North Hempstead Supervisor Jennifer DeSena unveils reforms to town building department

North Hempstead Supervisor Jennifer DeSena announced new reforms to the town building department, vowing to return residents' calls faster and digitize decades-old paper records.

DeSena announced the reforms during a news conference Wednesday at her office at Town Hall in Manhasset.

The town's 311 call center will field department inquiries instead of building department staffers. The town will digitize decades-old records, so building department staffers are able to pull records more quickly. The town also hopes to speed up the permit appeals process, officials said.

DeSena, a Democrat who ran on the Republican line, has criticized departmental operations since starting her first term in January 2022. Earlier this year, the Nassau Comptroller’s Office issued a critical audit of the building department that found "significant operational deficiencies."

"The most important thing is breaking down the wall between the residents and that department," DeSena said Wednesday. "This is going to help our staff as well, to facilitate communications, so that important information is available to our residents, as well as the professionals in the field, so that they have a reasonable expectation of how long a project will take."

Last month, the town hired a new deputy commissioner, Stephen Haramis, to lead the department alongside Glenn Norjen, another deputy commissioner. John Niewender, the longtime commissioner, will retire in mid-October, town officials said.

Town officials said they hoped to reform a "broken communication model," according to a copy of the town's reform plan.

The town will create a digital log of 311 calls that will be forwarded to the building department. A building inspector will be assigned to the case and have two days to respond.

Calls to the building department "are routinely left unanswered," according to a copy of the plan. "Worse still, there’s no clearly defined, assigned responsibility for the inquiries, and callers are left navigating a frustratingly complex maze to get help."

The town has kept digital records for some time, but it's difficult for building department officials to call up records from decades ago, officials said. When property owners seek permits for work on older homes, building department officials often have to dig through thousands of pages of documents to handle the requests.

Town officials also hope to expedite the appeals process. The department will assign a single inspector to handle all aspects of a property owner's permit request. The same inspector who writes an omission letter will also review the appeal. This way, the homeowner won't have to deal with multiple inspectors who may not be familiar with the case.

The town plans to end the practice of "expedited review," which allows applicants with a "dire need" to petition council members and jump ahead in the permit process. 

Asked about DeSena's proposal, Mariann Dalimonte, a Democratic councilmember, said the supervisor did not consult with her on it.

"I was stunned to learn that today [DeSena] announced reforms to the Building Department to the media without even a prior whisper to her Democratic colleagues on the town board," Dalimonte said. "Constructive reform to the building department simply cannot occur when half of North Hempstead doesn’t have a seat at the table."

DeSena countered that Democrats had stymied her prior attempts to reform the department. In a statement, she accused Democrats of having "actively blocked any attempt at positive change ... "

Correction: North Hempstead Supervisor Jennifer DeSena wants to end the practice of "expedited review," where building department applicants can jump ahead in the permit application process. A previous version of this story misstated DeSena's plan.

By Joshua Needelman

joshua.needelman@newsday.com

Joshua Needelman covers the Town of North Hempstead for Newsday. A Long Island native and University of Maryland graduate, his work has appeared in publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post.