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Question Sticker Use for East Hampton Contractors

By
Joanne Pilgrim

A proposal to drop a requirement that home improvement contractors attach stickers to their cars attesting that they hold East Hampton Town licenses did not get a stamp of approval this week from Betsy Bambrick, who heads the town’s Ordinance Enforcement Department. The stickers are a “valuable resource to code enforcement,” she said.

The proposed changes include an increased requirement for continuing education — from five to ten hours in the year a new applicant seeks a license — and a change to the period of validity for licenses, from one year to two.

Contractors must have a copy of their town license at job sites, and the law has required that each vehicle “associated” with the business — as in, driven by employees to the site — have a town-issued sticker.

Revisions to the town code on home-improvement contractor licensing had been developed by Michael Sendlen­ski, an assistant town attorney, and discussed by the town board at the suggestion of the town-appointed licensing review board. They were designed, Mr. Sendlenski said at a June 9 town board meeting, to make the law simpler and to increase its enforceability.

 The requirement that stickers be affixed to workers’ vehicles can be a problem, Roy Dalene and Britton Bistrian, members of the review board, told the town board during a discussion on Tuesday. They said contracting businesses’ employees and subcontractors change often. Thus, Mr. Dalene said, a worker may have a sticker on his or her vehicle that was issued by a former employer, and it may not indicate whether the main contractor has a valid license.

“We didn’t find that the sticker added any value in terms of enforcement,” he said.

But Ms. Bambrick disagreed. Contractors and members of the public who have seen workers at job sites whose vehicles lack the stickers have notified her department, she said, providing a “jumping-off point” for investigations into whether the workers have the necessary town licenses.

So far this year, Ms. Bambrick said, her department has had 83 cases concerning contractor licensing to look into, and 43 citations have been issued. In April of 2014, the department mounted an initiative to check contractor licenses, and opened 51 cases. Six tickets for violations were issued, and, Ms. Bambrick said, “We were able to get dozens of unlicensed contractors into the clerk’s office to get their licenses.

 

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