CITY OF AUBURN ELECTRIC BOARD MEETING
November 13, 2002 at 7:00 pm
Attendants: Jim Salva, Dave Klimek, Jim Moore and Ken Lumb
The following applicants were interviewed and approved by the board on this date to take the
exam given this date:
§ Bruce Emerson, Master Electrician
§ Jon Leubner, Master Electrician
§ Mark Caruana, Limited Electrician
Board reviews and approves minutes from October 2002 meeting.
Moore I have to apologize because I did not get anything wrote up regarding the Rochester reciprocal.
Lumb Well, I’ve got to tell you, and not because my company has one, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to do away with the reciprocal. I know how we felt when Syracuse dropped us.
Salva True.
Lumb And I’ve heard a number of times how many years it took to get the reciprocal with Syracuse. I’ve talked to Ithaca about a reciprocal and now we want to drop Rochester.
Salva Has Joe responded?
Lumb I’m not going to lie to you. He hasn’t gotten back to me again. I know guys are coming in from Syracuse and we don’t go to Rochester much, but…
Salva …we have the right to.
Moore On your license, does a member of the corporation carry that license?
Lumb Yes.
Moore According to our Municipal Code, the person who carries the license has to be a member of the corporation.
Lumb Right.
Moore Now we have Syracuse Merit working at Central Health under Bruce Emerson’s license. He works for Merit and has a Rochester reciprocal. He’s not really a member of the corporation. They just made him a vice president in title.
Salva Okay, we’ve all seen the application…
Lumb When I look at an application and I see design on it, does that me this person has ten years experience in the electrical field?
Salva Not necessarily.
Lumb I agree.
Salva He’s highly qualified resume-wise. He has a Utica and a Rochester license. He has a lot of engineering time and a lot of years in the industry, but not field years.
Lumb I thought we required experience in the field?
Moore He does the inspections.
Lumb That, to me, is not experience in the field.
Salva We are also taking into consideration his other licenses.
Lumb I suppose this is similar to when the fellows at Beardsley and Beardsley wanted to take the test. I really don’t think they did much work in the field.
Salva We could make part of the test hands on work to be demonstrated, like the plumber’s test, but we don’t have the facilities. If Mr. Emerson didn’t have the other licenses, we would have to give it a good hard second look. With the licenses to back up the credentials we can’t. He is taking the test tonight as an individual, if he passes the test he is more than welcome to come in and do work in the City of Auburn. He admitted to Jim tonight that he is not a voting officer, no stock; he is not a true corporate officer of Syracuse Merit. If he passes this test, he has a license. What he has done for Merit, as far as I’m concerned is nothing, because he is not an officer.
Lumb Let me ask you something. Do you think the city attorney is going to back you if this guy passes the test?
Moore We just refuse the license and let the burden of proof be on them. The guy admitted it.
Salva He did, but if he passes this test tonight, Merit is going to consider themselves as having an Auburn license.
Moore But it is under false pretenses.
Salva Then it will be up to us to deny it. There are a bunch of issues that need to be resolved.
Lumb Do we end the reciprocal agreement with Rochester just because some Syracuse guys are trying to come in the back door?
Salva It’s going to be complicated. If we can tighten up the corporate end of things, there would be no need to end the reciprocal and that actually brings us into the next issue. Jim and I met with John Salomone regarding the city becoming self inspected. He was receptive, but had three concerns. Number one was; would it generate enough money to pay the inspector? We had mentioned Bob Smith and the next two concerns were the residency and the longevity. Bob is 62, so he may inspect part time for another 5 years. Since Auburn doesn’t have a big labor pool, when Bob would retire, what kind of pool would be available to fill his job? It would be kind of skimpy. Are we going to find someone qualified?
Salomone said he wants Leone to present something preliminary to council in January. I assume Bob would be working out of the Code Office and we would have more control over unlicensed work being done. The inspections are not getting done right now. Ernie Hares just can’t keep up. If the Underwriter’s can’t serve us we have to do what we must to finish the job. In the last meeting Bob suggested strongly that we secure another inspection agency.
Klimek Why do we have to use just one inspection agency, why can’t there be two or more?
Moore The city can’t, but otherwise it’s open to anybody.
Klimek So you could’ve called somebody else for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Lumb I thought when you were in the city itself, you had to use the Underwriter’s.
Moore No.
Salva Well there’s a problem there. You’re right.
Moore That’s restraint of trade.
Salva If they were self inspected inside the city limits it would alleviate all that, because if you took the city of Auburn out of Bob’s territory, Bob’s successor could handle his territory quite nicely. It wouldn’t help Ernie Hares at all. He’s got a big territory and the service is horrendous. If you call the Syracuse office to complain, there’s nobody there but one girl answering the phone, no manager.
Moore When the inspectors go in to a house and see it’s not wired properly, they call for an inspection. Now the Underwriters are not going to do any follow up inspections, they’re sending us the paperwork to send to the homeowner.
Quill Why doesn’t the city call another inspection agency?
Moore The city has an agreement with the Underwriters that they will do those inspections.
Salva Exclusively.
Moore Yeah. What’s the incentive? They do the inspections for free. Otherwise the city would be paying for them.
Salva Well, it’s all tied up together. If the city were self inspected it would resolve a lot of problems.
Moore I agree.
+End of meeting
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