OBSERVER Photo by Braden Carmen Cassadaga Mayor Bill Dorman, left, and Village Treasurer/Clerk Roxanne Astry, right, listen as members of the Village Board give their reports during the most recent Village Board of Trustees meeting.

CASSADAGA — After multiple contentious meetings between the public and the Cassadaga Village Board of Trustees, the first meeting after voting to move forward with a moratorium on short-term rental properties was noticeably different.

When the moratorium was the topic of a public hearing on Aug. 10, the time for public comments lasted an hour and 24 minutes. Multiple members of the public raised their voices and/or personally questioned the ethics of members of the Board of Trustees.

At the first meeting after the vote, however, the meeting lasted just 23 minutes in its entirety — more than an hour shorter than just the portion for public comments on the moratorium in early August. What was once a standing-room-only crowd at the public hearing became an audience of two people from start to finish — including just the village historian and the reporter covering the meeting. One member of the public came in to observe a portion of the meeting well after it began. One Village Trustee, Rachyl Krupa, was not in attendance.

A highlight of the most recent meeting was a potential code enforcement officer, Jason Luce, was approved to be hired on an interim basis. Luce will continue his training in code enforcement, with 18 months to complete the process. He recently interviewed with Mayor Bill Dorman and Deputy Mayor Bill Astry, who were both impressed.

Trustee Cindy Flaherty also spoke about Chautauqua County grant funding for the village athletic fields. The grant is a matching grant, meaning the village will match whatever the awarded funding is, typically between $2,500 to $10,000, according to Flaherty. The Village Board is hopeful that electric lines can run to the fields and a new sign can be made to name the field. Those discussions remain ongoing. Flaherty noted how the fields have “a lot of potential,” and named multiple recreational uses she thought of as possibilities for the future.

The village also set Halloween trick-or-treat hours for 5 to 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 31.