Despite municipal and county leaders focusing most of their time on dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic this year, local leaders still found time to discuss possible future shared services.

The Countywide Shared Services Initiative was proposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in spring 2017 and later adopted by the state Legislature as part of the 2018 state budget. The initiative established panels in each county across the state, and each is convened by the county executive and is made up of mayors and supervisors in the county.

The panel is tasked with developing a shared services plan, which must be reviewed by the Chautauqua County Legislature for comment, presented to the public for comment and ultimately voted on by the panel before being sent to the state Department of State. The process became ongoing for 2019-21 and also allowed panels the option to delay making changes or adopting new plans when appropriate.

According to the draft, the 2021 Chautauqua County Shared Services Initiative Plan doesn’t contain projects that have thorough cost analysis and demonstrate savings in the 2021 calendar year because Chautauqua County and local governments spent much of 2020 focusing efforts on the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Rather these projects represent items of interest to municipal leaders through the panel meeting process, and provide a direction to further explore during 2021, and anticipated implementation in 2022 for those projects that are feasible,” the plan states.

The plan has four initiatives — countywide code enforcement, shared elevator and generator maintenance agreement, Dunkirk and Fredonia shared composting facility and other discussions to explore. According to the plan, countywide code enforcement has been a discussion item for some time and these efforts have been accelerated by involvement of the Chautauqua County Partnership for Economic Growth. Through discussions with municipal and community leaders, the partnership has had initial discussions with Center for Governmental Research about a similar study prepared for Tioga County, and possible parameters for a study of countywide code enforcement in Chautauqua County — including various potential models, costs and savings associated with moving to this more centralized implementation.

The shared elevator and generator maintenance agreement is a focus of the plan because many municipalities in the county have a generator and/or elevator in their facilities, which requires regular maintenance and occasional emergency repairs. While likely using the same companies to perform these services, everyone has their own separate agreements. The panel will conduct a survey of this equipment and annual expenses to evaluate whether savings could be achieved by soliciting quotes as a collective and issue a request for proposals based on those findings.

One item from the original countywide shared services initiative plan that may be further explored is a shared composting facility between the city of Dunkirk and village of Fredonia. Both municipalities operate wastewater treatment plants located a few miles apart, but utilize different methods for dewatering their sludge. Efficiencies may be gained if Fredonia was able to accept and dewater sludge from the Dunkirk plant, which then could be composted and sold. Following the projects inclusion in the original plan, it was awarded grant funding for a feasibility study, which has not began. In 2021, the county will look to begin the process of accepting a grant and initiating a feasibility study to move the project forward.

Other discussions that will be explored by the panel in the future is countywide property assessment, countywide housing/zoning court, shared or regional animal control officers and regional brush collection sites. In 2021, the panel will conduct a survey of each municipality’s resources and costs to determine the feasibility of moving forward with consolidated or shared models for these services.