TOWN OF HIGHLAND, NY — The Highland Town Board approved updates to its code enforcement policies at its meeting on Tuesday, April 14, centering around short-term rentals and the management of money coming through the town’s code enforcement processes.

Town supervisor John Pizzolato outlined the changes. The changes had resulted from a meeting with Al Fusco and Erika Schneider of Fusco Engineering and Land Surveying, the company working with the town for its code enforcement.

Under the new system, escrow will be collected on projects via the code clerk. Escrow funds are submitted by developers during a planning process to pay for any independent experts needed as a part of that process. 

Once those funds are submitted, the code clerk will write the planning and zoning board secretary a check, so that the escrow will be managed by that person, said Pizzolato. Any bills that come in for that escrow account will come in to the bookkeeper, but the planning and zoning board secretary will write the checks as they come in. 

Pizzolato said the process was recommended by the New York State Controller’s office, with whom the town is working on an overview of its policies. Under this system, “One person manages the money coming in, one person manages the collection of the money and then another person handles the bills, so that there’s a three-point system, so there’s full visibility, so we don’t have to go back years and years and years to try to make sense of things that were not properly entered,” he said. 

Additionally, Pizzolato said that all engineers and consultants will need to submit their bills within 60 days for reimbursement. When he came into office in 2024, he said, there was a backup in escrow payments so that the town needed to use ARPA money to pay off escrow and consulting bills; this policy would prevent that. 

Short-term rentals

Pizzolato also discussed changes in the policies around short-term rentals. 

No escrow will be collected on short-term rentals going forward, said Pizzolato; for that type of project, it just resulted in “a lot of busy paperwork,” he said. Escrow will continue to be collected if there’s some complication in the process, such as if an applicant has to go to the zoning board of appeals. 

Short-term rentals will face a yearly permitting fee of $1,000, he said. Unregistered short-term rentals will have 60 days to get on the agenda before the planning board, or face a $1,000 fine for every month that they remain in operation. 

In addition, Schneider will serve as the town’s “short-term rental czar,” ensuring enforcement and getting short-term rentals registered, said Pizzolato. 

“What we’re finding is that there’s a lot of Airbnbs,” said Pizzolato. “We’ve registered anywhere from I would say in the course of adopting this policy, we’ve registered around 68, but because of the way they were entered at the inception of the program, there was no renewal system.”

“Now, Erika has to go back and look at all short-term rentals from the very beginning and make sure that they’re on a regulated schedule,” he said.

In other news

Following an executive session, the Highland Town Board approved a settlement agreement in a case between the board and former constable Marc Anthony. 

Anthony had sued the town, as well as former town supervisor Jeffrey Haas and former town board member Kaitlin Haas, following the town’s suspension of its constabulary in April 2022, claiming discrimination against himself and impropriteties in the constabulary’s suspension. Details about the proposed settlement agreement were not available as of press time.