Office of the County Clerk Monroe County, New York Adam J. Bello Jeffery L. MeCann County Clerk Deputy County Clerk September 27, 2016 Maria T. Vullo Superintendent of Financial Services, New York State Department of Financial Services One State Street New York, NY 10004-1511 Dear Superintendent Vullo: ‘As co-chairs of the Monroe County Vacant and Abandoned Property Task Force, we are writing to provide our recommendations on the implementation of the newly created Statewide Vacant Property Registry under CPLR Sec. 1310. In April of this year e convened the Task Force, which includes members from all sectors of our community who are connected to this serious problem in our county. One of the primary goals of the task force is to ensure that members of our community effectively communicate and support each other's work as it relates to vacant and abandoned properties. The additional tool of the Vacant Registry could be enormously beneficial to our efforts in addressing these properties, but only if itis implemented in a way that supports the work already being done locally on the ground. Please consider the following list of recommendations as you implement the use of the database. 4. Define “Public Officials” — As DFS drafts the regulations supporting CPLR Sec. 1310, we recommend “publie officials” to be defined so that it allows inclusion of a range of offices and departments under the umbrella of a municipality. Without an inclusive definition of “public official;”, most municipalities will have just a handful of employees with access to this data. In a municipality such as the City of Rochester (with 2,400 vacant structures), this is simply not a feasible solution. Departments such as code enforcement and police should also be included in the definition, in light of the frequent issues they face related to vacant and abandoned properties. It is not feasible for just one staff person or even a few people to have access to this potentially useful information when you have a city that is dealing with more than 2,400 privately owned vacant structures and more than half of them have had foreclosures filed against them. If these departments are able to have direct access to the data, we believe local municipalities will have greater success at utilizing the data effectively. 2. Create a User-Friendly Electronic Database~ Municipalities need to be able to easily access and extract data from the Vacant Registry. The City of Rochester hopes to use the data to supplement their ongoing efforts to enforce code violation issues that are typically associated with these vacant properties. In addition, a municipality may want to assess how many properties a particular bank has in its inventory. This ‘could be for the purpose of engaging them about the condition of those properties, taking action against them in bulk form, or to report that information to the state. Regardless of the reason, municipal workers must be able to extract data out of the system in an efficient manner, and not be required to search each property individually. 101 County Office Building + 39 West Main Street * Rochester, N.Y, 14614 (585) 428-5177 + fax: (585) 428-5447 + www. monroecounty.gov + e-mail: meclerk@monroecounty.20V‘We recommend that the data be extractable in either Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access database format, with searchable fields such as the parcel ID number (ideally) and separate fields for the address line such as street number, street name, street type, and direction. Fields such as these will allow staff to run the data against currently existing municipal database's, and will identify and add useful information to for city's dealing with the problems caused by these vacant and abandoned structures. 3. Include Additional Data Points - CPLR 1310 identifies several data points that must be included in the registry, which we feel will be tremendously valuable. One such filed that will be collected is the lender's address. Municipal leaders have spoken to the Task Force about how difficult it can be to find the proper address to use for lenders in relation to legal actions. We therefore recommend the lender's address be specifically defined as the lender's corporate address which can be used for legal service of an enforcement action. In addition, we have identified several data points that we feel should also be included. ‘The statute currently states that lenders must report when a house is subject to a foreclosure proceeding. We recommend that they should also be required to report when there has been an entry of final judgment in the foreclosure action, and when a sale has been finalized on a house subject to the foreclosure action. This will enhance tracking mechanisms that local municipalities are using to track vacant and abandoned properties. Lastly, we know that many lenders will use a third-party property maintenance company to actually maintain the property. We therefore recommend that the name and contact information of these property preservation companies should be provided. This would be an enormous benefit to local municipalities, who often need to contact these companies with questions about the property. 4. Distribute the Fees Awarded Back to the Municipalities - In the case of a successful enforcement action where civil penalties were collected against the offending mortgagee or agent of the mortgagee, we recommend that a significant portion of those fees be returned to the local municipality. This will help support the work municipalities must conduct as a direct result of the violations. 5. Include Local Stakeholders ~ We encourage DFS to reach out to the knowledgeable stakeholders around the state who will be the primary beneficiaries of the data in the Vacant Registry. The City of Rochester and various community members of Monroe County have a depth of knowledge about the issues surrounding the handling of vacant and abandoned properties and how it impacts them locally. They can offer valuable insight to DFS as you develop and implement the registry. We want to support the work DFS is doing in this field and believe we can help to ensure that the data in the Vacant Registry is effectively used. ‘Thank you for your consideration on these recommendations and we look forward to an opportunity to continue to support this effort. Sincerely, Adam J. Bello Rebecca Caico, Esq. Task Force Co-Chair Task Force Co-Chair Monroe County Clerk Empire Justice Center