Council President Tony Dolce, City Comptroller John Sellstrom, and Information Technology Director Mark Dean at budget presentations to City Council (October 24, 2022)

The City of Jamestown is proposing to raise downtown parking meter rates 50-cents an half hour.

City Comptroller John Sellstrom told City Council that the on-street meters rates will go from 25-cents to 50-cents a half hour, for a total of $1 an hour. The parking revenue budgeted for 2023 is $245,000 versus $127,000 for 2022, a 31% increase.

Information Technology Director Mark Dean informed Council that his request for an IT Specialist was not funded in the Executive Budget. He said the $42,634 for the additional position is needed to handle cyber security needs and network hardware-software needs, “There’s a lot of activity, a lot of technical needs in the city hall. And what’s happening here is that many departments are kind of doing their own thing, taking it upon themselves to do IT. And that kind of leaves us out of the loop a little bit. And, so, when we’re asked sometimes about a certain piece of technology, we don’t know anything about it and we probably should have another person to help with that.”

Finance Chair and Council member at Large Kim Ecklund expressed concern over departments doing their own tech work when there are staff assigned to handle that already.

City Council also heard budget presentations from the City Clerk and Treasurer’s office, Corporation Counsel, and Assessor’s Office. Assessor Lisa Volpe did note that a city revaluation had been in her proposed budget for $685,000 but was not funded in the executive budget.

City Council will hear the next set of budget presentations by the Police and Fire Department at 6:30 p.m., Monday, November 7 before its work session that night.

WRFA’s Julia Ciesla-Hanley spoke with Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist about the stalled plan to do a property revaluation in the city, some recent board appointments, the state budget, and more.

Eddie Sundquist

Eddie Sundquist

Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist says the cost to do a property revaluation will inevitably be higher following City Council voting down a proposal to do one this year.

Sundquist said Council’s concern about the timing not being right given the cost of everything from gas to food going up due to inflation were valid, but his team thought it was important to have the conversation.

The resolution voted down by Council would have spent $285,000 to hire GAR Associates to do the revaluation this year. The cost rose to $685,000 if Council opted to wait to do the revaluation next year.

Sundquist said he didn’t want the cost to be a shock if Council did agree down the road to do a property revaluation.

He also said it’s not a set requirement by the state that municipalities conduct a reval, “But often times the Real Property Assessor’s Office for the state will come down and say, ‘Hey, you really need to do these things. Your data is aging out,’ or sometimes it’ll be indicated in audits by the [State] Comptroller’s Office as well. And there have been times when the state has come in and said, ‘Okay, we want almost every community to do a revaluation,” and sometimes there are funds attached to it which is great and sometimes they’re not.”

Sundquist said the revaluation could be done in-house, but would require a lot more staff than the city has in the Assessor’s office, “And you would need to be able to have people, and pay people, that are really going to be able to understand the modeling that’s required as part of this. To pay an outside consultant to do that, to complete that, do it all for us is a lot cheaper than hiring employees with pension costs and other costs the city has to pay and that’s been evidenced by the Council in many different employment decisions.”

The Assessor’s Office is currently staffed by one assessor, one appraiser, and a part-time clerk.

Jamestown City Council

Jamestown City Council unanimously voted down a proposal to do a property revaluation in the City.

Council President Tony Dolce said the timing wasn’t right and there’s never really a good time to do a reval, “I think the big concern that Council had and that many residents have, we’re just now coming out of COVID, people have been struggling with inflation, the price of gas, the price of food, the price of everything has gone way up. This just would have been a very difficult time to put on top of that the possible increase in taxes.”

Dolce said Council will be looking at doing a property revaluation down the line. City Assessor Lisa Volpe had previously informed Council that if they waited beyond February to approve doing a revaluation, the cost would go from $285,000 to $685,000 due to current data being considered too old to use by New York State.

Dolce said Council will look at whether costs can be brought down by hiring temporary staff using American Rescue Plan funds to do the revaluation in-house, “That we wouldn’t be spending for GAR Associates, to put in semi-temporary employees to go out and do that work here in-house. And I know she [Lisa Volpe] mentioned that it would cost more because they would have to re-up the data, it might be better off anyways to use new data than use data that is ten and 15 years old at this point.”

The City last completed a property revaluation in 2006. The cost at that time was $1 million which was funded through moneys from New York State.

Jamestown City Council

The revaluation will be the first one done in 16 years at a cost of $285,000. City Assessor Lisa Volpe had informed council members that if the city waits until next year to do the reval, the cost goes up an additional $400,000. It cost Jamestown $1 million the last time a property revaluation was completed in 2006.

Other American Rescue Plan funded projects to be voted on include spending $180,000 for new playground equipment at Nordstrom Park as well as the construction of a handicapped accessible path to the playground; $30,000 to purchase ball field surface material to reconstruct six city softball and baseball fields; $14,000 for new hand dryers in city park restrooms; and $30,000 for the purchase and installation of new signs for the City Parks system.

Also, council will vote to suspend the hiring freeze to hire four firefighters to fill vacancies in the fire department and to hire a parks laborer to fill a vacancy due to retirement.

Under new business, there are four resolutions to approve $3.95 million in American Rescue Plan economic development funds toward small business grant programs, equipment and machine upgrades; building and property infrastructure improvements; and information technology improvements.

The City Council voting session will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the City Council Chambers on the second floor of City Hall. The meeting is open to the public and will be livestreamed online as well.

Jamestown City Council

The Jamestown City Council Finance Committee has approved two resolutions related to doing a revaluation of city properties to go forward.

Finance Chair and Council Member at Large Kim Ecklund said if the City put off doing the revaluation until 2023, it’ll cost the city an additional $400,000.

City Assessor Lisa Volpe explained, “Because New York State only allows you to use data for six years, and since it’s been 15, they were willing to let it go this year but next year they’re going to want an entire project. And the previous project cost $1 million, but they’re [GAR Associates] able to get it down because New York is acknowledging what they now have.”

The proposed current cost for the City to do a revaluation is $285,000. It would be paid for using American Rescue Plan funds.

Volpe added that 40% of industrial properties have already had their property assessments reduced through the grievance procedure, with several now on the market for more than assessed value.

The resolutions must still be approved by the full City Council at its voting session on February 28, 2022.

Lisa Volpe presents on revaluation

Jamestown City Council members expressed concern over the timing for a proposed revaluation of properties in the City.

Council heard a presentation from City Assessor Lisa Volpe on hiring GAR Associates for $285,000 to do the revaluation. The city last did a reval in 2006, which cost $1 million. At that time, it was the first revaluation done in the city in 30 years. New York State recommends municipalities do a revaluation every 5 years.

Volpe said Appraiser Adam Zarczynski took new photos of all city properties in preparation for a new revalauation, however the property data is now 15 years old and may be deemed outdated enough to be unusable.

She said GAR Associates had originally planned to start the project in January and if the project is started later than March 1, it may not be able to be finished on time, “This would push the start of the project off until January 2023, with a finish date of July 2024. This would make the data we have 18 years old and the new pictures two years old. The further this is delayed we may find the cost is much higher due to the un-usability of the current data and pictures.”

Council members asked if the revaluation could be done in-house versus paying an outside group, but Volpe said that wasn’t possible, “Because New York State has a very narrow amount of time that you can do all 15,000 parcels. And in my department now it’s just me, Adam [Zarczynski], and a part-time secretary, so we couldn’t do all 15,000 parcels in that four month period of time. It’s just impossible. We wouldn’t have the staff to do it.”

Council Member at Large Jeff Russell said he’s heard concerns from residents who in the last couple years have bought houses for well over the assessed value of the property, “Those people are concerned that the City is going to come in and reassess their properties and kind of penalize them, I guess, for overpaying for the properties because of the hot housing market and they’re going to be taxed accordingly.”

Volpe said the tax rate could come down, “The levy would stay the same. And then we’d have more assessed value, so the tax rate would come down. So even if you’re assessed higher, your bill could still be the same or less depending on what the tax rate ends up being.”

Council President Tony Dolce said he was on Council the last time a revaluation was done and said it’s difficult to do it at any time. He said with the concerns by people about doing a revaluation during the Pandemic, he’d like to see the process pushed back six months to a year. Dolce requested Volpe to put together information on how much the cost would change if the city waited a year to do the revaluation.

Jamestown City Council

The resolution to be presented would hire GAR Associates of Williamsville, New York for $285,000 to do the revaluation. This is the same company used when the City last did a revaluation 16 years ago in 2006. A staff report by the city said the state recommends a reval be done every 5 years. If approved, the contract states the estimated date of completion for the revaluation would be Summer 2023.

Council also will review a couple requests to use American Rescue Plan funds. One resolution would use $110,000 in ARP funds to replace a penthouse coil. The staff report said the existing chilled water coils are failing and have begun leaking, thus losing their ability to condition and dehumidify fresh air properly. Another resolution would use $35,450 in ARP funds to replace outdated and failing infrastructure and networking equipment in the Information Technology department.

Two resolutions to suspend the hiring freeze to hire 4 firefighters and one Parks Laborer will be presented. The new hires in the Fire department will fill a current vacancy due to retirement as well as three anticipated ones due to retirement this year. The new hire in the Parks department will fill a vacancy due to a retirement in March.

Council also will review a resolution to sell the former 402 Lakeview Avenue parcel to an adjacent property owner on Van Buren Street, Deborah Munroe, for $200. The Planning Commission had approved the property sale at its January meeting. Associate Corporation Counsel Ben Haskins said at the Planning meeting that the property was acquired using 19A in 2018 by the city. After severe issues with the structure were found, including foundation issues, an emergency demolition was ordered. Haskins said a request for proposal put out in July 2021 only gained interest from one buyer. The $200 offered will cover what the City paid the county in property taxes in 2021.

Several presentations are on tonight’s agenda including a presentation on the Neighborhood Revitalization Renaissance Block Challenge Program by the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation, a presentation on potential American Rescue Plan economic development projects, and further discussion on DPW equipment priorities.

Committee meetings start at 6:45pm with the Housing Committee. The full work session will take place at 7:00 p.m. in the Third Floor Conference Room of City Hall. The meetings are open to the public.