A plan to cut Building Department costs

It’s not the typical time when the Town Board turns much of its attention to the budget for the next year. But it’s never too early to look at potential ways to pay for costs other than to burden taxpayers.

Councilwoman Liz Hanley has been doing just that and Tuesday morning discussed a draft of ways to transfer costs of the Building Department to those who use its services rather than to burden the entire taxpayer base for its operations.

She has spent time with Principal Building Inspector Reed Karen and his staff to determine the department’s overhead costs that are legitimately paid by taxpayers and what should be paid by those with projects that require various reviews of their plans that are time consuming.

At the same time, she wants to ensure that local residents with modest plans are not being overburdened with fees. Instead, those with applications to construct multi-million projects needing a lot of reviews and inspections should be paying higher fees, Ms. Hanley said.

Those who violate building codes should pay higher fines that escalate if  violations continue to mount.

To encourage more year-round rentals, Ms. Hanley is recommending a low license fee for those who can produce a lease agreement with a year-round tenant but a substantially higher license fee for those doing seasonal rentals.

Both Mr. Karen and Ms. Hanley said they know there are a lot of  unlicensed apartments with Ms. Hanley adding enforcement is not easy bur a way to track them down is needed.

There are also unlicensed contractors and landscapers working on the Island with Ms. Hanley suggesting there could be highly visible stickers on vehicles used by the licensed workers, enabling easing the process of identifying unlicensed workers. That would also be a protection for customers from being ripped off by some whose work is below par, she said.

A several page outline of Ms. Hanley’s calculations is on the Town website under the Records tab that will take you to the Town Board items for discussion. The numbers at this stage in the document are speculative and not set in stone, but represent the thought process that went into developing Ms. Hanley’s proposal.

They are subject to change as the full Town Board begins to explore what could be a transfer of costs from taxpayers to those who use specific services rendered by the Building Department.

The aim is to implement changes as of January, Ms. Hanley said.