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Village of Massena designates fire department foreman as code enforcement officer

Posted 11/8/13

By ANDY GARDNER MASSENA -- The Board of Trustees ended on Wednesday night the months-long debacle over who will enforce building and fire codes. They voted 3 – 1 in favor of a memorandum of …

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Village of Massena designates fire department foreman as code enforcement officer

Posted

By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- The Board of Trustees ended on Wednesday night the months-long debacle over who will enforce building and fire codes.

They voted 3 – 1 in favor of a memorandum of understanding with the Massena Fire Department to name the department’s foreman as the code enforcement officer. The current foreman is Ken McGowan.

The sole dissenting vote was Trustee Francis Carvel.

He voted against the motion because he wanted to see it as policy, not part of the labor contract between the village and fire department management.

“It’s very easy to put in … and nearly impossible to take out,” Carvel said. “I’m in favor of putting this in the policy manual.

“We’re talking about not tying a future board’s hands … and this could do that.”

Although he was absent from Wednesday’s meeting, Trustee Timothy Ahfeld had expressed a similar disdain in early October.

“There’s nothing wrong with the way this is written, I don’t want to see it as part of a labor agreement – I’d rather see it as a policy,” he said last month. “We’re trying to legislate something that doesn’t need to be legislated.”

The village and the town had hired Peter Devine in August as a joint code enforcement officer. He resigned his duties with the village one week later because, as he stated in his resignation letter, when hired he was under the impression he would be the lead code official, but the village was using the fire department for code enforcement duties that were not placed under his purview.

Devine continues to serve as the head code official for the town.