really our cooperation amongst two or more partners.”

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