Why don't we stand up?

That's the rebill.

That's in the professional services.

We got bureaux.

That's pretty interesting.

Sorry, I know I missed your job.

Do you have like two years?

Oh, the data.

I gotta be identified.

Sorry, not my thoughts on one side.

Then I have to get a line.

Oh, where do you go counselor?

Thank you.

Oh, I think that's it.

I'm sorry.

It's okay.

Thank you.

Oh, you look so pretty.

I love it for us.

No.

With the roses.

Very nice.

Very nice.

Thank you.

Oh, that's revealing.

Oh, Jay using the big words.

All right.

Good afternoon, everybody.

We are transitioning to our second hearing of the day.

Um we have BAA.

Um joining us at the table are counselors Caldwell and Jones Roser, in addition to those that were here last session.

Um we have Leah Whitmer.

Good afternoon.

So we've got a little packet here.

You want to run us through that, and then we can jump into the numbers?

Yep.

Thank you.

So the first page front and back is just an overview of the municipal violations bureau as a whole.

This first hearing is on the BAA, which will also cover health and sanitation violations issued by DPW.

And then our next hearing will cover parking violations bureau, which also encompasses the school zone track enforcement.

So I just gave you a little overview so you can see what we're doing.

Obviously, this department continues to expand rapidly each year.

Um we've had a big focus on constituent services over the past year trying to automate as much of our processes as we've been able to.

So with the help of digital services, we rolled out our self-service portal, mvb.seer.gov.

And if anyone's gotten a parking ticket recently, you know there's a little QR code on the tickets, the electronic tickets you can scan that takes you right into the portal so you can see um all of the evidence, any photographs, um, the violation as well as the options to pay or contest are right there.

And then it's really nice because when somebody can test through that forum, it goes right into our software.

So it eliminates that back and forth paper shuffling.

Um in the same thing, we input kiosk in our office.

So if you come into the public-facing portion of our office, there's kiosk there that you can dispute right on the pad.

So our informate information aids walk the um constituents through how to do that.

Um as well as when constituents are disputing, they can pick their date and time for hearings as well as if they want to come in person or if they want to contest by mail, they can just write their defense and upload any attachments that they have.

How many months has it been?

Um, really quick.

Yeah.

It's been three months since we started collecting for school zone.

Well, so school zone is technically under parking, which is the next hearing.

I can answer okay.

Do you know how many months we've been so the school bus stop arm program?

We started ticketing in May after a 30-day warning period, so payments, you know, it took a little while for the tickets to go out, so probably we got our first disputes and payments rolling in end of May, beginning of June, and then for the red light and school speed zone violations after a 60-day warning period, those tickets started going out in November.

All right, sorry, you can't do it.

No, that's okay.

Yeah, sure.

Um, hearing rooms, we also work with IT and put in like the smart screens like you have over here, so that um the judges are able to easily display the evidence um in any videos, photographs that were um presented by the city can be shown.

Um, and then finally, we're um working with the administration to try and roll out something like a law library resource center, obviously, with the influx of automated enforcement and the increased tickets across BAA and for illegal set outs, right?

People just seem to need more help, um, and to try and mitigate um the issues we're having with constituents who are frustrated with the processes of getting tickets, and even though my department really focuses on the disputes in the hearings, we handle a lot of the questions people get right for any type of ticket type.

They call us, my staff walk them through it.

So trying to streamline all the resources into one place with actual computers in printers um that are easier to use than the kiosk.

We do have the kiosk, and those have been working really flawlessly, but I just want to build on that a little bit um to try and make things more accessible for people.

Um, the bottom part it gives you a little overview of those hearings for the BAA.

We're primarily focusing on the non-compliant property code violations issued by codes, as well as those health and sanitation violations issued by DPW.

Um, we'll come back to parking next hearing and the bottom.

You can see that as a whole, the department is doing over 15,000 disputes annually, and I anticipate that number to continue to increase.

You'll see a lot of the trends, the volume of tickets is going up across the departments issuing the tickets, and as the ticket volume goes up, the disputes go up, even if the dispute rate stays relatively the same, more tickets means more disputes.

Um really quick question.

Yeah, if someone say, okay, because you guys working together with cold, yeah, because that's where the tickets are generated from correct.

If the someone from cold writes a ticket, right?

Or say a house had trash around, right?

Right?

And they write a ticket.

On the ticket, does it say um the BAA and this is the number or all that dispute?

Is there so the codes process they start with their notice of violation okay?

Saying that you have a violation, you have this amount of time to comply.

Um, and that compliance time range varies depending on the violation.

Um, but they send those out, those are nailed and mailed, so they're posted on the property, mailed to the um property owner.

And mail to the property owner, not to the person that lives there.

Correct.

It's a nail and mail under the law.

You affix it to the property, mail it to the property owner because the property owner is the one responsible.

Responsible.

Right.

So then if they don't comply by the comply by date, um, let's say it's uh seven days, then the codes department sends out a legal warning letter advising the property owner that they haven't complied.

If they continue to fail to comply, they will either send that complaint to the BAA or to the law department.

It encompasses both options and outlines um the legal remedy for each, so the amounts of fines that can be issued if that happens.

So the first time is a warning, or you get a fine.

No, neither of those are fines, yeah.

Okay, those that is codes attempt to get them to comply.

Perfect.

If the property owner still fails to comply, then if it they send it to the BAA, that's when a ticket with an associated fine goes out, and those are served by my department certified mail in compliance with the governing law that allows us to issue those fines.

Are you buying anything that comes?

I mean, I had a several constituents call about things that I never would thought about, right?

Um and then they call codes and then codes have to go see about it because it is an issue, but not to the point of where you would think you would need codes.

Like somebody's trash can got in the wind, right?

It blew over.

You know, little things about like where they're trash.

Are you finding any like things that are coming across by trying, you know, more of like community issues that shouldn't go to you, but it comes to you through that.

Anything like that?

No, because for me it has to go like the codes violations have to go through all those preliminary, you know, notices, you know, codes is trying to communicate if they have numbers on file, they're reaching out to property owners.

So it only gets to me on the code side if there's no communication, no compliance, then the ticket is issued, and our tickets give them 30 days to pay the fine or request a hearing.

And that's when the engagement with my department starts.

Leah, remind me, I'm not sure if you remember.

We last year we cut the budget line for your part-time staff.

I don't remember if it was parking or BAA.

Do you remember?

Um both of them are projected current year to come in under what we budgeted.

Is there a bottleneck there or what's happening with your own?

A couple things.

One, um, last year we increased the hourly rate um to 158 to be on par with the state assigned council rate.

Um, and then I don't do a lot of like raises or updates in my budget, so I didn't realize I was responsible for pushing that through.

So we haven't been paying them the increased rate.

So there is um, you know, more money that we're working with payroll to get out that I mean it doesn't account for all of it, but it's a pretty it's a I don't know, ballpark a hundred thousand dollar difference.

Um so that we're rectifying, and then obviously as they're getting paid forward, they're gonna be getting paid at the higher higher rate.

Two we are um incredibly backlogged right now, um, mostly on our by mail hearings.

Um we're finally caught up on a legal set outs, but we are behind BAA is our one process right now that's not automated, it's all manual because we're using the code software IPS.

Um, so we've been working to automate it, you know, whether to try and build out IPS, push it into AIMS where our parking and illegal set outs are.

Um, so a big group of us have been working on that um for the past year.

Um, and it just becomes capacity, right?

The BAA tax rollover took priority as well as automated enforcement, right?

Because we kind of added automated enforcement um with minimal changes to the department capacity.

Um, and so yeah, it and it's hard to find people, right?

That to fill the positions for the part-time because they have to be an attorney admitted in New York State.

Um, for the BAA side, it's um four years for the parking side, it's six to seven years, and they have to live in the city.

So of the part-time nature.

I mean, myself um and my deputy director Ishrat Ruhi, who's here, um, we do it.

I've also had my other deputy position vacant since um the start of the fiscal year last July.

Um, so that limits our in-house staff that can do those hearings.

And that backlog that you talked about, what is the impact on the resident?

What's the impact on the corporation?

Um, impact on resident, it's is it's a long wait time from when you dispute.

It freezes your ticket in time, so you're not going to accrue any additional penalties.

You're not at risk for anything like that.

But um, we do get a decent call volume where people ask for a status update because they haven't had a decision issued.

And again, it's mostly our by mail hearings.

We're pretty good about getting our in-person because you can select your date and time now.

Um, it's easier to get in for those.

Um, so just waiting, right?

For your hearing or your decision to be issued for the city um for the BAA specifically, right?

Those code the code case stays opened.

So their codes is waiting for us to work through our ticket process under the law, we could issue multiple tickets at the same time, but because of the way the system works, we don't allow them to issue a subsequent ticket until that first ticket has concluded through our process.

So if the property owner is not engaging or complying, the codes is kind of at a standstill at that point because this is their tool to try and get compliance.

And then, you know, the furthest um option that has an impact is that you know, any revenue that would potentially be generated is at a standstill as well.

Well, y'all want to go back to code violations.

So many of the property owners live out of state.

Yes.

There's one on North Thomson and I've got calls.

Live in Louisiana, New Jersey.

So when you send letters to them, what is the response time?

And do they pay their violations or they want to challenge it?

Sure.

So all of our tickets, regardless of where you live, are served served certified mail with return receipt.

Okay.

Um so we track all of that and anything that gets returned, we usually attempt a second service.

My staff will dive a little bit deeper to find a different service address.

Um that gets returned, you know, then we'll usually turn back to codes and end up denying the ticket because we weren't able to perfect service and they'd have to take it through the law department.

So I'm sorry, but do you believe that a lot of these who are LLCs change your names or identity to avoid paying paying these tickets or they move around?

We have a lot of um property owners that you know with LLCs that have, you know, LLC one, two, three, four, five, right?

You can see trends like that.

Um, I've never delved into, you know, kind of figuring out.

I leave it up to law.

I mean, I think we all have problems um with LLCs piercing the corporate veil, if you will.

Um, it's a big problem, you know, on my perpetual to-do list would be to try and get um work with other municipalities across the state to lobby the state to amend the service um option for these tickets, um, similar to you know, other types of civil fines and just have it be first class mail.

Um, the certified mail is hard because um people know if if they're a frequent flyer, they just don't sign for it, and then we're not able to perfect service.

We could personally serve them, but the cost benefit of that isn't worth it.

Um CAX is sometimes our day behind their taxes.

Yeah, so that this will be the first time this year where any onpaid fines and penalties will be rolled over onto the taxes.

So with the 2020, the May 2026 tax roll, that outstanding amount is going to be rolled over.

So I'm really excited um about that.

I have our really rough projections.

Hang on, let me find it.

Yeah, if people know, so when you do that, um is it going to be a letter sent to them too saying this is going to be sent to your taxes?

So they would have gotten that when they um anybody when you get the ticket that I was explaining, right, with the fine or penalty, you either um pay, then you're done.

And if you don't pay, you've requested a hearing or you default.

If either of those options, you get a decision and order issued from the BAA that tells you you've defaulted or you had the hearing, here's the order, and this is the decision and the amount due, and that advises that you have 30 days from that date to pay or appeal or request to stay of default.

And if you don't, that um that amount due can be turned into a judgment um and filed in placed as a lien or rolled onto the taxes.

Oh with that being said, maybe I put it should have used a better way.

Um, with you guys being behind because you guys got so much.

Yeah, how is that correlating to that piece?

Because what if it was someone who sent in something or a letter?

Oh, we back it up too.

Um, right, so the trying to get the dates right.

Um, let's say April 1st was the our cutoff date for tickets, and then it would have we would have had for the BAA specifically, we would have had to have issued a decision and order by April 1st, so that the response would have come in by April 31st.

You know, because we're giving any time we issue an order, you have 30 days to respond to that order.

So that's in addition to the ticket.

The ticket, you have 30 days to pay or contest.

Let's say you don't contest, you default, then we issue a default decision and order, and you have 30 days to pay or request to open that default.

Right now we're pretty far behind on the defaults.

Um, but anything, nothing issued after April 1st would be rolled on this year.

It would have to wait until next year.

So did if we went to go to if someone went to go pay down there, it would show that it was already rolled.

Like say so we said it would show like no, you can't pay because it's been already rolled to your taxes.

Yeah, we're working with I think I saw Rose in here.

She's been a huge help pulling all this data because again, it's manual in IPS to come up with the list, and then my staff go through with both the legal set outs and the BAA and check every single case to make sure that we've done all the steps we have to do, and then um we're working with Rose and we'll zero it out in the system so that you know if somebody comes to pay, it's gonna say rolled over onto taxes, and we've been doing that for the illegal set outs for a couple years now.

Leah, um the um I'm kind of looking at all three departments that are under you, I guess.

Sure.

The uh BAA parking and um payment center.

Is that you?

Payment center.

Payment center is not me.

Oh, okay.

All right, so yeah.

So out of those two, um you only have one um position in Surah.

One position in Sarah, the Surah position is John Black, who's with me for two days and he's with the law department for three days.

Okay, and um no one in either of these departments receive um out of title pay.

Not usually, sometimes um if we have somebody that we're waiting to fill a position, but I think since um I formally created my supervisor position, we haven't had that happen.

When was it a supervisor position created?

Not last budget year, the year before.

Okay, so not recent.

It was yeah, it was just took a while to get the position approved with the county.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, my positions, I feel like compared to other departments, they're pretty straightforward in that that one Sarah position, and when um he's with me, he's doing the um hearings for parking and automated enforcement, and then the rest.

Um, I you know, I put my org chart on the back of that first page for you.

Um I've got you know, pretty split between full-time staff and part-time staff.

The part-time staff are all the attorneys who work either as part-time administrative law judges or part-time hearing examiners because I'm having trouble um finding more people based on the volume from automated enforcement.

I'm cross-training any that want to be cross-trained and have some additional capacity, um, but always looking for new attorneys.

So, so Leah, I I'm looking at page 107 where you say temporary service, administrative law judges.

You have 10 of them, right?

Yeah, the 10, the number is kind of arbitrary because it's I think of it more as like the dollar amount in the budget that I have, knowing they're 158 an hour.

I could have two judges that are working, you know, 20 hours a week, or I can have 10 judges each working two hours, you know.

So I do have right now across both departments, 12 part-time, but you can see if you look on my org chart that I gave you for parking.

Um if you include John Black, one, two, three, four, five, six, I have seven.

And that's I recently just cross-trained two, brought one back, um, after we recently um unfortunately lost one.

So I just look at it as don't go over my allocated, you know, the budget line amount that I have, and I give people as many hours as I can part-time, and even with that, I still um again, due to automated enforcement, there's a pretty severe backlog across all hearing types right now.

So collectively, where where is the uh the amount for that?

It would be if you flip to the next page.

108.

Okay.

And the what temporary services.

Temporary services, okay.

So I'm sorry, can you just repeat what the 100K is backlogged for?

So what it 100.

You said that um there was a difference in pay.

Oh, the pay rate.

We increase the hourly rate for the part-time administrative law judges last year up to 158.

Um, so the amount is, you know, right now the projected amount, the two 50, right?

Am I reading that right?

Is I think a little bit lower.

I think it'll be higher than that.

Um, because we weren't paying them the correct hourly rate.

Okay.

Um again, I'm giving people as many hours as they're able to give right now.

Um, so it's not for lack of trying.

So I would uh make a desperate plea not to reduce that number any further.

Cause I'm I mean I'm constantly posting and trying to hire new part-time judges, I'm trying to hire that vacant deputy position, which is my only real vacancy.

They're just very challenging positions to fill because of the it attorney admitted in New York State for so many years, depending on the type of case they're adjudicating.

So I I'm still on these uh administrative judge questions.

So out of all of that, we this year we spend 385,000 on it.

Is uh are they hearing all every ticket or is there specific tickets that they are the part-time?

Yeah, the the uh temporary service.

So the temporary services are all of my part-time judges.

Okay, in addition to them, myself and Ishra also hear cases.

Okay.

Um, and if I had that other deputy position, that person would be able to hear cases too.

So that group of judges, we hear all of the disputes across again, and I kind of tried to break it down to show you who's doing what the laws are a little different.

So for the BAA, we have a separate appeal panel.

Those judges can't regularly hear the underlying cases.

Um that's why I have the appeals panel split there, and um, like I said, I just am now cross-training a few of those to do the parking and automated forcement because that volume is um so high.

So just just uh it uh this is this maybe maybe a simple question for you.

What did we generate with tickets last year?

Or all the revenue generation would be back up under the revenue if you flip to page 31.

And I generally like to say these, right?

The revenue generation, I get how it impacts my department, but that's not really my goal or my responsibility.

That's the underlying department issuing the tickets.

That being said, if you look in the middle of 31 there, you'll see administrative adjudication receipts.

Um, and like I was alluding to because the ticket volume, if you look at if you skip to that page, the BAA page here, um, the ticket volume, you know, if you look at fiscal year 23 to 24 compared to last year, codes um over doubled the amount of cases that they referred to the BAA.

So more tickets means more fines, and then more hearings on my end.

Um, so you can see that amount is projected to go up, and then we'll have another almost we're not sure, but 500 to 600,000 that'll be rolled over onto the taxes this year.

So if you combine both of those and look at it, that'd be over a million dollars that the BAA ticketing is generating if you consider the rollover to be that's just that one that's just BAA if you flip to page 34 under public works, the very first item, the set out charges, that is the um revenue for the tickets for the health and sanitation violation, and again, you can see that that the projected amount is more than we were anticipating.

And then if you flick to the back side of my handout there, the health and sanitation, you know, I kind of tried to give you an overview of those tickets, um, because again, DPW, they're issuing significantly more tickets, which they could be both car and a legal setup violations, and I gave you a little reminder that the initial ticket is actually a warning, and then the fine is if you don't comply.

Um, so of the almost, you know, 8,689 tickets.

I gave you a breakdown, and the really cool thing I think with this is that even though the volume of tickets is going up, the compliance rate is going up.

So last year the compliance rate was around 67%, and now it's a little over 72%.

So what would need to happen for complying rate to increase?

But more people when they get that initial warning ticket, they're pulling it back within 24 hours so that environmental services isn't going and picking it up.

You're only getting the fine for the um health and sanitation violations if you don't correct the violation within 24 hours.

And if environmental services, Andy Jacobowski and his crew are going and picking it up, that's when you get fined.

Okay.

So we're not doing speeds on rebel.

I'm just looking at it.

We are in one minute.

One minute.

Is this our rep our full revenue?

Or this is this is not how we pay um the company that we're you're going back to page just in general.

So with one, this full revenue is what we brought in.

That has nothing to do with any other cost that we have to pay.

I'm gonna defer what came in.

So it's still we still haven't paid.

So this is just total.

This is an after we paid anybody, right?

Is it the revenue share portion?

Is it our portion, or is it the total amount, and we still have to pay gen optic?

Right on the expenses side.

Okay.

So it is a special.

So we I I stayed far away from those numbers this year because last year it there were just too many different versions of numbers.

And Councillor Caldwell, thank you for the transition.

Can I get a motion to adjourn BAA?

Okay, move a little second.