Common Council - Regular Meeting

or you can say so we're starting a meeting for public hearing regarding those on that and then the city or. So anybody here to speak to the zone and then the match. Again, but I'm here for the zoning of the map and then the city or. They will carry this public hearing after the next meeting will be another opportunity of caring or 2 regarding the proposed This year 2026 community development block grant program and then upcoming funding round to allow public participation and grant process. I'm here to speak to that. Then regarding this is so I'm carrying on to regarding both of the year 2026 community development block grant program and upcoming funding round of public participation in the grant process. This is the first of two public hearings as required under the Community Development Block Grant program to be held prior to submission of the CDBG application. The Citizen Participation Plan handout is available here or by contacting COMA at 607-753-1433. Purpose of the first hearing is to provide general information about CDBG program and answer any questions. The second thing is to obtain citizens' views or complaints about the CDBG program. And a third is to encourage participation to low moderate, low to moderate income persons in planning. Okay, nobody's here to speak to that. So I'll call that to the next hearing, public hearing number three, regarding proposed amendment to Article 11 of the Code of the City of Portland related to parking. I do have two people sign up here. So Michael, sign.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. My name is Mike Bersani. I'm a resident of the city of Portland and I serve as interim director of communications at Student Portland. And I'm here to share the university's perspective on potential parking changes, as well as some initial feedback we've heard from members of our campus community. First of all, I want to say that we value the strong relationship that we share with the city and this surrounding community. We're proud of the initiatives and the events will be placed throughout the year. Those partnerships reflect our shared commitment to making Cortland a better place to live, work, and learn. But without question, we know that parking is a complicated issue. It's something that both university and the city have worked to manage for years. And I think many of us would agree that it's one of the topics that students mention most often when talking about their experience in Cortland. We recognize there are no simple solutions. With that in mind, I'd like to share a few initial observations on behalf of the university. First, based on some preliminary information that we've received, a proposed paid parking plan appears to focus primarily on the city streets surrounding the university. And as a result, the people most directly affected would be our students, along with those faculty, staff, and visitors, especially when we consider those streets that cut directly to campus. A second, we're concerned that the proposal could place disproportionate burden on our students, including many who are already managing the financial challenges that come with their education. We understand that, you know, grace period has been discussed for Main Street, but our understanding is that the streets surrounding campus may not receive the same consideration. And if that is the case, The proposal would have a much greater impact on our students than on other users of the city's parking. Finally, we'd encourage the city to consider whether the timing of the public info process allows for meaningful participation from those who would most be affected. With public comment sessions taking place in July, when many of our students and faculty members may be away from campus, an important segment of our community may not have a practical opportunity to share its perspective before decisions are made. So, you know, we recognize that parking is a shared challenge and we appreciate the city's efforts to address it. But we believe that solutions will be strongest when they're implemented in ways that balance the city's goals with the needs of community members and students. Because for more than 30 weeks out of the year, our students are our community members. They live, they work, and they learn here. So we look forward to continuing that conversation and we hope to work collaboratively with the city to find solutions that serve our entire community. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you. I'm going to probably get this wrong. I think it's Harry Bisagati. Did I say that right? Holly, sorry.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. And hello, everyone. My name is Holly Filsigati and I am here on behalf of the Student Government Association at SUNY Cortland where I serve as Vice President. We appreciate the opportunity to provide our perspective on this proposal, an important issue that is being discussed today. We recognize that this has consistently been a pressing issue and acknowledge all the effort that has gone into the proposal and the discussion. But after careful review and discussion, our organization does not support the proposal The streets proposed for paid parking are used primarily by SUNY Cortland students and employees. And we believe this place is an unfair burden on those who rely on these spaces to access campus. Parking has long been one of the most consistent concerns raised by students. And this proposal would not alleviate these existing challenges, but instead can introduce an additional financial burden on top of the previous concern. Rather than enhancing students' experiences, it creates greater stress, reduces accessibility, and places another obstacle in front of students who are a part of not only SUNY Cortland, but also the greater Cortland community. We respectfully express our concern with the timing of this proposal and hearing, and it is taking place while students are not in school. So much of the population directly impacted by this proposal may not have the opportunity to participate in such an important discussion. We believe decisions that significantly impact students should be made with the consideration of the voice of the students they will affect. SUNY Cortland students are just as much fellow Cortland community members as they are students. Thus, as an organization working hard to represent them, we are committed to working collaboratively with the city and community members to develop solutions that will effectively address the issues while also reflecting the needs of all parties that are affected. Thank you for your time and your consideration. I'm the SUNY Cortland Student Government Executive Board. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good day.

Is there anybody else to speak on this matter?

OK. Ms. Prasanna, can you come back up, please? I'm in the fourth ward. And that's the area that would be suggested. I'm just thinking that perhaps not building a dorm, which will take away some of your existing parking. Yeah, that was kind of an unusual decision to make, considering that parking is such an issue up there.

Yeah, we are adding, we are actually adding parking on campus. Well, yeah, if you drive through campus, not too far away from where that construction site is, our softball field, dragon field. So there will be a net gain of parking when construction is completed to kind of manage our student residents on campus. So there will be a net gain after after that project is completed.

Okay. And I understand that instead of using some of the relatively unused land down by 281, that it was that that area was chosen to build a new dorm because that's what the students wanted, because they didn't want to have to walk down by 281. Yeah, I mean, that

The residence hall you're talking about that construction will start on in August is built as an alternative to our west campus apartments, which are located down 2801 that require bus transportation. So by building the south campus apartments at the new site, the idea is to bring students a little bit closer to campus to keep them connected to campus life. to amenities like our Student Life Center and obviously academic buildings as well.

I'll be able to watch it being constructed. It's right across from my house. Has the college ever thought about not having freshmen drive, not having freshmen have cars on campus?

It's usually a consideration that a lot of prospective students and parents will ask about. Can my student bring a car to campus? A lot of our student population does come from across New York State, across the Northeast. So it really is an important, I think, selling point for the university to be able to have access to reliable transportation, not just for getting home, but also to job sites, off-campus experiences. So we know that that's an important consideration for students when coming to Portland, especially in a you know, more rural area where, you know, access to a car is maybe more important than it would be in an urban setting. Okay. But it used to be.

It used to be. It used to be. Because I went to SUNY Portland as an undergraduate. And we could not drive.

Yeah, no, it is definitely an important. I do not know when the change was made to allow first-year students to have cars on campus, but it is. since I've been at Portland in my 15 years, has been an opportunity that we've offered to incoming students.

I understand it's a selling point for the college, but if parking is an issue and you want us to give, that's something the college might be able to give.

I also might want to mention that I think you're in the committee with us on that, that Our assumption was three quarters of the people that were taking the parking spots up on the hill were faculty members, correct?

Right.

Right.

And we would encourage our employees to park in faculty, staff spots as space allows in those lots.

I actually worked for the college, a program through the college, and have to come once a month for a staff meeting. And I... I kind of question all that parking behind Bowers, back then it was mid-hose and everything. I'm not sure people, I mean, I know students park back there. So, but that's- Yeah, those are patented. Right, but I don't think it's patrolled very well. It's my understanding that the city asked if it would be possible to include a $75 per semester fee to students. And I believe the student government approved the idea, correct? Yes, the student government said, yeah, that makes sense because it's our fire department that goes out there. You have your own police department, but our police also go out there. So you, the college uses a lot of city services. Obviously don't pay taxes because they don't have to. We were told no, and I believe Oneonta has a similar fee. It's got to be a little give and take.

Yeah, I would need to consult with colleagues in student affairs to understand a little more about that process because he's not involved in it. Okay.

And as for Pearl Street, and I'm sure York Street as well, the calls I get are from people whose, one, driveways are blocked. It's supposed to be a two-hour parking. They park there all day. So I would not be in favor of any additional talent. So, but I appreciate it. You check out of $75. Okay, thank you.

And also that it was brought up to the college. I think the only one who wasn't in favor of it was President. I'm not mistaken.

Yes, I believe so.

So my I advise the few people, and I know they're working on it, that there is a board of trustees that maybe they just need to make the trustees make the decisions to kick up some coffers here to the city of Cortland and we might be able to look at something else. But at this point in time, I think we have no other option to move this forward.

It would be pretty expensive for the college to get their own start department.

For sure, but unfortunately, it was zero for the fire department. Derek might be able to speak. I would say on an average, they're probably there 365 times a year.

How many, Derek?

Average. Nope, number right off the end. I think last year, around 150. This year, we're running to be just over 150 alarms. So it was halfway up. Yeah, so when I go to the college, I had a great presentation. SGA supported our proposal, moved up the chain to the people, and at the executive level, it was full. Mr. Ballista and I went up a few months ago and tried to pick another bunch. I believe you.

We're not at all means. We love the college. It's great for businesses, the property owners that have college housing. We love you here. By all means. We're not trying to throw you under the bus.

We're grateful for the work that takes place here. I know you make a lot of difficult decisions here from a lot of community members. You have to weigh everything. worst year because, you know, the timing of it seemed, it came rather abruptly during the summertime. And, you know, we work on behalf of our students. And I think the feedback we would even receive from them would be, you know, that this is an unexpected, unanticipated burden, but we will work through it, right? I mean, we solve problems together, the college and the and city.

This is a sports academic school, mainly, correct? More sports go on at the college than any other education.

Yeah, we're an athletics powerhouse. 26 national championships.

To me, kids should be walking to school. I mean, that's just my personal opinion. I should walk a lot more than I do. I'm not in school anymore.

You're speaking on behalf of the university, just because this would this would be an abrupt change to to make at the at the start of the semester, but we appreciate you hearing from both university as well as as well as our student government so.

yeah we appreciate how you stepping in as well, and certainly we have great relationship we work together all the time and different items. By any means, we don't want to make an adversarial we we couldn't do without college, I don't want to do without. Although there's issues that come up, but that's always the case when you have your population increased by that much. So overall, we have a great, and we want to keep it that way, trying to work on that. But I think timing of it, there's budget, budget issues and trying to get that worked out, trying to plan ahead. That's part of it. None of it was done in the Ferris, obviously. And you know, we haven't seen working together to make it so it works. Like we talked about yesterday, we talked about, you know, scholarship areas where somebody might need it, but I think it forces some of the hands where we have people You know, live on 50 Main Street that are not walking. They're all driving up there. Or the same house, Monroe Heights. My niece was one of them. You know, she'd, you know, instead of somebody waiting for 15 minutes, riding up together. And even from Monroe Heights, it's tough, but I get it. And sometimes it's winter, but we have a walking home community. We want to enforce that too. So I think we need to work together either way. Whichever way this goes, absolutely. We'll work together to do that. And I appreciate you guys. doing willingness to do that and bringing it up. You brought up good points.

Appreciate you hearing. Just one more question. Since we met yesterday, I took a little bit of your review and your college registration guidelines. And you charged a $25 registration fee and a $50 fee on top of that per semester per student. What's the other $50 you saw?

I would have to consult with our student accounts office to, you know, know where the specific rationale behind that fee is. It's on the student fees page, you said, Don? It might be the SGA account office. I'm just curious. We can certainly talk and I can look to make sure you have a reliable answer on the fees here.

And the $75 will be a fee. I can't do anything with the tuition when I ask for the tuition to be a fee.

I appreciate it. Amanda, do you have something that's You're right to speak to the same issue.

I would like to speak to the same issue. Sure. Hi, in case anyone here doesn't know me, I'm Amanda Epps. I am in Ward 7 with Troy. I work at SUNY Portland. I'm an alum of SUNY Portland. I got the honor of actually always walking up that hill at SUNY Portland. I'm also on the Joint Committee for Student Interest, meaning that I sit on the... faculty senate, and specifically focus on issues that affect both our students and our faculty, both professional and educational. That is a lot of things. That is the perennial issue of parking. I assure you, Pat, everything you brought up has been something I have heard dozens of times every semester. And trust me, They've all been trying to find alternatives. These are the best options. And if you want, I can definitely help get you in touch with people that can sit you down and tell you every little last reason for that. The big reason I want to point out is that we keep talking about things being walkable and how people should be walking and all this. Not everyone has that luxury, y'all. Has anyone considered or asked or checked about any of the accessibility ramifications of this? Adding paid parking would then put another thing, because if people have to pay for parking there, they're more likely to illegally park in the handicapped lots. You say, well, great, then people can ticket. Yeah, but that doesn't help me trying to get to work. That doesn't help people in the moment. It does put more coppers in the city, though, at whose expense. This feels extremely predatory. I would really like to ask that this at least be tabled so that when Faculty Senate comes back into session, it can be brought up. At this time, and it was already discussed, most of the people that would be affected by this are not currently checking their messages. They're not here. I would really strongly request that if we're making decisions that are targeted at a specific group of people, which it clearly is by our own discussions here, I would really like to see our council decide to allow those directly affected to know about this and maybe even have a say in it. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Just to be clear, it's directed at specific areas, not specific people. Okay. Anybody else here to speak to that? All right. We'll remain that public hearing open until the next meeting. And now we'll roll to calls and orders. Please.

Council Member Tolbert. Here. Council Member Silliman is recorded absent. Council Member Panello.

Present.

Council Member Lane.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Thank you. Anybody else for public comments? Okay. There is no financial update at this meeting. It'll be the next meeting. Mayor's report. So a couple items real quick. We had the dental bid. We had to pull that dental bid from the contractor. It was there. They're not following through with their covenants. So I've roundhouse mill. So that bid has gone back out. So we'll be coming back with another A person after you've received those bids back. The tree bids, ash bids were due yesterday and again we had no successful luck with that so we're redesigning that and RFP and sending that back out of the way and last strike three was Randall Park. We got those estimates last week, I think it was Thursday. We opened those bids and some of them, they were higher than what we had budgeted them out and some of the areas we're looking to redirect and change how that is a bit out to so meeting tomorrow to redesign that our keys and some of them and then we put out. So we had a lot going on, since our last meeting we had a flood, we had a tornado and we had a shooting so we're still trying to fight the shooting suspects and victims on that case. Tornado, DPW, great job helping with that. And the flooding, we're still cleaning up some of the aftermath from the flooding this weekend. But we were able to get some of the trees cleaned up at the park just in time for the Juneteenth successful program that was over there. There was good turnout for the Juneteenth. They had good vendors and a good amount of people that had shown up. Brush week starts next week. So just be a heads up, everybody there. You'll see there's still a lot of tree stuff out, but we just figured we'd wait until brush week to get the rest of that out. Um, also Monday is the 80th. Anniversary for a wick wire pool. So, um, so we'll get onto that on Monday. It's been a little excitement over there for the time. The Portland Dairy Parade starts today. Uh, so we saw that concert in the park at Suggit Park is that would you say about Portland Dairy Parade? Oh, did I say the parade?

Yeah.

Fair. Sorry.

I love the parade. I love the parade.

I like the parade too, the fair, but thanks for that. But that started today. So a concert in the park series will start Thursday at 7. It was Sydney Irving starting that off, and that's at Sunget Park. That's going to move around. Then Zootopia 2 is the movie at Sunget Park on Friday at dusk. The Main Street Music Series is back to next to brew at 64 Main. And that concert is Fridays from six to nine this month. Next, so we have applicants, we're receiving applicants still for DPW Finance, and we'll be starting to fire at the end of the month. And I guess that's all I have to report. So we'll move to award one.

Thank you. Hopefully everybody had a healthy and happy 4th of July and big thanks to the DPW crew. I know that they were busy with projects both big and small over the last couple of weeks and hopefully everything goes well in terms of the pursuit of people that were down on that one street and doing some bad things. A couple of questions and some comments in terms of financial items for the city. But I want to start out with a question about the public hearings for number one and three. Does council as a whole going to have discussion about these items? Because they were discussed in small group and we approved for them to be on the agenda for public hearings, but we've not discussed them as a group.

We can discuss them. And now if there's questions to ask, now's probably the time to have those conversations during the public hearing process so they have any concerns with that come up for them. And that's certainly next meeting as well during the public hearing process. If there are questions, I mean, they can have those so people can get answers if there's questions.

Yeah, because one of the concerns I have, there's properties on Groton Avenue, for example, currently zoned as businesses. Now, if the zoning has changed the housing, R2 or R4, if those businesses then are non-conforming, what happens down the road? If those businesses go out of business, if they look to sell, now they can sell as long as the property stays in use. But once it's out of use for six months, then it has to revert back to the...

I believe it's a year, but yes, then it reverts back to what the zoning change is. That's correct. Yep, so...

Council Member Tobin's right, it is six months, but after that six-month time frame, there's two ways that it can go about reverting it back to CB, a central business. They could go to the ZBA, appeal it there, and then they could actually come in front of the council as a whole to do that. Part of the process was being the pro-housing community we are, taking a look at that area. So you're not wrong, you're right, those are valid concerns, it is six months, but if they were to sell it, Just to use a business name, for example, Shahan Tire Service there. He's one of the ones that would be affected. If you sold it and it gets sold as an active business, it stays grandfathered, but that six-month vacancy you mentioned is the one that would trigger an automatic route to the parking lot. It would have to be a similar business. So there are certain businesses that are allowed in an R4 district that has been approved in the zoning already and to go for something different than that, but if it would be sold as a CB, I think it would.

The grandfathered use has to be similar in nature. There are businesses that are allowed in an R4 district or an R2 district with a special use permit. Otherwise, they would have to apply for a use variance. One of the criterias in getting a use variance is, is it the party's fault they need a use variance? Certainly, when you own a piece of property and the zoning changes, it's not your fault to change. I can't guarantee what the ZBA would do. But that tire business, it's probably not really someplace you'd put a house. So my guess is that a use variance would probably be appropriate for it. You know, as long as the buildings were standing as they are today. It burns down, then you want to rebuild something that conforms to the neighborhood.

Right. And then in terms of zoning, is the lot even big enough, either one of them, for there to be a structure placed on it? I mean, making them R2 or R4 when it's a small plot really might be handicapping the property owners.

I would think the Shahan Tire property I would certainly think is big enough to put an R4 structure on. Some of the other ones, it might be something where they would need to apply for an area variance. We have a large number of parcels within the city that are not large enough to do what we do with them. So the zoning board feels quite routinely grants area variances to allow for non-conforming parcels. You know, a lot of our housing parcels don't have proper setbacks. Things are too close to a sideline. The back yards aren't set far enough apart. The overall bulk coverage is too great. So I mean, when you put a zoning code into a city the age of Cortland, you're gonna have a lot of areas that are non-conforming and unfortunately we do that. Roy does a great job when somebody applies for a permit for something to try to get area variances for anything that's non-conforming to bring it conforming, but it's process and we're nowhere near there.

The concerns regarding the zoning, I haven't looked at each property by property or talked to the property owners. I know that there were postcards that were sent out. Are we aware of whether or not those have been received? Because the U.S. Postal Service sometimes, in terms of postcards, can be slow.

Mr. Jewett, do you know when those cards went out or your butters, stuff for that?

Yeah, they have been received. I've been getting calls about them. So, yes, I do know that they have been received.

I'm sorry, I forgot your name.

It's okay.

From questions regarding public hearing number three. That was amendments article 11, which is about parking of what I direct because there's two minor typos. Andy, is that you or is that Randall? Either one of us. All right. Number one line three, there's a period missing. And under number two, the fourth line, it says, hey, I believe it's supposed to be that. But one of the things that came up here, there was a conversation and it was Mr. Brassine was talking about seeing a map. Is there a map in terms of places that might have gate parking instituted? Because I don't think that's been shared with the entire council. Sounds like there's been some discussion and there's been some.

The law change doesn't institute paid parking anywhere. It only gives Council the opportunity to do so by resolution. So in order for paid parking to be instituted, Council will need to approve that on a street-by-street basis. It covers a lot of things. One, it tries to clear up that issue of people blocking driveways by making a bigger buffer zone where people happen to park farther away from your driveway so you can get in and out. It also tries to streamline the process as it is right now. Every time we want to make a change to parking, theoretically, we're supposed to change the city code. If we get a new pizza shop that moves in and we want to put a 15-minute parking spot in front of that shop, it doesn't really make sense to have to change the city code, go through a public hearing and all those steps. So what it does is for broad sweeping parking issues, council can adopt those by resolution. A 20-minute parking zone, the superintendent of public works can do that after consulting with the public works commission. So it tries to streamline some of those processes without it being cumbersome because what happens is we don't update the city code. So we have these things that are in the city code. It's like, why is there no parking on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 to 3 on this street? No one knows. Nobody can remember if it's ever been enforced, but it's in there. So we stopped doing it for some reason. This must be the reason it was put in there. It doesn't exist anymore, but we never updated the codes. This makes it much more simple to keep things up to date. Same thing, just like we did with the fines earlier. If we want to adjust parking, we don't have to change the law. It'll be a simple resolution to say, we're going to raise the parking permits by 50 cents or a dollar a month or whatever the case is going to be, or we're going to institute a parking somewhere. And it'll be up to council to say, two hours are free and it's X dollars after that, or it's immediately we're going to charge for paid parking. I mean, if you look at cities around Portland, you can find most any situation that you want, you know, Ithaca, Auburn, they all treat it slightly differently. You know, and I know when we looked at some proposals here, Dave went through, Chief Guerrero, excuse me, went through and looked at what all of our adjoining cities were doing, you know, and kind of said, well, if we put it this way, it leaves council the option to look adopt a parking plan for whatever area they choose to do so for, you know, and then that'll come before council, you know, in forms of a resolution. So the hope would be once we pass this law, we'll also pass a resolution to address certain things within the parking. The parking committee did make a recommendation, but I think the areas you've talked about that you've probably heard, it does largely affect areas close to campus at this point, but then it will be up to council if they wanted to expand that, retract it, change it, whatever they wanted to do after they, you know, gave it a try. And as it's not a law, council can make those changes much more nimbly by just doing a resolution. What's the timeframe on that resolution, Ben, for council? I mean, it could come as soon as the next meeting if council changed the law, if not possibly the following meeting. You know, I understand the concern that the folks from SUNY raised that it's not ideal timing for their student body, but we also want to do it so we're not trying to institute something mid semester. Instituting at the beginning of the semester is the easiest way to start implementing something like that with, you know, typically when we've done things with parking, And Chief, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we'll do a grace period of two or three weeks or a month or whatever and issue warning tickets for that time period to try to get them, you know, understanding what's going on. I mean, that was really the driving factors to try to get something rolled out for the new semester.

Okay. And it would be by resolution, local laws require public hearings. Are we committed to doing a public hearing if and when we are going to do paid parking? if there's more question up here. I would say absolutely. I mean, that's what you got to talk about it.

I mean, that's a big change. Whether it's a public hearing or not, I mean, a resolution of that type of change, you know, I certainly wouldn't hesitate for council to say, this is a big change, even if it's not called a public hearing, because that's a publication and certain things that it drags certain other things in. Um, Resolutions all go out well ahead of time. It's not like resolutions are stuck on the agenda the night of the meeting, unless it's an extreme rare situation for some emergency situation or something. But it's something like this that would not be the case. It could be on the agenda. It could be tabled to a second agenda to allow, you know, there to be a second chance for people to kind of bite at the apple, so to speak, to be heard on it. You know, and that's certainly proof. I mean, anything that's a big change like that, I think it makes all the sense in the world to stretch it out, you know, kind of introduce it at one meeting, have a little inspection on it, and then at the next meeting, it gives people a second chance to come forward, but then council can act on it, you know, and As we've done with other changes, whether it's a change in law or something like that, quite often there's things that are tweaked after we hear public comment.

So that's something that's... And what's nice about this, being able to do this law and have a solution, if there is a change, let's say somebody brings up there's not ADA, it would be nice to have ADA spots or different situations we can be more flexible and to make that work or problematic areas or areas that are problematic, we can change back because that flexibility to address the real concern as they come up.

So just to make sure. So right now, parking is allowed on one side of Pearl.

Correct.

If we approve this, that would be paid parking?

No.

No.

If you approve this, there will be a resolution that will call out where parking is allowed. OK. My guess is that because we're going to follow what the parking committee recommended, there will be probably paid parking on Pearl as part of that resolution, but that's up to council how they want to proceed with that.

So it recognizes two steps. First step is the fastest law, the second step to adopt what was recommended by the parking committee. Right.

The way we got set up for me, or mainly you, Melissa, it's easier to change than bringing everything to a resolution.

And there's so many areas that come, crosswalks, for instance. Right now, the crosswalks on Main Street say that they're located 72.4 feet from the intersection of Main and Tompkins, for instance. And when they redid Main Street, that's probably off by three feet now. Well, instead of saying you can't park in this crosswalk located here, you can't park in a marked crosswalk. So we're changing things to try to make things more common sense, more simple, and not have to keep running back to the code every time we repave a street or something changes like that. A crosswalk gets moved, a new crosswalk gets added because some business moves in or something. So just things like that that just are common sense.

Okay, so there are recommendations coming forward from parking committee in terms of.

2nd phase after this gets approved, and that'd be saying. I saw that discussion ahead of time, so it's typically confusing.

Well, it's good related, but. Not exactly the same when we, uh, when the city redid the parking lots all around Avenue, the parking has changed where there was residential only. And then business, and then there was signage, then there was not signage. And it wasn't clear. And I'm a member of an organization that goes to lunch at the Elks on Tuesdays and talking to other members, there was a fair amount of confusion about that. And if we're going to make changes, having it publicly advertised and everybody clear about what those changes are, I think is crucial to make sure that people know what the expectations are. And I would put a plug in the parking lot at Suggit Park off Madison. There's permit parking only signs. I don't see people parking there. And in particular, this time of the year, I think it would benefit our constituents if it was just open to everybody.

I'm not sure. Jim's not here.

The only time we did that was on Elm Street. Some of the residents we allocated, I think, four or five spots for all night parking. I mean, that was just Elm Street. Madison, Suggit,

Yeah, against the residential. So there are some spaces both in the Suggit lot there across the street from Harper School as well as Dexter that are designated as residential permit parking. The residential parking on Bain Street is usually at capacity. And, you know, there are Some people who live on Main Street who, because of there's no spots available for them down there, will take those. How many spots total and how many spots are designated as residential? I know they have in my head here, but the decision of how many to make was, you know, we did take into account the activities going on at Parker School. And to date, I have not heard any complaints about those spots being designated as residential permits, taking up space that other people can't find a spot. But if that's the case.

Because sometimes, like in Maple, release pressure off some of those buildings there that have stacked cars parked and be able to have that, again, students' options to be able to have something to do with that. So I know during student time it's used more frequently than not. Certainly, I'm sure that's not, you know, during the day it's not enforced, but at nighttime, there's options.

Well, interestingly enough, I don't think we have a lot of the downtown overnight parking spots filled. And Lincoln and Maple, I would imagine that some of the parking this time of year is probably a little less. And maybe it could be seasonal if that's actually a demonstrated need. But a park, there's already limited parking there. I know that anybody that tries to park over by the pool, the splash pad, they're great resources. That lot gets filled up very quickly. People are parking along the road. So then the next place to park would be over in that lot because there's not a lot of other places.

Well, we do make adjustments in terms of how spots are allocated in the different lots about residential business to our parking. So, you know, we want to be able to make those adjustments to meet the needs of the community.

The other thing to remember is with the downtown parking spots, this time of year, it may seem like a lot of them are empty, but they're full because a lot of the landlords will carry those permits year-round. So even though there's not a car sitting there, that's a spot that is leased out by somebody. I mean, it's deceiving this time of year, especially in the downtown lots, because the residential permits may not all be being filled, even though they're all utilized, so to speak, or vice versa. And there's a waiting list. Yeah, there's a waiting list for a lot of the city lots.

Yes. Don't even get worse. Everybody wants parking. Well, we want all this development to go on Main Street, and I said it before. It's all great and dandy, but every building's got four stories. And what we did years ago, they were all occupied, but nobody had a car back then. They had horse and buggy.

And if you had a car, you got one for your house, not one for the husband and wife and two for the kids.

One out of every four kids had a car. Now, every kid's got a car, and they're the size of a boat.

Hey, thank you. Financial questions, concerns. At our last meeting, Mr. Shager, and it's in the minutes, you talked about potential revenue shortfall in codes by about 200,000 and in youth care by about 125,000. I do see that we have some budget adjustments. Are we to anticipate potential budget adjustments to account for those two shortfalls in those lines or anticipated shortfalls in those lines?

In this case, no.

So my concern was Having attended the meeting that the office of the state comptroller put on over at the county office building, it was very clear that when there are shortfalls identified that we are supposed to make those adjustments. So we talked about working on a million dollars in terms of this year. Yes, there might be 500 additional state aid coming in. My guess is that there's six being adjusted. Some of that 500 grand will probably be sucked up there. But if we are not making adjustments when we know we have shortfalls, we're setting ourselves up for problems later.

I think we've got to be careful, O'Brien, because you've got to know where that money can come from. At this point in time, there's no place for that money to come from. If we get the state aid, maybe we could do that adjustment. If we get some property tax more than we anticipate, that could take care of it. If we have savings in the budget, we can do it. But at this point in time, that money is not available to go cover it. I don't know how the state would want me to go say I'm going to take $100,000 and get rid of a police officer or a fire guy and cover it. I mean, that's what you're looking at.

It's important not to overstate your revenue when you're doing the budget. You're doing that during the budget season, not overstate your revenues, and you would have that fixed before that. So you're after that, so now we have to fix it in a slower method than we'd like to do. All right. Thank you. Ward 2. Is that here? No, Ward 3.

Okay. So, Ward 3 got hit hard with the remnants of the tornado, especially Melvin, Forest, My Street, Elwood, and Atkins, and then other parts of it, and George Street. I want to sincerely thank the City of Corbin and the DPW for the work that they did ASAP to clean everything up immediately. We got hit hard and you guys did a great, great job helping us. Power was back on within a couple of hours, which of course was National Grid, but Melbourne especially got hit hard. And I just want to say a sincere thank you to everyone who helped us and helped my constituents. Other than that, other than that horrible situation with the tornado remnants, everything has calmed down. We're good. And so far so good. But I definitely, I can't tell you how grateful I am because we got hit hard. we got really hit hard at the third board. And I want to thank everybody for helping out.

Okay. One thing I just should bring up, just because I'll forget if I don't, is the day before that is the day they fixed the roads in Catamount.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But they took a beating afterwards.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's repairs that have to be done.

Yeah.

So I'm going to put my hands up on that. Thank you, Ms. Lane.

I would also like to thank DPW. The fourth board didn't get hit really hard. But we did have, what was it, early last week, there was a limb that came down on top, farther down from Main Street on top that knocked out power.

Yeah, that's power half the city now.

Yeah, but that was fixed. I attended the Juneteenth celebration, which was very nice. I keep getting calls about speeding up into the city on tompkins and out of the city on tompkins i spoke to the chief because i know they're not going to give somebody a ticket for going three miles over the speed limit uh the chief said he has told his officers 11 miles over uh some of them get off the record please but they have been writing tickets. They wrote six tickets, you said, yesterday. So they're not just sitting in the cemetery. Like a lot of people say, you know, I see them sitting in the cemetery all the time. They don't go after anybody. They do. They do go after people. So that's it from the board.

Thank you, Mr. Collin.

Thank you. I'd like to echo the thanks to DPW for all the work they've done the last few weeks, both on the storm and addressing some crosswalk issues on Main Street. So I appreciate all that hard work. Additionally, I'd like to thank the chief and the police department for all their work investigating the shooting. I appreciate the press release getting out as quickly as it did. So thank you for that. I'll be having my next award meeting Monday, July 27th at 6 p.m. again in Beaudry. So I'll be doing the rounds to get the word out for that. I've heard from a number of folks who are frustrated with the cuts to the pickleball court project at Randall. And I'm having discussions with those folks. And lastly, do we have any update on the search for the finance director and the DPW director?

Again, applications are being received, and once we get them all together, we'll get them to appropriate committees. That does look really good. Thank you, Mr. Parker.

The only item I have is the Church Street and Elm Street light is still on. Anything new on that DOT? I'm coming off a look at that light, that noise.

Do I talk to statements? And I told him to tell me if it's not okay. He said he would let me know. Yeah, you're going to hear it, but it's not to the decimal. It has to be heard from hearing and hearing it. Or the vision, apparently. But it has to be. You reached out to him? I did. I talked to him directly. And so if it's an issue, he said, so what was the order? Oh, yeah. They adjusted it. And it seemed better to me, too. I didn't hear it. inside that car. I was right on top of it. Yeah, right. So yeah, but it's based on what the level of noise is. A truck might just go by and it turns up and then go back down. So I think there was an issue, but we're sure the best thing here. That's all I have. Thank you.

Mr. Beckman. One thing that caught my attention this weekend, it's been an ongoing issue, is a resident on River Street, I know Roy's worked on it, bringing us up a man because I saw you walking up to the cane better than your wheelchair. But there's been a residence on River Street that has not had a sidewalk. I'm not going to mention names or addresses. It doesn't matter. It just needs to be addressed. I know we've always worked on it. Randall, you might know, property, but it's gone on way too long. It's bent off probably the width of the sidewalk, I don't know, over three, four feet by 15 feet long. And all weekend, nights weekend or weekend out, You can keep walking on the lawn, in the road, on the sidewalk. We have all this stuff in laws in place about not mowing your lawn will send somebody to work. I think we need to change the charter or the law that if you don't X amount of days to fix your sidewalk, we're going to fix it for you. There's grant money out there to get it. If it's gone, it's gone. I understand. But last I knew, there was still some money left there. And I don't know what the problem is. It needs to be dealt with now. We're getting angry. Give me the address and we'll be sure to sell. Thank you. We don't have that in the court. Just, I'm not, just, we're going to the homeowner by any means to run to the boss, but it's just that good address.

Thank you.

Other than that, I'm not doing Jim Crow or attaboys. Right. Mr. Michaels.

I'll cover the attaboy for you. Perfect. Ward 8 was also hit very hard during that storm, as well as Ward 7. I certainly want to thank our DPW for getting out there and getting rid of these trees that were laying across roads, sidewalks, driveways. We helped with some residential property as well, especially our plates and fire. I think over a period of one hour, it counted 138 calls, and I'm sure that It was much higher than that. But I knew we were in trouble. I saw that and it all came true. So certainly my thanks goes out to all these folks that pitched in and helped everyone out in the community.

Yeah, I like this ad. That was on one of the fire trucks after we were going around assessing everything. Dispatch handled it great too. We don't want to forget about that. That was incredible. They handled that well. But the fire department responded and the police, everybody hit it hard. News Bureau, DPW all collected together and they went out and did a great job. Yes, everybody chipped in.

Yep. Also attended the town gala meeting Monday night and believe it or not, parking was one of the topics that we probably discussed the longest. And Mike certainly grabbed some of those issues us tonight to take a look at.

Just real quick, back about the storm. We talked about it a few minutes ago earlier. DPW fire, everybody did great. National Grid was wonderful. I'm telling you what, the rest of the utility companies sucked. There were streets that were closed for three days. No reason for it. We didn't do anything about it, but it was terrible. Hubbard Street had lines down three days in there. I had a phone cable, no reason for it.

I had a bunch of areas down at the same time.

I know, but everybody else, you know, trucks in from Canada and I pass them all the time, convoys out. I know here's the bone-heavy storm, everybody got dinged, especially the power companies because they weren't getting a fast response. Now they've got them lined up now. You go without power, there's got to be a major issue, you know, want to throw that out there.

No, he took over.

I'm sorry.

I just wanted to throw that out there. Thank you.

Don, you're done. I'm done too. All right. Well, thank you.

They don't go to a general number one authorize expansion of the record for an agreement. Yes, a local 1,000 representative of the public were to be there on the way.

The extension of the collective bargaining agreement between the city of Portland and the CSE a local 1,000 is your body approved and ratified. We're going to solve their Steve was does need to buy off the rise of the collective bargaining agreement on behalf of the city of Portland with CFDA Local 1000 for a two-year contractual term dated January 1st, 2006 through December 31st, 2007. I'll move it.

Second.

Ms. Pinnell, Mr. Beckwith. Mr. Lewis, can you just give some highlights of what was the big changes on this? I know there was an attachment or some salary ranges that were some of the other wording that was changed?

The big changes are when we went to negotiations, the union pointed out that some of the salary ranges were out of whack. We were way high when we were starting our laborers based on what all the neighboring municipalities are and way low on where we were paying our CDL drivers. The difference between a laborer and a CDL driver was like 83 cents, which doesn't really encourage anybody to get their CDL, which is what we need for people to plow streets. So we need to direct it by that situation. We work together with them. We're able to get them to agree to a new tier, which is hard to get unions to agree to, to go into a two-tier system, but we will be starting laborers in a similar level to where the county or other municipalities locally would start a laborer. By doing that, we're developing a gap between the laborer and CDL range. The other change that came out is currently our MEO heavy only requires them to have a Class B CDL. We have several pieces of equipment that require a Class A CDL to operate. We have a couple of people that have that, but since their job description doesn't require them to have it, they really don't need to utilize it for that job. So they asked to create a MEO Class B and an MEO Class A, which we're doing. That being said, it's up to the city superintendent of public works through the budget process to determine how many of those he needs for each one. So it's not something that if we have six people with a Class A, they automatically get the Class A rate. We give it to the number of people we need to do the job. I think before Mike left, he was thinking that number was probably two, but it'll be up to the new person to determine what that is. We also streamlined the job descriptions. I want to say the bargaining unit is about 18 to 20 people. I think we had somewhere around 16 different job titles, many of which were not being used. We streamlined that as much as we could this time around. There's a few more that we've talked to the union about doing next time around. But within the MEO, there was like MEO Heavy, MEO Light, MEO Heavy Mechanic. And there was just a whole bunch of different iterations of things. There was a rec maintenance worker, a water maintenance worker, a laborer. There were laborers in the youth department. There were laborers in the DPW. There were water workers, there were sewer workers. So we tried to streamline that down to make it more manageable. We're not New York City, we're Portland. And when we have a problem, we're going to need to call on everybody that we can to do it. So in recognition of that, we streamlined a lot of the job titles. I think we're down to maybe around 12 now. One of the ones that we didn't touch just because there was a lot of incumbents at the supervisor level, but in talking to the union during negotiations, next contract, they would be very interested in reworking those supervisor titles as well. Just because if you use the word supervisor, it's a tested position. Their position is they would prefer to call a lead operator where then it wouldn't be a tested position because their position is that a lot of times your best construction person may not be the best test taker. So they're more in favor of it being treated as a labor-grade position and allowing for more movement. They also are very in favor of not in such a small department, not saying, well, you're in part here and here, you're in there and kind of pigeonholing people and saying, well, I can never be a supervisor until the person who has a year on the job more than me in my department leaves, where really we want to promote our best people from out without NCSEA to the leadership positions. And that's something they're very in favor of as a union too. So we have a lot of good discussions with that. It's not really a full new contract. It's an extension of the old contract by two years. Both sides had some things that they wanted to get into, but at this point, they knew the pressures the city was under, and They didn't figure this was the year to go for those things. So they said, let's just kick the can down the road and see where things are two years down the road, making these changes that we made. The other big change is the health insurance change. But they had actually agreed to that clear back in last October and told us to go ahead and do it. But it's being memorialized in this MOA to move those health care changes forward. They were actually the first group to agree to it. Last group to get their contract done.

All right. Anybody have any questions?

Did we get the full NLA? Yes. It should have been sent out to you.

I saw a flip from it. But, counsel, does anybody else, did we get it? Am I missing it? Because the number you're talking about, I don't remember seeing in the packet.

It's a three-page document, and the third page would have been a chart that showed the new rates and the new position titles? It was included in the supplemental.

I remember seeing it here. I can't remember what it related to because we haven't seen so much documentation.

Maybe I misunderstood the question. Whether the agreement was included in the supporting documents? Yes. Okay. Okay.

Well.

I remember I had to flip it around.

What went out to council and what's online. Yes.

It was on the last page of one of the documents, I believe. It was in the supporting document.

It references the original. You're right, because the chart was landscape oriented, so it would have showed up the wrong way when we pulled it up.

And it references sections of the corridor being modified.

Correct.

Yes.

Yeah. It's not a new agreement. It's just an extension agreement is what it is. Everything in their old agreement stays the same except for the things that are modified by the three.

It was the last page. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anybody else have any other questions? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. No more discussion.

We'll call the roll.

Council member Tobin. Aye. Council member Piniello.

Aye.

Council member Lane.

Aye.

Council member Conley. Aye. Council member Carpenter. Aye. Thank you for all you do. Thank you.

I got to jump back. I missed the minutes from the last meeting. Can I get a motion to reset the minutes? Any questions? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carried. That item number two, approved special event permits for Community Beach Party on August 6th, 2026.

Resolved at the City of Portland County Council does hereby approve the issuance of permits as described below. The Community Beach Party, sponsored by the Portland County Health Department in collaboration with the Mayor's Office and Youth Bureau, August 6th from 5 to 7 p.m. at Maiden Park, issuing a special event permit in the sound device protocol of altitude.

Michael's. Yeah, a great event. So a community collaboration and health partner. We have a bunch of other agencies there to talk about dental hygiene, fitness to everything. And then right into there, we'll go to a concert and then go right into a beach movie. So Moana. So anybody who hasn't seen that, get down and do that. So it'll be a great, great time.

So sad to hear the Beach Boys back up. I just got that email. Yeah, I know.

Council member Tobin.

Aye. Council member Malone.

Aye.

Council member Lath.

Aye.

Council member Conlon. Aye. Council member Carpenter. Aye. Council member Vacquil. Aye. Council member Michaels. Aye.

On agenda item number three, approve sound device permit for use at level up youth summer camp on August 10th through the 13th, 2026.

Resolved City of Coraline County Council by approves and authorizes the issuance for use of the Suggit Park Rotary Shelter between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on this time through the 13th, pursuant to Section 193 of the City of Minnesota.

Council Member Tobin? Aye. Council Member Canelo? Aye.

Council Member Lay? Aye. My question. Aye.

On agenda item number four, amend the 2026 budget adopted by the purchase of department public works.

Resolved at the city of Corwin County Council this year by amending the 2026 city budget. It's outlined in the accompanying table. And then it's earning $52,226,000 from the sale of equipment line, or I'm sorry, increasing that line by, well, it's not right here.

You're increasing it by the 52,226. And you're increasing the- Both lines, Bernie?

Yes. Okay, I apologize. It does re-print, so increasing the sale of equipment

Okay, a motion, please. All right, Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Michaels, any questions?

So is this to go to a new vehicle? You know, what the... New truck. New truck? What kind of truck? How important is this truck?

This will be a long time.

So it would be used for plowing and salting in the winter?

Yes, and every day. pulling the leaf back. We typically, we don't have a one-ton that really pulls the leaf back either. So, and we're believing that we can do some of the more plowing, more plowing with the one-ton trucks in the city and a lot of areas till it gets really heavy and be able to reduce on the wear and tear and the roads and the fuel and then own bigger trucks and then the CDLs. So this is the first attempt of trying to make that work by using the sale of that equipment money to offset the cost.

Well, as you know, you guys, Right, as far as smaller and smaller trucks.

Especially with fuel costs.

You don't have to see CDL cheaper. You can move all values.

This is a test. Plus they maneuver well on these. And on streets. Yeah. Back up your larger trucks.

It's better to go lower, right, Jim? Yeah, so we go lower. So I just want to go to pickups. I keep two big trucks.

You know, because they're just, here's three to five years off, get a big truck here, $500,000, you know, for a big truck today.

They're not trucks sitting through the $70,000, they could do the same thing. You know, we're expecting delivery on two of the big trucks that they already went two years ago, right? Yeah, they've been ordered at 2022, so. We're expecting, we're still, we're still expecting any way to go. Yeah. All right, anybody else? And we'll be pleased.

I'm going to win. I'm going to win. I'm going to win. I'm going to win. I'm going to win. I'm going to win. I'm going to win. I'm going to win. I'm going to win.

to $4,000 to $6,000. Then we take the new budget total, the shift meaning the $10,120 and the professional service line down to $19,000.

So first I'm going to ask for a resolution to amend or a motion to amend this resolution reading on that first account shift manage increase of what you say 6,000, and then the increase on the new budget totals with 10,120. And on the second line decreased 6,000 and the new budget total of $19. Can I get a motion to accept that amendment? I'll move it. Mr. Panallo, Mr. Carpenter, all those in favor of the amendment? Aye. Opposed? Okay, now to the resolution. Go ahead.

Okay. Resolved that the City of Coral County Council does hereby amend the 2026 general fund budget as outlined in the accompanying table. So the London Forest Ship Manning will increase by $6,000 for a new budget total of $10,120. $10,120. National Service Line, $4,000. $6,000. $6,000. $6,000. And $19,000. $15,000. That's nice. $2,000. $2,000. Okay. For a new total of how much? $19,000. Total of $19,000. and an increase in water over time line, an increase of about $3,000 for a new budget total of $8,513. And under the income of other government line, an increase of $3,000 for a new budget total of $18,000.

Making a motion for this. Mr. Carpenter, Mr. Macklin, any questions? I appreciate that budget and that's good to have these down, we should be doing this. All right, over please.

Council Member Tobin. Aye. Council Member Piniello. Aye. Council Member Lane. Aye. Council Member Conlon. Aye. Council Member Carpenter. Aye. Council Member Beckwith. Aye. Council Member Michaels. Aye.

Agenda item number six, authorized agreement with Syracuse Time Alarm Company for monitoring and inspection services at City Hall.

Resolved that the Sydney-Carroll County Council authorizes Mayor Steve Orr's designee And then to bring up the Syracuse time and alarm company incorporate or alarm monitoring services and inspections that city all through February 22,027. Well, after seeing $2,666 with payment to be named from account number a 1620-541-1500 or federal services. Any emotions.

It's a current respect with the Russians. The one please.

Council member Tolbert. Aye. Council member Canelo. Aye. Council member Lane.

Aye.

Council member Conda. Aye. Council member Carpenter. Aye. Council member Backwood. Aye. Council member Michaels. Aye. Okay, presentation.

Mr. Lewis, I almost called Mr. Randall. Mr. Lewis, this agenda item is supposed to be at the next meeting. We're not holding on this tonight. This is just an educational piece and I mean, counties come next meeting, but we're not. I'm not, I don't know why this resolution's on my agenda. Yeah, number seven. We don't even have that now. All right, Sean. Thank you.

The county was hoping we adopted it. Now they've already adopted it. The county adopted it at the last legislature meeting. And this is basically the mirror image of what the legislature adopted.

Okay.

which I assume they did. It went to the Finance Committee. So my guess is it passed the legislature because Mr. Monticello felt he wants to meet next week. We've got it.

Yeah, I know. I thought that was to work on the resolution.

It has to work on the actual putting ups and bolts of the agreement. Oh, sure. Correct.

I'm not having to talk to him.

I know we've had multiple conversations with him, but... Yeah, well, if the council's ready, we'll get to that. It's certainly the best way I can talk to you, but I know that... I'm sure there's going to be more questions. So maybe it'd be best to go ahead.

So try to put together a little PowerPoint here for you to go through. It's short and sweet, but the county has been talking to us probably for about two and a half months asking us if they can collect taxes rather than us collect it for them. They collect taxes for, I believe, every other town in village in the county except for the city. So it's going to be somewhat of an undertaking for them, but not a huge undertaking. If you go to the second page, I just wanted to show you what was the outstanding taxes as of last week. In 25 or earlier, there was $303,000 off the school taxes that we needed to collect, $320,000 in accounting taxes, both of those. school and county we've made whole in the past. In the city, there's $608,000. Out of all that money, roughly $1.2 million, we have $300,000 going through the foreclosure process as an estimate that we hope to have foreclosed before the end of August. In 26, as of 7-2, we've taken over $339,000 from the school and made We haven't made them all yet on that. Excuse me. Tony is 1.5 million. The city is 2 million. Keep in mind that you still have the second payment in the city where people make payments in February and then August. So we still have that second payment to come in, but some of that is going to come in between now and the end of August. Usually what we don't get after the end of August, that's, a problem that will make the county and the city will have to go chasing it. Roughly, I'm estimating the revenue that we're going to gain in our books that is $1.75 million altogether. We're going to get some of that with what we collect, but some of it also is going to come by this county making us whole.

So the county would have to do the opposite.

In the future, yes. So what are the advantages and disadvantages of doing this? The advantages for us is it's a heck of a lot less transactions and reconciliations than we have to do. You think about all the people coming in and paying tax bills, multiple checks coming in, everything coming in from the banks, all that goes away for us. If you've heard an auditor sit here and say, tell us one of our big problems is reconciliations and transactions. This reduces that dramatically. That's going to increase our cash flow because right now we're making the city and school district full each year and then chasing it down. We're not going to have to do that in the future. We're not going to have to make the county whole. We're not going to have to make the school whole. And we're going to be made whole. We're not going to have to go through a foreclosure process. Just on the ones that we're chasing down right now, I think we have legal fees so far of over $20,000. That's just to get to where we are, to get to the next step. Some additional savings to also be lower legal costs as well as software costs. We won't need to pay all the software costs that we have with NUNIS. Taxes is part of that. So that portion will go away. The largest disadvantage is that we're gonna lose the interest off of those unpaid taxes. That's somewhere gonna be between 225,000 and 250,000. From a legal standpoint, what does the city have to do legally? Number one is we have to repeal the local law that gave the city the authority to collect the taxes. Number two, we're gonna have to change the code of ordinance. The county where ours is February and August, the county's is February and April. Okay, so in 27 of the county's agreed to keep all the tax payments, the same as the way the city is which would be February and August. Going forward after that 28 it's going to change the January and April. So we'll have to put that into our court of ordinance and that means the budget when it goes to Council right now is 1015. In the future, it's going to have to be 915 or earlier. Okay. And when the budget must be adopted right now, you have to the end of the year to do it. Um, you're going to have probably to October 31st to do. So basically we have to set those criteria. Within the city, what works for everybody. Uh, but when that budget has to be complete, it has to be done, uh, before the, I'm going to say the 1st of November. Um, the County also needs all of our documentation because they have to get it all in there into the tax formats and get it ready to go out. But I'm going to say December 15th. They're covering all that. We'll take care of all that. We have to give them our information. They're going to take care of all the bills. Yes. And they're going to do it for 27 folks. Okay. To give you a little bit of a clue of how this is going to work, delinquent taxes prior to 1-1-26, which is a tax that's 25 or prior, some of our taxes go back to 2008. We have to foreclose on all the process, all the properties in process by 9-1-26. I'm estimating we're going to get about $300,000 out of that, as well as, let's just say that's what we owe in taxes. Hopefully it's a break even. I don't think we're going to get, well, the opposite.

What happened to anything that was doing good that we didn't resolve? Did we still have the right to collect that?

The county's going to make us full on all that. I'll go through that here. Okay. we're going to sign any of the remaining properties that aren't part of that foreclosure to the county in 25 or prior by 1031.26. On 12.1.26, the county will make us full for whatever those tax amounts were, whether it was school that we made whole or county or city, they're going to make us full on 12.1. The estimated revenue out of that, I'm estimating is like 650,000 between the foreclosures and what they're going to make us hold on. The 26 taxes, we have to pay the county 50% of the taxes that we've collected for them for 26 upon signing this agreement. So far, we've paid them $4 million. We've collected about $4.1 million. We owe them about $100,000 for that. On 1031, whatever we've collected we're gonna have to pay them 75% of that on 1031. So whatever we've collected that August time period, we're gonna have to pay them 75% of that basically. Then the city will make them whole on December 15th for whatever their tax, whatever that, I think it's like a total of $9 million plus what we paid them, we'll have to make them whole. So city has to make the school whole by 1031. I believe that number right now is like $500,000 or $600,000 altogether.

You know, we gained from all this anyway. It was just the interest.

Yes. A lot of headaches in between. A lot of headaches in between. And hopefully we're going to get more interest ourselves because we're not going to be paying this money out. And we'll have the money earlier in the year. We're going to have the money in two years at the end of April, not collecting it all the way throughout the end of the year. On 1-15-27, the city turns over its uncollected 26 taxes, okay? That'll be school, county, and city taxes. If you go back to that first page right now, I mean, if that was today, and hopefully we collect it on those and it's out there, but I think right now, that number is two, three and a half, about $4 million. Okay, if we collect two million of it, they're going to pay us the $2 million on 131.27. The way accounting systems work for municipalities, all the money that we collect up until February of 27 goes back into the 26 budget for taxes. Okay? That's going to help take care of the headaches that we have out there. Okay?

What's the advantage to the county?

They control everything. They control everything. Okay? They're going to collect that I mean, they're not going to have to add anybody to do this is what they're telling me. Okay. They can do it with their existing staff, their existing systems. You know, we're just doing this. We're having software just for us. Okay. They had it for, you know, Virgil, McGraw, everybody. Okay. They're just adding us in. Okay. To them, there's no really additional cost for them.

We talked about having, doing this, I think when Brian was married before, Pat and Yeah, we talked about a way back when I'm doing here.

Yeah, no, I would like to go with that.

Yeah. No, I believe it was financially more lucrative for the city to collect because then you're getting the interest on the city, the county and school districts money. And then when people are delinquent and they're paying late fees, if you look at it at a one year snapshot, you're not always getting the whole picture because After three years, the city can take properties through the NREM process, put them up for sale, and then recoup whatever is owed in terms of taxes. Looking at one year, you kind of see it, but after three years, if there's money that's owed, the city would recoup what is owed.

Do you think this is a good deal then?

One of the concerns, Chuck, I was going to ask you to go through what you were talking about in 27, and maybe it comes up later in the PowerPoint. Because the retirement payments are due February 1. You and I talked about this back in February. And that's a big ticket item. And usually in January, the city, this is why it's so important for the tax bills to get out as quick as we can in early January so that the tax bills are out, people pay, and then you have cash flow to cover. Will the cash flow be impacted? Because that's, you know better than I what the payment was for the retirement.

Yeah. We don't get our taxes until the, this year, until late February. Okay. So this will be coming out a little bit earlier. This was just, this was an agreement that we made with them, okay, to try to get the cashier that works for both parties. Okay. It wasn't trying to say, we're going to try to screw the town, screw the city. It's like, what works for everybody so that none of us get hurt? Okay. I don't know. And this originally it was February that they ended up bringing it back to January. Okay. Not necessarily because I pushed for it. That was, you know, the way they wanted to do it because they see themselves to getting a lot of taxes in, in January and everybody else. Okay. So they're just trying to clean everything up, but we'll go through the rest of this. If you go, maybe it answers a question. The pay schedule for 27 taxes on the next page, it is, They're keeping the tax collections the same exactly as we have this year. So any money the county collects in February, they're gonna pay us in March 13th. So every month that they collect taxes, whatever they collect at the city's taxes, they're gonna pay us by the 15th of the following month. Then at the end of August, any unpaid, they're gonna pay us on September 15th. So just say our tax base is $12 million, we'll have all $12 million By the end of September. Okay. But right now we're going to be out a couple million. In 26, 27, any unpaid school taxes are going to go to the county. The county will make the school whole. We don't have to worry about that. Going forward in 28, this is going to be a change for the residents. Okay. But then basically we're going to have a year and a half almost to get used to it. The way the county does things is option one, you pay your taxes in full by January 31st. That said, no fees attached to it. If you want to do a payment plan, you pay 50% by January 31st. You pay another 25% on March 15th, and you pay a fee for that. And then pay another 25% on April 30th with a fee. So all the taxes are collected at the county level before April 30th. we will see all of our money, I believe it's by June 15th. So you can see how they do. January, they'll pay us in February. February, they'll pay us in March. March, pay us in November. Whatever's collected in April, they'll pay us in May. And whatever's unpaid at the end of May, they'll pay us in June 15th. A couple of other issues, not necessarily issues, but things to make everybody aware of. The tax warrant, we have to supply to the county by 1231, 26, and 27. We're going to have to supply that to them by November 1st going forward each year. Actually, the tax warrant, they'll give us to like 1115, I'll say. So you pass the budget on 11-1, we have to have it to them by 11-15. Just so everyone knows, Broome County does exactly what Cortland's looking at doing. and Mike's from Roome County, and most of this has been incorporated similar to what is done down there. Other points, the county's gonna keep all the interest, all the penalties, and all the headaches. There'll be no collection at City Hall after 10-20-26 for 25 or prior taxes. There'll be no collection of 26 taxes after 12-31-26. So if someone comes here on 1-1 wanting to pay their taxes, They can't pay. It's going to have to go to the county. No question at all at City Hall, there's taxes on 1-1-27 forward. Part of the agreement that I need to work with the county on is clarifying how pilots are getting paid and the reason for that. It's stated in our initial contract, but when I started looking at it, some people just pay us and some people pay them. Okay, and then we have to pay the county. We need to get all that squared away. So either all goes to the county, hopefully, and then they'll make us, pay us back. Right now, it goes in different directions. One thing that I think is important for the city is we have the first right of refusal on any foreclosed properties. If there's a property that we'll get an interest in that we want to buy, we'll have that first right of refusal. I can tell you in the city of Binghamton, that was very important. I'm not saying that you want to go buy all of them because you don't, but there'll be some that may be very pertinent spots that make sense. The county will be responsible for all the foreclosures and any tax issues, assessment issues. We have to do our portion of that. Okay. If someone's fighting about it, we're still responsible for that. One of the things that we did add to this agreement is the county wasn't always consistent on when they made their sales tax payment. This MOU is going to put that back in to a place where they're going to, we know when we're going to get sales tax. Okay. So they're pretty much have all their sales tax on 1-14. They're going to get it to us on 1-15. Okay, so we'll see a little speed up from that process to I'm going to say anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks. There was. So the standpoint that's about a million dollars a year in the summer. We will be seeing it over the 6 weeks earlier than we have passed.

And even this.

Now something I learned speaking with one of our only representative that They may want to open a satellite location if they get overwhelmed taking all these taxes in one area. It's something they would probably announce beforehand.

Yeah, there's a couple things. We talked to the county about the residents because we care a lot. A lot of people plan on the same thing every year. So this gives them a year head start to be able to plan on being able to pay their taxes in full by January 31st. That's what most people would like to do. And then the other part we asked them is the convenience of getting to City Hall isn't always the best. The county office building can become more difficult. So they promised, and I know the county's coming to our next meeting to talk about presentations and some of the questions that we have. And so we talked about where those alternatives might look like. Something that's more ADA accessible, easier. where people drop off. I don't know if the drive-through at the DMV works out, but they were looking at those different things as well as they're looking at new software. They talked about software to do better, easier online payment, which is the process we were at and kind of wish we were a little bit ahead of this, but the software that we are training on, we cannot.

We were getting close.

We were getting close, but we didn't initiate it. So it is good timing to get rid of the AS400 as well. But I know some of the biggest losses that the revenue that we made holding their money. That's why they have the sales tax that we're holding their money to make them whole longer so we can make that so we more cash flow. That's part of it. I like your answer. It was a bad name. It's tit for tat. Those first.

Anybody have any questions?

So I had planned on this agenda item coming to council at the next meeting after they have more questions for the town and how they're going to handle it and how they're going to take care of our constituents, because that's important, I think, to all of us. But certainly, I mean, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page and the same intent and go through all this, because we're going to start following through with the legal documents and what that looked like coming through with the tentative leaders and other things involved in it. verbally discussed, but it has to be put in the legal document, which will be very critical next week. Why would we wait for that? I just want to kind of get into this passive, where everybody's at, where they feel, what they want to do, what questions the county can ask, what information they can bring, help with discussion on that. Otherwise, they'll come and make a presentation and everyone won't see it. Anybody have a question? Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff. Yeah. That question with January. So sales tax, your last point here is sales tax payments. 115 will be the first payment, and that would be fourth quarter? Yes, the fourth quarter. Fourth quarter is usually a little bit higher, but it would be a quarter of... Last year was 7 million, so it would be a million and change. 1.8.

Last December was 1.8, but we got it doing it. It's really very exciting, 1.6 million local members are.

So the concern, again, you've got the big payment for retirement on February 1st, and I don't know the numbers, but I want to say it might be more than that. How is the city going to be able to, with an agreement in this form, or be able to carry through?

I think this is going to help our cash flow in February because the way we do it right now, we don't get the cash until the end of February. Our first tax bill is not due until February 28. We'll look at how it's set up right now. Okay. This will help that a little bit. We'll get the sales tax. In the future, we'll also get some... down the road when we get taxed at the end of the year.

The cash flow has always been an issue since I've been in those first couple months for sure. The end of the year and the first couple months because we have cash out buyouts and the new buy-ins at the beginning of the year for the contracts. But I think what helps us is the money I brought for the past development stuff that we're going to get will help us be ahead a little bit as a reserve to be able to do it. Once we start that cycle, it's just a matter of how that hits going to work out to be in the same cycle, the same amount of money.

Dealing with that, Scott, just so you understand this one too. The state pays the biggest chunk of the state aid to us in early December. Technically, the retirement bill is due like December 15th. They usually send it to you about five days before the retirement. So a lot of communities use that state aid to pay that retirement bill. It's very similar. Not exact, but it's very similar. So we've had to use that for cash flow.

Yeah. So we have to just change the how we manage our cash.

How difficult is it going to be to move up essentially the budget next year on top of the other work on the finance office?

We don't have to do it for 27. Not for 27. That was all part of this conversation. We didn't want to screw around 27 at all. So going to 28 is when we have to make that jump forward.

And you think that'll be enough lead time for a smooth transition? It should be, yes.

I mean, we're working on it now. We're pretty far along working on the budget for next year already because we're trying to get ahead of everything we have in front of us. So we've been meeting and continuing to work on those as we are. So I think we could probably have that, and again, it's everybody in educating, everybody getting rid of the speed, getting the council to speed would be difficult. But if we stayed on the course that we are right now, we could, if we really put any effort. We could do it this year.

I'm not proposing that, but I say, but so I think it's good. Tom, that's to give you an example. 12 years of Binghamton, that's the way it was. You know, you just have to change your mindset when you're going to do it, how you're going to do it. And, you know, you have to be dedicated to say, okay, when you get this thing, when you get the budget on 9-1, you're going to set your meeting dates and we're going to work our way through it systematically. And it involves everybody. And I'm not saying that this year is, It's going to be simple. There's going to be a lot of conversations. But once we get this thing squared away, year to year to year, we'll be fairly smooth. I think the big issue is going to be the taxpayers. That's hard. I will say this. If the state comes in here, like we're planning at the end of this year, I think with 27, budget 28, it's going to be a lot cleaner. Hopefully. Okay.

All right. Anybody else anything they would like to see from the county. call us as a city yeah. All right, one thing I didn't get to mention the mayor report to the price test is this weekend to say they can tend to be so make sure he's aware of that or else part we're expecting him whether for that so. With that our motion for adjourn it will see on this to earn your favor. I don't think getting adjourned at some point.