Common Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the Ithaca City Council's meeting and committee of the whole session B. It is August 19th, 2026. I'll call this meeting to order. First, since we have a lot of folks in the gallery, I'll read the emergency evacuation notice. In the case of one, you are to take one of two exits, the door that most of you came through or the door that is over my left shoulder. You are to wait at the trees on the same side of the street on South Cayuga and Green. You are not to cross Green Street unless it is strictly necessary. Anyone with restricted mobility in the event of an emergency, it is best to move to one of those stairwells outside and first responders will arrive to aid you. In the event of other emergencies, you will be notified at that time. We want everyone to be aware of their surroundings and offer help when it is not to your own detriment as you were your own best advocate. First, any additions or deletions to the agenda? All right, may I have someone move the minutes for approval from June 17th, Mr. Shapiro, seconded by Mr. Trumbull, all those in favor? that carries unanimously. I also was remiss. Mr. Kirby has a childcare emergency and is not able to be here this evening, and Mr. Keel is still resigned. As a reminder, we are still accepting applications. If you live in the Fourth Ward college town and you want to serve on the Ithaca Common Council for a year, please apply so that we can interview you and appoint you. We're going to move into statements from the public. For those of you who have not been here before or it's been a while, we have 30 minutes set aside for public comment. Normally speakers get three minutes. When we are at capacity, we reduce that to two minutes so more people have the opportunity to speak. The clerk's office has collected 15 speakers for me. We have those here. If you have not been added to the speaking queue because you were not here before the cutoff, you may submit comments and write into the clerk's office. You may also come speak with us again because, as you will find out when the planning department comes up later, The thing that most of you are here to speak about is only in its very first, sorry, second consideration. And there are many, many more steps in the process. So you may come as early as the first meeting in September to share your thoughts. With that, I will call two speakers. One will be on deck, obviously. You will have two minutes. And please, I understand that there are multiple views represented here. Try to keep the applause to a minimum or the booing. Let's not do any booing at all, but let the applause to a minimum just so we can move quickly and make sure that everybody who is in this stack does get their time. With that, David West, you are my first speaker, followed by John King. Welcome, David. You have two minutes once you begin.

Hi, folks. Thank you for having me. My name is David West. I am the Tompkins County Housing and Community Development Director. and also a resident of Southside neighborhood and a recent or father of a recent LACS child who walked from the Southside to LACS every day for middle school and high school. So I have a lot of connection to this site and to the traffic in and out of it. I'm sure you all know that we released our housing snapshot last year on the county's housing strategy, and we are thousands of housing units behind. And the best place that those housing units could possibly be is in the city of Ithaca, near bus lines, where people can walk and bike. And I think this site is a good example of that. It's near a school, which is a major employer. It's close to a lot of other major employers. And the kinds of units and the kinds of buildings are the things that we most need. So it's studios, one and two bedrooms. We have falling household sizes that need small units. We are not the large families as Americans across the country that we once were. And particularly in Ithaca, our household sizes are falling. We need a lot of small units. The building types in this proposal are something that I'm particularly excited about, which is the three-story walk-up. They've added a basement, which is really unique. way of getting the most units you can into a building that doesn't have a second set of stairs or an elevator. Saves a lot of cost. This project is coming in at under $200,000 a unit. For comparison, a lot of other buildings that we're seeing are $400, $500, $600 a unit. So this allows the development to happen in a much more affordable way, which can keep prices lower in the long term. Traffic, I'm really glad to see the improvements for students walking. The flashing beacon will be fantastic, and I hope you can also create a way for students to walk through this area. And I think this is a good spot in the environment for this building, or set of buildings, because it reduces overall impervious surface in the watershed by keeping it at the bottom where it's least important. Thank you.

Thank you. My next speaker is John King, followed by Reggie Teasley. Welcome, John.

You have two minutes once you begin. Good evening, everyone. I'm also here to speak in favor of advancing the PUD process with the emphasis to everyone in the audience that this is just giving approval for the process to move forward, not approving a final design at all. I've heard a lot of the concerns expressed by members of the community. I want to go through a few of those and where I think they fall. We've had a lot of concern about the environment brought up. I'd like to remind everyone that urban density is the single most important thing we can do to reduce our carbon impact. New York City, due to its density and walkability, has less than one third per capita national carbon emissions. One third. And we control land use at the local level. Nothing else we can do here will come anywhere near as close to reducing our impact on this planet as density. I hear a lot of concerns about runoff and trees. The thing to keep in mind is, yes, those concerns are real. This is a better way to do it. As David said, by keeping this development dense and in the city, we will preserve more open land. We have 25 units an acre here. Development's going to go up to Lansing, Dryden, or somewhere else on our watershed otherwise at two, maybe three units an acre if we are lucky. And that does happen frequently. It was the mid-century, sometime around 1950s, when Ithaca passed its first restrictive zoning code. From that time forward, the city of Ithaca has only grown 10% and the rest of Tompkins County grew by 137%. Every home we don't build in Ithaca gets built in sprawl instead. We have filled up thousands and thousands of acres of our watershed with sprawl. And in Lansing, they don't think about the runoff. They bulldoze the entire forest and just build a house in the middle. We can't afford to let that happen. I also want to emphasize that yes, traffic is a concern. I think that concern is not as dramatic here as we think. We're talking 40 or 50 spaces. That's maybe 20 to 25 peak hour trips. That means an extra 20 to 25 cars an hour during the morning and during the afternoon. on Elm Street, which currently sees nearly 2,000 vehicle trips per day. Traffic is a real concern. It's a rounding error here. I appreciate these concerns. I believe they're in good faith, but I think they're all mitigatable.

That is your time. My next speaker is Reggie Teasley, followed by, if I mispronounce your last name, please correct it when you come up, Dorothy Shaleen.

Hello, my name is Reggie Teasley. I want to say postpone making a decision on the PUD so the residents can have more time. We need more time. The developers have had plenty of time. Let's consider the context and our climate risks. The climate crisis and its impacts must be a key factor in local planning. The global climate continues to heat, as predicted by climate scientists. This is causing a destabilization in weather patterns. I've given you an example. You could see several of the sources I've cited. What are the risks? Risk of the climate crisis are many, including extreme rain events, drought, and excess heat. For Ithaca, it's flooding and excessive heat. The increasing building and paving in the city is creating a heat island where the city is several degrees hotter than the surrounding green areas. Even the state plan highlights the importance of infrastructure and green space. I would hope that you might read that. Also, your comprehensive plan makes many of the points that we have raised right along. Local mistakes to avoid. This ill-conceived PUD is designed for a steep slope that is filled with mature woods, which will be cut down in increasing stormwater runoff and flooding risk. Instead, retain and use the natural infrastructure. We did a study of these woods. Among the things they provide are avoiding runoff, 22 and three quarter thousand gallons a year, Mature woodlands also provide habitats for insects and animals, birds, which are in steep decline. You could go to the lab of O for that. Let's promote best practices and look to the future. I think I know what Whispering Woods are saying. They're saying we're alive. We are helping you. We provide nourishment and homes for many species. You need us. Please don't kill us.

Thank you. My next speaker is Joe. My next speaker is George, is it pronounced Igarza? So you're on deck. Dorothy, please, you have two minutes.

I'm going to take quotes from the proposal itself and make a comment about it. First is deleting parking spaces, and the quote is, to reduce reliance on personal vehicles as a method of decreasing traffic congestion. Who decides which tenants get parking and who has to walk to work? And where do the other people park? Another is improve open space. This is their idea of open space. Construct a stair landing from the school. So people from the school and the driveway are going to have to come down together on that one landing and exit into the traffic on Elm Street. Also, LACS is out of session now and should be part of this discussion as they use the open space as part of their curriculum. There is no benefit to the public to have open space Innovative design, in quotes, concentrate development within previously disturbed portions, preserve natural features. This site has over 600 old trees, some are over eight feet in diameter. Disturbing the natural embankment of trees is not innovative or sustainable. This sidewalk grading rejection, because this is in the proposal, construction would require substantial excavation into existing road hillside, which would significantly alter existing topography, require removal of mature trees and cause substantial disturbance to the Tompkins County unique natural area. If a sidewalk is rejected because of these issues, I don't see how the proposal could go forward. And my last thing is about the density of housing. Policy alignment is 10 to 20 units per acre. Let me think. 75 divided by 3 is 25. I also have some questions here that I'd like to leave with the clerk to be answered later. Thank you.

Thank you very much. My next speaker, George, you're next. And then following George is Ana Ortiz. Welcome. You have two minutes once you begin.

Thank you, Council, my name is georgie Garza here and i'll be speaking in strong opposition to this part of the development, the chestnut. Hill with whispering woods management i'm sociologist working at binghamton university, as well as and, most importantly here speaking from chestnut hill apartments where I currently live, which is under the management of whispering woods. Excuse me. I took a look at the PUD and it wouldn't receive a passing grade in my entry level class. The proposal is full of empty operative terms such as quality and family oriented without clearly defining what it means. I don't understand what having market value apartments, what about having market value apartments makes it family oriented. I'll be speaking in a moment about the management itself. My field is in environmental studies, but I don't think it takes an environmental studies degree to see that the destruction of over three acres of forest land would do to the goals of net neutrality that Ithaca is striving to achieve through its 2020 Green New Deal. Finally, I've been living in Chestnut Hill now for over two years now, and two minutes is not enough to share the grievances that I've had and a lot of us have had with Whispering Woods management, who have delayed a lot of repairs, have intimidated a lot of residents, and you don't have to take my word for it. Most of you on your computers now can look up the Ithaca Times article that was put out two years ago. published in May 23 of 2024, titled Chestnut Hill Tenants Face Displacement Amid Rising Rents and Renovations. And there you'll see firsthand testimonies of the intimidation tactics, the harassments that a lot of residents faced, had to face intimidating lawsuits by this major company who hides behind a lot of shell LLCs. is from out of state and has refused to help out and repair issues in existing apartments. So I can't imagine what they will do, set the precedent for these new apartments. Thank you. Thank you very much.

My next speaker is Ana Ortiz. Just a gentle reminder to not cut into speaker's time with applause. Followed by Ellen, is it Cuevisto? Cuevisto? Okay, you're next. Ana, you have two minutes. Why don't you begin?

Thank you. My name is Anna Ortiz. I represent the West Village apartment. And since a couple months ago, the county recognized me as the people, the mayor, and peoples of the mayor or something like that. I'm here to represent the West Village. And I am glad that everybody's get together and stop because we feel in West Village when something happened, they left us behind. We don't even know what's going on in our area. Plus, you know what I mean? We are ready. approve or we are okay to having housing. So, and then we able to live in and able to pay, you know, a good, you know what I mean? What you call it? You know, I never liked this speaking. So if people know, affordable, you know, to them because like people like me, I work in the city and I do the food pantry, grocery response and stuff. And, you know what I mean? I like to have at least like a proper housing. So, and then I'll be able to go downtown and up. And then, although my concern is, You know, I mean, if they doing anything construction, at least if they, you guys can take care of the street because every time they get wet and get rain, all the rocks and all the stuff is danger for my kids in LCS school. So even my kids from West Village or Fort Cree or whatever we are, it's danger to walk And then like people ordering and stuff, like I'm not walking for people living close to city, they walk. So, and then we now, if we need to do it more, you know what I mean? Not just talking, it's action. Because, and then it's like, you know, I'm here, you know what I mean? I took my time, but a little bit concerned. It's like, if we're going to do something, just do it right. And then if anything, just reach out. You know where I'm at.

That's your time. Thank you, Ana. Thank you. Ellen Cuevisto is next, followed by Sarah Hess. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. You have two minutes once you begin.

The only access road to more than half of West Hill is Elm. Lower Elm Street is already congested. Last week from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on a weekday, we counted 1,765 vehicle and 106 pedestrian passages on Lower Elm Street. We did this when school is not in session. They are in session for 10 months out of the year. Lower Elm Street is already dangerous. During our traffic count, we saw two drivers on cell phones, drivers speeding, a large number of drivers tailgating. Bicyclists going uphill were endangered by drivers speeding or crowding them while passing too closely. Multiple pedestrians had to step off the sidewalk into the street to pass other sidewalk users. Larger vehicles going downhill had to swing across the center line when driving by parked cars. If anything was coming uphill at the same time, everything slowed down or stopped while the drivers figured out who was going. The lower Elm Street road surface is terrible. The pavement is eroded in layers on both sides of the street from repeated floods, and it's pitted and warped in the middle. Meanwhile, we counted multiple NYSEG trucks, flatbed trailers, cabs, gadabouts, and six, eight, 10, and 14 wheeled vehicles. 68% of all vehicles during our count were SUVs or larger. Elm Street is easily congested, heavily used by the neighborhood, and inadequately maintained. Elm Street is clearly incapable of absorbing the scope and scale of this proposed development. For these reasons alone, this PUD should be tabled. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. My next speaker is Sarah Hess, followed by Katrina Davis. Welcome, Sarah. You have two minutes once you begin.

My name is Sarah Hess. I've lived on West Hill for over 30 years, just a few blocks from the proposed site. Like others in this neighborhood, I know this intersection very well. I've seen traffic accidents, long backups, dangerous drivers, ice and water damage. And I know what happens when the traffic light goes out because of a power outage. We've heard plenty about traffic and safety, and you'll hear more, so I won't go on about that. I will add, though, that I'm personally offended when some of you want to dismiss our years of lived experience as nimbyism. To the contrary, we are just trying hard to explain the reality that we know of bad consequences that would come if this complex is built. Here's my question for you. Given that some of you have doubts about this particular plan, what do you think is a smart way to add more housing to West Hill? There have been plans for more development in the past, but none recent. The future land use map referred to in this proposal is 10 years old, and it doesn't suggest any zoning changes for West Hill. I don't see any real planning happening here. Speaking only for myself, I am not opposed to zoning variances or a PUD if it's done right. Expand housing with duplexes, row houses, or apartment buildings in appropriate places. And there are many double lots in areas with accessible land that could be cleared. New structures should be spread out on smaller streets. should avoid damaging important natural environments and they certainly should not create more safety hazards by the bridge our city needs a smart plan please think about steps you could take to invite responsible development on west hill and table this proposal for at least a month so lacs voices can be heard thank you for listening thank you my next speaker is

I'm going to cut the last person if we keep breaking into applause. We have 30 minutes for public comment. Katrina Davis, followed by Dr. Miranda Pagan.

Hey guys, I'm Katrina. I'm a resident of Ward 1 in West Hill. I live on Elm Street. My wife and I moved into this neighborhood about a year ago. We are a new family, and this is our first house we ever bought. This is a huge milestone in any young family, especially for our generation. We're millennials. It's really tough for us to afford housing. And we're really committed to this community and living in Ithaca. We intend to raise our children And like in this house that we bought up on West Hill. And I say all this to just to like mention like we're really invested in this community and we want to like for this reason, we would be happy to see a development in the location proposed at the bottom of Elm Street because it's close to the city. It's close to bus lines. We need more density in the city. We'd be happy to see it. That being said, I understand that the developer is somewhat beholden to the city. There's some kind of negotiation over zoning. The developer needs to have some kind of approval. There's some discussion back and forth. I understand the city has some kind of leverage. I would like to see the city use this leverage to improve the proposal. If folks are concerned about having too many parking spots, change the amount of parking spots. If folks are worried about flooding, make sure that it's built in a way when there's no flooding. Because like, yeah, like the city has some leverage in this. I would love to see council use their imagination and use that leverage in a way that like benefits the entire community. Thank you.

Thank you. My next speaker is Dr. Miranda Pagan, followed by Dan Hoffman.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me. I am a resident at West Hill in Elm Street. I am here to speak in favor of the PUD. Do I think it's perfect? No. But as Katrina was just saying, right now, the only reason that the developers are coming to council is because of the zoning of West Hill. The city is currently working to change the zoning. So I don't understand why the neighbors are trying to shut it down because either way this development is going to happen no matter what. So right now is the only opportunity we have to actually negotiate and make it better. As a resident of Elm Street, I do believe that having a driveway on Elm Street is not a good idea. It's a very narrow street and I was looking at the map and I know that the property owner actually owns maybe the Chestnut, I think the land that they own goes to Chestnut Street. I think it would be better if the driveway entrance was towards Chestnut. Then I also want to say that I am also in support of building more housing in general. Currently, we are in an affordability crisis. There's a lot of demand for housing and there's just not a lot of housing available. The only way to deal with that is by building more. West Hill is probably the only neighborhood that is not pulling its weight. There's a lot of single-family homes with a lot of land, and it would be nice if we had more neighbors. And also, yeah, I think that's pretty much what I wanted to say. So thank you.

Thank you. My next speaker is Dan Hoffman, followed by, is it Greg Perreault. Apologies. Your handwriting looks like mine. Welcome. You have two minutes once you begin.

Thank you very much. My name is Dan Hoffman. I have lived on Upper Elm Street in the city for about 20 years. And I moved to Ithaca in 1968. And I also served on Common Council for 12 years and as city attorney for six years under Mayor Peterson. I'm quite familiar with the city's environmental quality review chapter of your code. And I encourage everyone to make sure you follow all the steps in that. The proposed development is a type one action for more than one reason. And that means that it most likely does require an environmental impact statement that will provide more public opportunities for comment and suggestions. And it will, I think, make for a better project. So i'm not going to take up my whole two minutes, but I strongly encourage you to look at the local environmental quality review law and to put it in place for this project as soon as possible, thank you.

Thank you greg's next and then Connor gaffney. Welcome Greg you have two minutes, once you begin.

I'm Gregory Perot. My wife and I have lived on Campbell Avenue in the city on West Hill for the last 21 years. Since I don't live on the Chestnut Elm neighborhood, I won't have to look at the Elm Street apartments if they're built. But I am here out of concerns as a taxpaying citizen for transparency and effectiveness in government. I do not think the benefits of the proposal outweigh the impact for a project with conventional zoning, let alone a PUD. Recently, I took a walk in the woods to see the unique natural area and verify impressions I've gotten from aerial and contour maps. The main word that describes this proposed project is awkward. Bus service. The connection is awkward, bordering on non-existent. Try walking up that hill with a child or two, then add a few bags of groceries on the way back down to go home to a third floor walk up. All the other apartment projects on TCAT's Route 14 and 14S have real, nearly level bus stops, including handicapped access. West Village, Conifer, Lindeman, Overlook, Candlewick, to name several. It would be a cruel joke to claim that Elm Street apartments are served by TCAT in any comparable way. Terrain. The land parcel is heavily wooded, sloping, and adjacent to a smaller but important example of Ithaca's famous, gorgeous Cliff Park Brook. The amount of earth moving and stump removal to provide a nearly level site for five buildings and parking would be colossal and very muddy. The runoff will mostly go out the curb of the dirt road there, cut to Elm Street. Traffic. The only access from 75 apartments to the road would be Elm Street, which is such a bottleneck already that no TCAT bus passes through it. It has a visible sign crosswalk with a nearby LACS. Vehicles for school parents and staff must be able to pass through there, not just Sunrise. Would construction equipment block that like it has so many times in recent years? Can a fire truck or two get into the parking lot and turn around? I urge council to table this. Thank you very much. Thank you.

My next speaker is Connor Gaffney. My next speaker is Amelia Samoutis. Hi, can you hear us?

Yeah.

Hi, welcome. You have two minutes once you begin.

Kids need woods, even if it's just to look at. Many LACS kids eat lunch outside every day. Where there are now trees and a wonderful green space, it is currently planned for apartments, the construction of which will be too loud for some of our noise-sensitive students. The limited trees will mean a hotter campus, for LACS's non-air-conditioned school. The stairs that are supposed to be a community benefit will provide a privacy issue by putting heavy foot traffic for the LACS campus and limiting the ability for teachers to see their students, therefore limiting safety. Some of the students currently use the woods as a coping tool for anxiety, ADHD, depression, and more. I urge the city to consider a land swap with the developer, trading some in an old army depot or another parcel for the woods. Not only could this save valuable green space that LACS and the community could use as a park and educational tool, it would give the developer a chance to repurpose pre-developed land. Apartments are more harmful to the woods in our community than single-family homes or duplexes per current zoning. Apartments would mean more tree removal. The construction noise would also be less for this type of development, and more trees means a bigger preserved green space for our school. Single-family homes would pose much less of a traffic risk and would limit the foot traffic for the LACS campus. Finally, I think moving this PUD forward while LACS students are out of session is unthoughtful towards our community. Many students are on vacation as we speak. Even more don't know that the development is happening. Before this goes through, even as a concept, there should be an opportunity for LACSers to speak once school is in session. If not, you are leaving out a highly impacted group from the PUD process. Not all kids have internet access to be able to attend meetings virtually during summer. This is why I think this discussion should be held in the fall once students are in session and are able to attend these meetings in person and organize with others. For all these reasons, I am against the putt going through in concept tonight, especially without an environmental and traffic study. Thank you.

Thank you. My next speaker is Yayoi Koizumi.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Welcome. You have two minutes once you begin.

Just a second. My video is not on. Why is that?

I don't know, but we can hear you.

Okay. Very unfortunate, but okay. Let me start. Good evening. My name is Yayoi Koizumi. I'm speaking for myself. I'd like you to notice the imbalance tonight. The developer presents with slides, images, and time. The public hears two minutes each, voice only, literally. I cannot show the images, data, and map the way the developers can. Please keep that imbalance in mind. This is not a simple housing vote. Ithaca needs housing, but the developer here is requesting a special zoning permission, a PUD, because the project isn't allowed under current R2A zoning. Special permission raises the burden of proof. It does not lower it. This is not anti-housing. This is anti-blank check PUD. The record is not ready. The public packet contained blank, gobbled, and unreadable pages until I flagged the problem. I appreciate the correction on Monday, but the corrected portion of the packet still does not answer who owns or controls the applicant entities, who would be the legally bound by PUD conditions, or which public benefits are binding. A last-minute PDF correction is not meaningful public review. You cannot un-clear-cut Old Forest. a building can be revised, a road realigned, nearly 200 mature trees cannot be put back. When a decision is irreversible, the burden of getting it right the first place is higher, not lower. That is exactly why the record must be complete before council acts, not after. Infill should not be a magic word that turns a forested slope with mature trees into vacant land. This forest is near a brook with foot traffic with both LACS and West Village at the dangerous convergence of Elm Street, Hector Street, and Route 13A. So as you hear the developer tonight, treat it as the beginning of scrutiny, not the end. The public has barely begun to review the real materials. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Mr. Kerrison, I'll take the next comment card for two minutes since we had someone who did not show up. Welcome, Theresa. You have two minutes once you begin.

I'm Teresa Ault of 206 Eddy Street, Collegetown. I am concerned about West Hill residents opposing the Elm Street PUD, a PUD that would allow more people to live on Lower West Hill. These residents seem to feel that trees are more important than people. I guess they consider themselves environmentalists because they oppose cutting down trees, but they don't think about the air pollution and climate warming that comes from cars driven by people who work in the city but live in outlying towns or Seneca or Schuyler counties. A PUD that allows more housing where people can catch a bus or walk to work is a good idea. Perhaps there could be an agreement to charge no more than fair market rent. Perhaps there could be an enforceable promise not to seek a tax abatement. Now also, I am glad that the city will, in its executive work plan, prioritize housing.

Thank you very much. That concludes public comment. Thank you everyone for your attendance. Next, first I'm going to invite up Director of Planning and Development Lisa Nicholas to introduce the update on the PUD project. While she is coming up with far more detail than me, it is in fact true that Council does not make a determinative vote on this project until after the Planning Board reviews it. So for the folks who are interested in environmental analyses and site plan review. That must happen before council approves. This is just to discuss moving it forward to that process and having a public information session. Director Nicholas.

Thank you. I thought it would be helpful to everybody if I just reviewed the process and the timeline and reminded folks where we are now and what's to come. So I just wanted to share my screen. There is a quite complex schedule in the application packet, and I'm happy to share that.

She can probably speak up, but we could also maybe have the rest of the gallery not be cross talking so that we can hear the presentation.

Hang on a second. I'm working on I'm working on it. Okay, so there is a quite complex detailed schedule within the application, but I wanted to just project this basic overview of the process and where we are now. I can certainly go over the more detailed schedule. In the memo that was provided by staff, we said that this project had come to Common Council in June. You had given them some feedback and they are back tonight. to show you how they've responded to that feedback. And the decision before you tonight is to allow the project to, allow the project to move forward in concept and go through the, begin the process of approvals, but not quite yet, or to not, or to have them come back and do other things. So there are many places within the process that council has authority to stop or change or lengthen the process. So we are at step number one. This is a five-step process. All of the steps take different amounts of time. So we are, council is evaluating the proposals. Staff has reviewed the proposal to make sure that it's complete. It is complete. Your job tonight is to evaluate the proposal and determine if it should move forward to a public information session. That is the second step. In the public information session, the applicant would present the project to the public at a scheduled and advertised meeting. The public would have the opportunity to ask questions, and we would record all of the questions. And in this case, in many cases, we could have the applicant and some people give preliminary answers to the questions. We would bring all of that back to you at a future meeting in which council would make a decision based on the results of the public information session and other information if they want to grant a conceptual approval. A conceptual approval is not a binding approval. It is a vote. You take a vote, but it is... allows a project to move forward into design and municipal approvals. So that's when it would go to site plan and environmental review. And that could take anywhere from, I don't know, three to five months.

And Director Douglas, I know you've done many of these, so some of this might be so obvious to you, but just expressly, when it goes through site plan review or design review or... environmental impact at any point in the process, the cognizant agency, whether it be council or the planning board at any given time can say, oh, unacceptable.

Yes. Thank you. So site plan review is a process in which a development proposal is reviewed by an independent board, and they evaluate. That is when all the studies happen. That is when you've heard some folks mention a record, or you heard somebody mention seeker and environmental law. That is when that would happen during site plan review. And again, that could take many months. Important thing to remember is, you remember in January, you always... adopt a resolution saying that you are allowing the planning board to be lead agency in any project in which Common Council is an involved agency. Well, this is an example of where Common Council would be an involved agency. So for PUDs, Common Council is an involved agency in environmental review, and what that means is that you get all the environmental forms, all the environmental information, and you're, well, anybody can do this, but an involved agency is given specific attention to comment on the environmental review. Still the lead agency, the planning board, makes the determination, but Common Council is given that information and also can make comments. So this is where a traffic study, a biological survey, different things like that And then, you know, during that process also, you get an update on anything that's happening at the planning board. And then finally, when that is concluded, and you would have had, you know, would have brought you back for meetings for the zoning, if there's any updates to that, then it comes back to Common Council for a final vote on whether or not you want to approve the plan.

We have a clarification from Mr. Brizio. Yes.

Yeah, can you clarify if the City Environmental Quality Review Act requires full environmental?

Point of order real quick. Point of order from Mr. Shapiro. It just seems like our colleague is reading a question that was presented to them by someone in the gallery. Is that permitted?

That objection is sustained, yeah. No, it's not permitted, just to be clear.

Well, I have a question about whether or not full, one of the speakers raised the question about Seeker, and I have a question about whether or not a full local environmental review is required before even a preliminary approval is required for this. Maybe the city attorney could clarify that.

Well, the plank. Lisa actually is our resident expert on seeker and seeker. So I will refer to her.

Right. A seeker determination is required before a binding decision is made. Not before preliminary approval? No.

unless you were finished, in which case, any further questions before we move to the meeting?

Well, I just wanted, again, I want to make sure everybody understands where we are in the process and that, again, the next step, whether should you decide to move forward with it or not, would be a public information session in which there would be a special session for folks to ask all of their questions, and we would begin to untangle and answer some of them.

I have a clarification from Mr. DeFendini.

Regarding when this public information session could take place, council has discretion on when that could happen, so we could theoretically move it to later in a timeline for a designated time period?

You might want to just put the sharp point on what you're trying to ask.

Yes. If we wanted to move this so that LACS faculty and parents could participate in the process as opposed to the range of time that's currently on the... In the memo. In the memo, we could do that.

You could do that. Yes, you certainly could. That's my question. Thank you.

I have Mr. Trumbull next. Could we dictate the SEQR review to include like a real trip generation in intersection analysis? Or is that kind of just something that they follow that's routine through the state?

I think especially as an involved agency, making recommendations for what you feel is important in the environmental review is absolutely necessary. And is absolutely acceptable and encouraged a trip generation is it's on the seeker form, it has to be provided and then from the trip generation and then the. You know from the trip generation and the and the particular aspects of the site, it would be determined what kind of if any transportation traffic impact study would be needed.

I see your hand, I want to make sure no new, no first time hands, none. Okay, Ms. Fabrizio.

So just to clarify, for the public information session that would be coming up, the developer would also be making a presentation at that presentation or not?

The developer would make the presentation. make the presentation about their project to the public.

So there's no opportunity for the public to give any extensive input before the developer might make changes and bring it to review for us the next time. Unless the residents decided to hold their own public information session and invite the developer to that.

Well, the public would have the opportunity to ask questions, and in order for you to have the information from that, the developer gives a presentation, the public asks questions, and the team would answer questions as they could, and then you get that information back. Some of it would have answers to it to evaluate.

Right, yeah, no, what I'm thinking is, you know, this is a new process for us, obviously, and I'm thinking that a kind of tweak that would be helpful would be to have public information session before the developer comes back to us. Because if we want a project as good as it could possibly be, I think the developer needs to be able to hear that information and incorporate that potentially into whatever the next version is that they're going to present. The process that we have right now doesn't allow for that.

I heard a little bit of speed, because I'm resisting the germaneness comment. Because I think that's a reasonable proposal to amend the law, but that's not what's currently on the debate.

I mean, it certainly is a balance, because in order to go to the next phase of a project, like doing all the studies, somebody also has to know if counsel is amenable to even considering the proposal. So it is a bit of a balance between how much information to present up front and how much will happen once they get a preliminary or a conceptual approval. That's the balance.

Worth adding there also is I think, again, the planning staff deals with a lot of projects. And so some of this stuff, I think, is obvious to them. As we'll hear from the architect and development team today, This is the thing that also then gives them the confidence to then invest money in the engineering study and the environmental impact to submit to staff and the planning board for review whereby they are able to. So most projects don't submit those things or wouldn't hazard to spend those funds if they didn't know if the project was even conceptually attractive to the body.

Does that answer your question? Yeah, no, it does. I still think we could get a better project, potentially, if they got some preliminary input from the community who knows the ins and outs of the immediate environment.

Absolutely. And just to the left, all the opportunities for public input during the process would be incorporated. The project that you have before you is a concept for a zoning change. It doesn't mean that the actual layout or arrangement or specifics of that project would change during the entitlement process as it usually does, based on public comment and collaboration with engineering and what other, you know, the studies that happened during that process, should you choose to move forward.

Thank you Lisa will keep you on on on call here i'll invite up the project team at this stage to. field questions and comments. And then I also believe. Technical expertise at the request of Council, we have t cat representatives present, as well as, of course, one of our public commenters is from the county. So if there are any, any questions for those agencies, just flag me and I'll make sure we, we shuffle those folks in. Welcome. You have a preliminary comments.

Yeah. So we have a little presentation to read. We have a little presentation to review taking in what we heard last.

You might want to just, cause we just get that mic as close to you as possible.

Yep. Understood. It moves. Okay. So yeah, Our intent and goal tonight is to take everything that we heard from the last meeting, digest that, show you how we've addressed some of those items and how we think that we may or may not have met some of your goals. And what we're really looking forward to is that public information session. I'm seeing some familiar faces tonight from a previous community project Widom and Holt did together in the West Hill area just outside the city borders. And from that process, I hope that we had presented to some of these community members that we genuinely want to listen. We recognize that we have certain levels of expertise in our respective fields, but there is also the expertise of the residents in their immediate area, and they know the ins and outs of certain aspects. And we do not want to overlook that aspect at all through this process. So that public information session, which is ideally the next step, is where we can really listen, take in all those elements, tweak the layout, the design, whatever information is coming into us and find that synergy of finding the balance of meeting a community need of more housing, but also trying to find harm reduction and not scarring the environment to a point that we are all disappointed. It's always one of the trickiest parts in our field to try to find that balance. So with that, we would like to just kind of recap. Lisa did a wonderful job going through the schedule, so I think we'll hop to the next slide. And so one of the things that we really wanted to point out is that there's really two major things that we identified going into this is the comprehensive plan identifying that it is indicated to be medium density residential in the area. And that is what we're trying for this particular site. And that is what we're trying to meet the city's goal on that aspect. There is also the unique natural area that's been identified at the county level. So again, it's a balancing act, right? On one hand, we're hearing we need more density of housing. On the other hand, we're acknowledging we have something special in the environment. So that was the challenge for the development team at this point to sit there and go, how can we thread the needle and find the synergy between those two items? Next slide. So one of the first things that we kind of realize is, we need to think about the building blocks right, we could do a bar building on the site that would. take up an entire length clear cut a lot of trees, you could get a certain level of density there, but the issue with that is, while that could be very efficient from a building standpoint it's not efficient from. trying to address some of the issues that we commonly hear of like maintaining the natural vegetation, trying to make sure that we're not impacting the slopes and impacting drainage to an unreasonable extent. Like there are laws and things in place and Lisa can kind of like, well, through the site plan review process, there is a lot of laws that we have to follow. We cannot discharge any more water than what we're already getting on the site. And quite often through these processes, we actually reduce that amount of water that is getting discharged off the site. So genuine concern, genuine issue to kind of get over, but one of the ways that we try to do this is to try to get density, specifically chose this building typography because it was the smallest footprint that we could possibly get. We could break it up into chunks to allow more strategic placing with the typography. Their full acknowledgement of right along Elm Street there is a steep slope right there. But once you get up onto the site, it plateaus off significantly. And then once you get close to the school, it slopes up drastically again. So our goal is to try to position those buildings as strategically on the edge of the flat area and into the hillside to not necessarily have to clear cut everything. Our goal is to try to minimize our impact as much as we feasibly can. And I think at this, just another note with the building typologies. These are, because of what we heard last time, we came in with two stories over basement, and we heard wanting more density. So we looked at the code, we looked at what we could do with this building type. We can do a maximum of three stories and a basement. It's gonna be a little tricky and it's gotta be pretty strategic to be able to get that bottom story where from the Elm Street side, it's going to be viewed as four stories. There is a calculation for the grade plan there. That is going to be an interesting aspect that we're gonna have to keep a very close eye on to make sure that we're meeting the spirit and the letter of the law. regarding that. If we were to try to go any bigger or any more dense, we would have to look at a different building typology. And again, we did not feel that it would be appropriate for the site given the characteristics of the neighborhood of a lot of single family houses or some duplexes and such. We thought we could break down the mass and scale to really fit in of getting the large or the increase of density, but also at the same time trying to preserve the aesthetic that makes the neighborhood special at the moment. And now I'm going to turn it over to Jacob to talk through the other site elements.

Yeah, thank you. So as has been mentioned, this is a conceptual plan. And, you know, site plans tend to evolve, they almost always are not what is originally proposed. They shift and change with input from the public and from the boards that review it. As well as as the design designers dig into the details, we find out information we don't know at this at this point, that will change the way this looks. However, in order to make sure that we are responsible, and are bringing forward a project that is actually viable, that this is in fact possible. We have looked at how can we use this site to exceed the current zoning. And that was a comment that is in response particularly from our last meeting with Common Council, that we do not feel beholden to the existing zoning for the site through the PUD process, and that we were asked to look bigger. How can we add density? So we've added a fifth building to the site, and we've added a fourth floor to these buildings. So overall, we've increased the total unit count up to 75. We have kept the parking amount the same. And we've actually reduced the amount of impervious parking area by tightening this up and elongating that road to run more parallel to the slope, which helps with grading and disturbance area. This is just our first pass, though. We had concept one. This is concept two. There will probably be concept 12.3a by the time we get to the end. So there's a lot of room for this to move and change and be something very different than what's shown here. But all of that does require that zoning change. So just some notes on this in terms of what we're targeting, we are trying to align this project as much as possible with the community benefit criteria as established in the PUD process. So looking at those, the first on that list is to reduce regional traffic demands. And that's something that's been mentioned earlier that By developing in this site, we are not putting housing outside of city limits. We're connecting to sidewalks, we're in a location where people can walk to services, to shopping, to employment, to school. And so regionally, this does in fact reduce the amount of traffic on all of our infrastructure. We are also looking at the greater quality and quantity of housing. We are providing a much higher density project on this site than is currently allowed. So through the PUD process, we are able to provide more density of housing in a location that should have that housing. protect, preserve natural resources, we're fully aware that this is a gem. This is a beautiful site. It has that small gorge. It has those exposed bedrock cliffs. We're not touching that. There will be some trees that have to come down for this to work. No one is making a secret of that. But we are focusing the development area as much as possible on the center of the site, which, as Bear mentioned, is the flatter location. to limit the amount of disturbance on the periphery, which is where we have the steep slopes and the really precious natural resources. In addition to that, we are also, in order to make this project work, looking at an increased capacity for the water utility for the entire West Hill neighborhood. So there has been identified a deficiency in the existing utilities for this neighborhood for water quality and water pressure. It has been an ongoing maintenance issue for City DPW, where they have to flush the pipes on a regular basis in order to remove sediment that builds up. One of the things we're proposing to do here is to create a loop, which we are not civil engineers, and at some point in this process, a civil engineer is going to sit up here and explain in much greater detail the specifics of that. But we have coordinated with the city engineering department, and that utility improvement is something that they would like to see, regardless of anything else that is associated with this project. Beyond that, we also heard a lot of concern. And there is obviously concern about pedestrian safety here. The one existing conflict area that is very apparent to everyone who is familiar with the site is the staircase from LACS that drops into a mid-block crossing on Elm Street without a landing or appropriate safety It's non-code compliant for various many reasons. There are not detectable warning strips. There is limited signage or any warnings for vehicles coming through there. And so one way to approach that is to take that existing staircase, and put a landing at the bottom of it, which would look like most likely what we're thinking in concept would be to turn at 90 degrees so that you don't have that straight shot into traffic, but that there is a turn, there would be a railing, and then a landing point at the bottom where there's a pause for pedestrians who are going to be crossing at that point. In addition, we're also proposing additional signage, the signalized pedestrian crossing signs and other improvements to that crosswalk. And we're looking forward to working with the city to determine exactly what those safety elements should be. But just overall, we know that that's a critical point, both for the neighborhood, for LACS, and for our residents. So we're looking at putting a... pedestrian spine along the drive lane here that would connect at that mid block crossing so that people walking from this development would also be crossing at that point. Now there is Kind of the the concern that you have a driveway connecting where a crosswalk is located. But if you talk to traffic engineers and civil engineers that is actually best practice to put. The crossing point at a location where there are other moments where vehicles are pausing instead of having it in a straight shot mid block crossing. So we think that's a better safety improvement and that's part of why we've aligned the driveway with that mid block crossing. Again, there's room for that to change. We are going to have traffic engineers involved in this, looking at the safety, looking at the traffic counts. Maybe there's a different way to approach that that is safer, but we're committed to improving that in the best possible way that we can. Beyond that we're also aware that there is a plan that has been put forward for floral Ave for improvements to crosswalks at the connection of Elm Street and floral so I we know again that our project is going to be our tenants will be walking on that crosswalk on their way to the waterfront trail or downtown Ithaca and so we're also committed to making sure that the city has a the resources they need to make sure that that crosswalk is as safe as it possibly can. And so again, we're happy to work with the city to make sure that as much as we can possibly ensure pedestrian safety on Elm Street, that we're a willing and happy partner with the city on that approach. I've not been slipping through the slides here as I was supposed to. So I'm just going to show real quickly. This is that crossing, which I think everyone is already familiar with. This is the existing condition. We're not showing a detailed rendering here of what that would look like because it hasn't been fully engineered yet. But we would be resolving this issue where pedestrians are crossing directly. This shows the location of that floral ave connection with Elm Street. as well as the pedestrian route that we expect to run through the center of the site and connect down to Elm Street and then use the existing Elm Street sidewalk to come down to Floral.

I do want to just pause for a moment there. That black dotted line, we did explore trying to have that be street side to be able to have that be publicly accessible as well and connect all the way down through. The thing that our civil engineers identified as the issue and part of the reason why we we acknowledge that the sidewalk doesn't, the sidewalk's not a good idea there, because you can get about 75% down the site, but then you have to navigate about a 40 foot drop. And at that point, you're looking at either tremendous amounts of ramps, which is a maintenance and issue of its own right, and that would take up a lot of that area that's been identified of like the cliffs and such, or you would be putting in stairs at that point, which then would not be ADA compliant, And again, maintenance and safety issues, especially during the winter time. So it was one of those we were kind of looking at, well, we want to provide access, how can we best provide access in the safest, most economical way for not only the developer, but also for the city. And that's where we focused our attention on that crossing at the school over Elm Street to the other side of the sidewalk, and then the second crossing there. We felt like if we enhanced that pedestrian way and made it as safe as safer than it is currently proposed, that that could be our way of addressing that concern.

Yeah, and just this is a rendering prepared, I believe, by Bike Walk Tompkins as recommended traffic safety improvements to the crosswalk at Floral. So we've gone down this bulleted list of the various elements that we feel our community benefit. That's our presentation.

I do want just a couple closing remarks. Obviously, last time we came in, we talked about a playground. we absolutely want to engage with the school in conversations we had tried to multiple times reach out to them regarding the playground and were at that moment they were not interested in those conversations that being said i think with the changes that we're talking about now we would still very much welcome that synergy and conversations to see how we could best participate and have that input both from the parents, the students, and the administration to be able to facilitate that. So I just wanna be clear that we weren't trying to avoid that aspect. We have genuinely tried and we're willing to continue genuinely trying. But as we have that discussion, I just wanna be clear on that aspect that it wasn't that we didn't.

All right, I'll turn to my colleagues for some questions. Mr. Shapiro, you're first.

Um, sure. I just have, uh, two comments about the potential community. Good. Um, the first I'll just start where you just ended. Um, my kids go to bell Sherman and that's surrounded by a big field. Of course, it's either like city or school owns, so we don't have to worry about private development. So it's a little different. Um, but, um, During COVID, that outdoor area became a really amazing outdoor classroom that post-COVID has really continued to provide a really incredible resource to the school. So I appreciate what you just said about the playground, but I would encourage you to think bigger than that because I think like having that outdoor space to have that outdoor experience enhancing your elementary and other, I forget what grade LACS goes up to, I'm sorry. Middle through high. Okay, okay. But I think that just enhances the academic experience. It gives the teachers another tool in their toolbox. And I'd encourage you to work with the continued outreach. But to really think beyond just the playground. I think it's really, I think that those other, you've heard neighbors talking about trees. You know, it is privately owned land. They could probably bulldoze the whole thing if they wanted to. But I think since they're asking for some community, Since they're asking for something beyond the zoning that we have, I think that's a good community good, in my opinion, and I think we're hearing from folks about that. The second thing, and I'm no expert about parking or any of the things that you talked about related to civil engineers and whatnot, but looking at the map that you had up before and appreciating everything that you said about the crosswalk, I was struck by one of the comments from someone in the audience who suggested that having the exit be on Elm Street really isn't all that great. I'm looking at the map there. Of course, I can't see the grade of land. But I would like second that opinion and hope that you give it some thought for how do we limit the exiting of cars on the Elm Street. I think we've, I would hope all of my colleagues have been on Elm Street by now, if not before the last couple of weeks. But clearly it's like, it's a narrow lane. It's hard to have traffic coming in and out.

Thank you. My next speaker is Mr. Trumbull and then several others.

First off, congrats Lisa on retiring in your incredible accomplishments with the city. And thank you guys for coming back. That was great feedback from what we talked about before. I will echo my colleague Alderperson Shapiro's comments about the concern for traffic. I'll just emphasize what I said earlier that I really think some type of in-depth intersection analysis and real trip generation there just because the way Elm Street is set up, it's just way too unique to rely on averages And then also to kind of echo I think George's points, this is a developer that has behaved not the greatest in the past. So I think we do have a lot of leverage here. And I'd also like to see you guys make that conservation easement a firm community benefit commitment and not just something that you guys are exploring. But that said, you guys are doing great work. I'm excited to see how this process develops. And thank you for working with us. Mr. Devendini.

Alderperson Matos can go before I. She had some questions. Sorry about that.

I'll bump you down then. I have Alderperson Fabrizio after.

Thanks so much, thanks for all that information, that was really helpful. So I have like four areas that I wanted to talk about, rents, traffic, parking, and runoff. So we all know that what's considered market rate, apartment rates here are really super high, you know, 2950 to 3800 at Herald Square, 2927 to 4300 at Library Place, They're really priced for student families with means or for students who are sharing apartments. I'm wondering about housing the average Ithacans can afford. That would be a community benefit I could support. What are the projected rents that the developer needs to charge to meet their financial obligations and their return expectations? Real numbers, not like market rate or percentage of whatever, just like what are the numbers that you guys are, that whoever is doing the math is working with?

So I can't speak to that at this moment i'd have to get that from the developer, but I will say regarding the building typology. It has been specifically selected because the examples that you provided is a different construction type that does have a higher cost per square foot associated with it so that's at least architecturally how we're trying to respond to it but.

I get that. So thank you if you can bring that to the information to the public as soon as you can. And I guess second to that would be a question about would the developer be willing to commit to any specific minimum percentage of apartments that would be affordable at a certain rate, like 30% of the average salary in Ithaca or something like that, which would be like $12.50 a month, I think. So that's a question. Traffic, we've heard a lot about traffic and I really appreciate that you are willing and that you recognize that people who live in the community and who deal with that street on a daily basis have a lot of information to give you and I really hope that there will be opportunities even before the public hearing for you to get some input from them and incorporate it into your plans. I walked up Elm Street yesterday, and I walked the property, and I did see that that new property that's across the street, newish property across the street, it's like 15 units, it only has, I think, five parking spaces. And I was really, I didn't realize that there's parking along that side of Elm Street. And so that's... that's difficult, there's a lot of road safety issues that are really totally valid concerns, and again, I just wanna say that I appreciate that you're hearing that. I did walk around the block, and I also wondered if you had thought at all, and of course this would have complications and difficulties too, but I wondered if you thought at all about potentially buying some property from the northern edge of the school district property and if there was a way to have access through there as opposed from Chestnut Street as opposed to Elm Street. Did you look at that at all?

Given our current reluctance with conversations around a playground, we have not explored that because admittedly I would not have assumed it would be viable.

So I guess I'd still encourage you to maybe think about that. I mean, obviously, it would have other issues that would come with it. But I think it could really solve a lot of the problems that people are concerned about. Let me see what else I have here. about runoff. You know, we received so many notes from West Hill people saying that it is just like a river coming down that street. And there's so many problems. And could you just speak more about what the developer is willing to commit to with regard regarding like replacement of like discharge pipes and sewer infrastructure and updating the old pipes. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Are these improvements that the developer would be making?

So I think I heard potentially two separate things there, so I just want to clarify. One of the public benefits that we're discussing is connecting a water line, so that would be for the water supply, not the drainage. So that's an own separate element. Regarding the drainage, number one comment that we hear on every single development in Ithaca, because everything's on a hill, is I'm worried about flooding in my backyard or in my basement. And it's a legit valid concern. And I think a lot of us professionals in the area, we hear this and we do our absolute, like we address this on the regular. And so as a part of this project, like I can't, I'm not the civil engineer. We have just preliminarily talked about how are we going to address some of these things. we're almost certain that we're gonna have to have some storm water retention under the parking lot. So when you have those high volume rains, it's going into that collection system and then slowly dispersing as opposed to overwhelming the parking lot or whatever systems are in place and then just going down the hill. So likely, the runoff that's being experienced on Elm Street, anything that is being experienced due specifically to our site is likely to be reduced. Again, I can't talk about to what magnitude of reduction that would be experienced that would be for the civil engineer.

but it's a high priority on your list of things to be concerned about. And I don't think the city has any regulations yet about permeable services for parking areas, but I'm just wondering if you're thinking about that and how you might include, I'm not sure why we're still using so much asphalt for parking. And I guess related to that, I appreciate that you're looking carefully at the siting and trying to ensure that you preserve as much of the woodland as possible. Do you have an estimate on what percentage of the lot would be covered by buildings and what would you see from the road? Would you still see the woodland from the road or would you see the buildings from the road? Like how much of that forest land on that steep slope would you be cutting back into?

The most appropriate answer I could say is to be determined. But the intent and the goal is to try to preserve in between the buildings and the street as much of the natural vegetation that is indigenous, non-invasive, or causing other issues that could deteriorate the area. We wanna try to maintain as much as we possibly can. I would not be so bold to say, oh, there's gonna be enough trees that you're not gonna see the buildings. you're going to see them in behind hopefully some tree trunks. It kind of depends, right? So those are some details that would definitely get worked out through site plan review in terms of the percentage of building area and impervious versus pervious. That's one of the requirements that we have to provide through site plan review. So those numbers would be dialed in. And again, our goal is to reduce our impact as much as possible. So we want to try to show as much green on that plan as we possibly can.

So I don't know, just looking at that, are you saying that you would be covering like 50% of the lot or just do you have any guess at all?

I would urge people not to guess speculatively before the site plan process because what I would hate, and I'm sure is not your intention, is to use an arbitrary off-the-cuff comment as an anchoring point for future debate.

I understand that. Thank you so much. I hope that you'll have an opportunity to meet with residents even before you come to us next, because I think it would be really important to get some more of their input and incorporate it into all the work that you're going to do between now and then.

We're looking forward to the public information session at the library for that.

Ms. Matos.

Hi, thank you guys for joining us today. I do have a couple questions slash maybe one suggestion. My first question is, just for clarification, the trees that you guys will essentially be cutting down to build the development, will they be getting replaced or is there a plan to replace a certain amount or as many as you guys can?

Open to negotiation so i'm always with construction there's, especially when trees are present there Teresa we intend to preserve and sometimes through the process they end up coming down. So often we'll have some sort of conversation about replacing those trees, or what is expected. And as a part of the site plan review process, there will be an expectation of what trees are being planted. We have to provide that planting plan. So again, site plan review will be that perfect opportunity to, and again, the public will also have public hearing, or there will be public hearings through the site plan review process to ensure that we've hit all the marks. One of the things that we've already identified is that we have to do a tree survey. We have to go out there, see exactly what is on the site, identify those, And really, I heard someone say eight foot diameter tree. If there is one onsite, I would ideally not wanna touch that. So we will do that tree inventory as a part of that site plan review.

Okay, thank you. And just listening to a lot of my constituents' concern regarding the traffic flow coming off Elm Street and kind of echoing off of Alderperson Shapiro and Fabrizio regarding looking at potentially changing the entrance of the development. How... feasible or have you guys looked into possibly connecting the entrance of this new development or can you guys explore a connection to the street development through the chestnut street apartments and their easement that they have and then if so could we ensure that it would be wide enough to allow for pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure?

we would have to go back and review with the team if that's possible. There is a structure going across the creek currently. The shape that that structure is in is unknown at this point. A plan review as well? Yes. Okay, thank you.

Ms. Schvetz.

Through this whole proposal process, you've stressed wanting to continue that iterative process.

Understood. So I have my...

And so that's considered the phase one of that project.

I just, I need to know that. So I'm just going to hold off right now, but I'm supportive of your work. And I'm really super appreciative of, you know, you listening and responding to, to what the community is telling you.

Ms. Schvatz.

I'll make this quick, but I just want to reiterate what was said before. We talked about how there needs to be, I think, a lot more communication with TCAT to make sure that this is actually feasible, the pathway to Chestnut. But I think also I would really like if you guys could explore some sort of incentivization of bus ridership, like perhaps providing universal access for the first set of tenants who go into this development, anything that would allow TCAT to increase the routes that they're currently running, because they need more ridership and it also benefits everyone living there so we can, you know, continue to promote alternative forms of transportation. So TCAT's here, so please talk with them.

I just want to say again, thank you for being here, for being responsive to this. I know we're doing a big dance. I appreciate you being good dance partners about it. And I want to thank all the residents who have come up to come here and speak about this. We're really responsive. I'm reading every email about this. And I hope that what we put forth as conditions and things, expectations that we want to see for this proposal are reflective of that. I'll read through that. I won't read through them again. You can see them online. I hope you've got it. The only thing I'll ask is that regarding those public information sessions, I know we mentioned the library is going to be a space for one of them. If we can get one closer to the West End, whether it's partnering with LACS to do it or what we could do along those parameters, that would be really ideal for our residents here to participate in that.

Our initial hope was to have it at LACS. I imagined. We'll work with the city staff to see if that's possible.

And you can rely on us to try to help facilitate those connections to the administration. Thank you. Mr. Trumbull?

Yeah, I strongly endorse all of Alderperson Dave and Dede's ideas and agree with Alderperson Schvetz completely, in which case I would like to make a kind of maybe unorthodox statement Uh, ask that you guys could explore it, but it ties directly into your project school on reducing reliance on personal vehicles, which should be exploring annual T cat passes for all the units for the life of the PUD. Um, or at least those not provided parking spots, um, offered as just a standard lease inclusion, um, with annual proof of purchase reporting to the city.

Mr. Trimble, can I just ask you that they're not, but can I ask you to refine when you see the life of the PUD, which is in perpetuity?

Yeah, yeah, so forever. And I'd be open to exploring, you know, whether or not that could be reduced over time. But I think, you know, if we look at 115 units, albeit some would have reduced parking, you know, you could probably do something like this for under $50,000 a year, which I think would also tie directly into the city's goal of, you know, carbon reduction.

All right, with all of those comments, let's do, who is in favor of moving this forward to the public information session? Those opposed? And that carries. We're at nine today. Eight to one. Thank you. Let me entertain a three-minute recess so that the chambers can clear for people who don't care about the rest of what we're doing. Mr. Trumbull, seconded by Mr. Shapiro. All those in favor? That's unanimous. We will reconvene at 7.58. Yes.

here Yeah.

And we're back.

All right. Move on to the rest of our regular business. May I have someone please summarize and move resolution 4.1.

Mr. Sewell. So resolution amending the existing capital project for a public safety facility. Essentially, the it's asking the. City manager and controller are authorizing them to use funds for capital project 917 for the purpose of identifying cost-effective alternatives to the construction of a new public safety facility, including without limitation to engage in an appropriate firm or firms to conduct a fit test on the existing police station slash city court site and to evaluate the cost of addressing deferred maintenance, conversion of the city court facility and relocation of the city court to an appropriate alternative facility.

Thank you, Mr. Sewells. Is there a second? Seconded by Ms. Matos. I'll invite up Chief to answer any questions. But I'll first recognize Acting City Manager Recchio, who is kind of spearheading this effort.

Thank you. Yeah, I think it's in best financial interest of the city to explore the option of rather than relocating the Ithaca Police Department to somewhere like the Bola Drome, which we purchased for this potential purpose, to actually look at expanding the police department into the courthouse facility, which is already attached to the police department. In all prior analyses of the police department expansion, none of them considered expanding into the building that's attached to the police department. And I can't find a reason why that wasn't considered, other than that it's a purpose-built court facility, I believe we have some analysis to do, but I believe this could save the city. You know several million dollars at the very least long term it's very expensive for new sort of stick built construction. And being able to explore this I think gives us the flexibility to try and meet ips needs on a quicker timeline and it may be more easy. easier and potentially more cost effective to relocate the Court, so we just like to explore it within the existing capital project dollars that are already allocated to this project.

before I make eye contact with anybody to recognize hands. So I'm unbiased, I'm just gonna look at my resolution and I'm gonna say, what we're voting on as Mr. Sewell said is, do we wanna authorize them to use some of that $4 million to find better alternatives than us building a from the ground up new public safety facility? So let's try to, just given that we got a lot left tonight, let's just try to move with urgency. Ms. Matos.

yeah my only question um for our city manager is have within this process we will be essentially getting a quote for if we were to move the courthouse or do we know what that number is already

We would get a quote for, we would look at potential real estate options for what it would take to move the courthouse. They have less square footage needs than the police department, so it's likely to be a much more cost-effective solution, and they could use a different type of site than a police department would need. And so, yes, you will get that information as part of what we learn here.

Oh, so I must have misunderstood the resolution. I thought the courthouse was going, like the new Bola drum was being looked at as a new site for the courthouse.

Not currently. Oh, okay.

Well, thank you for that clarification.

The Bola drum was purchased with the concept of looking at it as a future public safety site. That could or could not include the courthouse. The initial fit tests that were done did not include the court relocating to that site.

Okay. Thank you.

Yep. Mr. Shapiro.

um I know it's just about considering other options so assuming it's just a small amount of this $4 million I can I get on board with just. A small amount to consider other options but i've I was convinced the last year that we had a need for additional space and beyond. what I think is being mentioned here even. And I just want to maybe remind this part of the fiscal equation is that if the police department or public safety building was built at the Bolladrome site, we'd be able to sell the site where the current police department is and assumingly make several million dollars on that sale.

This is a very key part of this consideration. If the court were to remain... at the site that it is now, and we were to sell the existing police station and the parking lot, those are likely to be less valuable, being that they're attached to the courthouse, if the court were to stay there. And so I agree, that could be a worthwhile discussion to have, and we would within this, but the entire site, including the court, is likely a more interesting parcel to redevelop if we were to consider that.

I think I just misunderstood the last part of what you just said. It would be... It would be a more advantageous property to sell if the court was no longer there. Is that what you said?

If we were going to discuss further property transactions that might impact the value of a sale, I'd recommend that we go into executive session.

Okay, yeah, I didn't mean to go there.

Nope, good line of questioning. I think it's worth discussing at some point.

I guess my point being, still, it feels OK to me to assess other ideas, and especially if that other idea is maybe the court building shouldn't be there either. Maybe there's lots of things that shouldn't be there, including the police department. I'm not ready to just write off the fact that we made a decision to buy a piece of property because we were convinced that the police department needed a new space and this site gave them at least the square footage I'm assuming that they needed for that site. So I'm just not like right away convinced that we should just like shift gears, you know. Again, sounds like you're asking for a small investment from what's set aside to assess other options. That sounds responsible to me. As long as it's not like too big. RFP for the service.

Ms. Fabrizio?

Yeah. How much is it? I mean, how much are you thinking this would be to do an assessment?

This time I don't have a hard cost estimate for you, but I do not believe that that an architectural fit test is a very expensive activity we have around $116,000 cash on hand. from this particular capital project. We didn't borrow the whole $4 million. We would come back to you for future authorization for anything that was above that cash on hand. My anticipation is that we do this in as cost-effective of a way as possible to assess the square footage needs with the existing building profile.

I just interject real quick. I think it'll help get to your concern, which is I think... Just as a reminder, because we had such a public previous part of the meeting, we're in committee. So what we can also do is give the comptroller's office the next couple of weeks before we vote on this in September and actually pass it to maybe put an initial ceiling on it, at which point they can come for further authorization if they need to exceed it.

Thanks for that. Yes, I think that would be really prudent. So I think one of the reasons people didn't think about this is because, yeah, it was a really purpose-built building, and it has to be built to really detailed specifications from the state of New York, and it includes very, very specific things. So those, you know, like jury deliberation rooms and holding cells and conference interview rooms and security and all that stuff. It's really very, very specific. So I didn't spend a lot of time looking at this, but I did spend a little bit of time, and I found that Middletown's actually renovating buildings. It's not a perfect benchmark, but it's a little bit bigger, I think, because they have two judges, yeah, two judges, two courtrooms. We have two judges, one courtroom. But all the required extras. So theirs was like 13,000 square feet. And, you know, I mean, this is not cheap, right? Just the construction. It's like five to seven million dollars. That's, you know, no land purchase or anything like that. I guess what I'm thinking about is the fire department, the fire station renovation, which turned into a new building and how we were basically told, and I don't remember the numbers now, but it was something like it was only going to cost a million and a half dollars more to build a new one than it would have been for us to have done the renovation. And that project ended up like eight or $9 million over budget. It ended up being like 14 and a half million dollars. And again, part of that rationalization for doing it was also that we were gonna sell and we were gonna make the money and we were gonna put that money on there. And we did do that, but it still was extraordinarily expensive. And I guess, I'm not opposed to exploring it, but I don't want people to get the idea that this would,

If you're looking for a response, we should absolutely do this. But before you respond, we should go into executive session if we're going to. So I'll entertain a motion to enter into executive session and discuss property. Or we can move by all the per. I traced the contours of your argument toward something that would have necessitated candid discussion about property transactions. Never mind.

Absolutely agree with and understand that, and I have been in contact with the New York State unified court system. for several months. We have interviewed them. We have assessed their needs. The current courthouse is not working very well for their needs because they have grown over time as well, and it is full. We do have two courtrooms, albeit one of them small and one of them a little bit larger. We've expanded from one judge to two judges in that space since 1993 when the facility was built. That facility is facing a significant amount of deferred maintenance to it. I've done a tour of that building, every room, mechanical rooms, rooftop, you name it, security. entrance area as well as through IPD. And we've taken all of the information from the court system related to the amount of square footage that they would need for each item from jury deliberation rooms, bathrooms, judges chambers, courtrooms, et cetera, and looked at what options may potentially exist for that. And I do believe on initial assessment that I would, I'm only bringing this to you because I think that we have a potential more cost effective solution relative to the cost to a new construction of a police station, which is unlikely something within our current borrowing capacity that we can afford at this time.

Right. And I guess that was the other point I wanted to make is, um, I don't think we voted that we were going to go ahead and build a new police department building. I'm sorry, chief, but I don't, I don't think we voted on that yet. No, we voted to make a purchase of a potential site, but we didn't vote to, like, we're definitely building a new police department.

I... Kayla, do you have a... There are individuals at this table who were here when council did make that vote. There are also a majority of individuals, yourself included, who were not here when we made that initial vote. This initial authorizing resolution in 2022, that was what council said, which is we're building a new public safety facility, which is the item in which we're currently debating, right? It's like, you're correct if your assertion is that there was no guarantee that the Bolidrome site, that is correct. But there was absolutely a city commitment to build a new public safety facility in 2022.

I did not. I was not on council.

Right, right, yeah. So I think it was just the three of us at the time.

Not just for Kayla's edification. It was not at the meeting that we had discussing the bull drum.

Mr. Sewell, you're next.

I just want to say I feel confident that the city manager has looked into all the things surrounding the requirements for building a court. Otherwise, he wouldn't be doing his job, but I think he is. I also want to say I really am always in favor of spending a little bit in order to identify cost-saving measures. I think that is prudent, especially because we – Oftentimes you can spend a little bit in the short term and save long term, which is always in my favor. And in terms of looking at something that has happened last year, I think the city managers already identified a purchase that. Council made last year that ended up being different than what they had hoped for. And so having the new city manager look at this with new eyes and a different understanding of just sort of administrative capacity and abilities is a wise thing to do. So I strongly recommend we move forward with this.

Mr. Wynn.

Yeah, I agree. And, you know, I did vote to construct a new building because having toured IPD, it needed it. I mean, the two main things that like really stood out to me were like the victim interview room being where it is and then how it's furnished. And then and also we have a higher proportion of women officers now and seeing the condition and size of the women's locker room was amazing. atrocious, frankly, and they deserve a lot better. So those are the main driving factors for like, we really need a new building. But even then, having gone through a very similar process for finding a new TCAT facility, which just didn't work out, and then seeing the price tag, which has probably doubled in the five or six years since we last looked at those things, I was increasingly thinking like this is never going to happen anyway. And so a more modest proposal, I think, definitely bears exploring. So I support this. Thank you for bringing it to us.

Thank you, Mr. Nguyen. I have Ms. Matos and then Ms. Trumbull.

Thank you.

I'm going to choose to ignore Alderperson Fabrizio's comment this time. Yes, I just wanted to make that comment out loud real quick. But now my comment actually is for our acting city manager. Is there, and this is like a little bit of a joke, but seriousness too, is there a possibility to explore sharing the town's court with the city? Being that like there it is in city, and also once again understanding what we might have to go into an executive session for this, which is why I motioned for an executive session so we can have a more candid conversation.

But yeah. The public answer to that question is that I hope to explore any and all potential partnership facility uses for this and other strategic real estate moves for the city that address several of our needs at one time.

Thank you.

I, of course, have the longstanding view that the town should be part of the city of Ithaca.

I agree.

For the record, yeah, we should annex them, for the record. Mr. Trumbull.

Yeah, I echo the sentiments of all the person when in Seoul. A question, too, to you, Chief. keeping the location as is would probably be a lot easier as far as like beat and route management too, I'd imagine. Because if we moved to say the third street location, wouldn't that involve having to like redefine the beats and like the patrol routes of officers?

No, that, that would all, uh, be very, very similar. Uh, There's a lot of information around this that, you know, when I arrived here in late 23 and it's been invested in this process and identifying locations, a lot of locations have been ruled out. A location that was over on Fulton was really high on the list that We weren't able to secure the property. And so, you know, we moved forward with the, the boulder drone, which is still a viable option, but there are a number of different issues that I know the city manager has worked on that, that affect, multiple city departments, and so this is something that it makes sense to explore. We've had conversations around it, and my first response was, I don't design buildings. I've seen the building design, but we really don't know how this fits, if it fits, so it makes sense to have people that have that expertise do this.

Thank you. Do you have another hand?

No, it's fine. Thank you.

Mr. Wynn.

to ask the question that I meant to ask earlier, but the Bolladrome site does have potential DPW usage too, so will you also be exploring alternative uses for that?

Not under this capital project, and I don't know that something will come forward in this year's five-year capital plan related to the Bolladrome site, but I do think once we answer these questions about the possibility of IPD expanding at its current location, I think we'll know more about the potential strategic use of the Bola drum site long term for the city, being that it's on the same block as DPW facilities for water and sewer. And we're preparing to make a significant investment in the water and sewer facility there as well. It is worth looking at that long term under the DPW potential use. It's well suited for that, yes.

Any further questions on this before we go to a vote? All those in favor of advancing this to the September meeting carries unanimously. Thanks, Chief. Chief, I'm going to guess. Yes, consent agenda. Thank you. I'm going to guess that we're not going to be able to get the new members out to the police station tonight because we still have several hours of meeting left. So council members. Well, I was like Council members, please be in touch with the chief, so if you have never been to the site. So that you can have a little bit more context as to what we're looking at just be mindful of quorum we can't have a six of you are more than five right thanks chief. Great question. may i have someone summarize and move uh 5.1 the city of ithaca active transportation network plan additional funding so that we can both hear from our acting assistant director of engineering and so that she can make the long drive back home after this meeting mr win seconded by uh well sorry summarize and move first uh this resolution increases the local match for the um active transportation network project in response to an additional 200 000 in federal funding Thank you, is there a second? Seconded by Alderperson Schvetz. Questions or comments for Ms. Matos?

I was just going to give Natalie the opportunity to add on to anything that you had said earlier that might be important for us to know about this project.

I can give some context about what both the local match and then the reimbursable amount will go to.

Yeah, that would be very helpful.

Yeah, so just again, this is a repeat, but the original scope of this project, which was funded with $587,000 with $123,000 match, was a two-phase project. The first phase was to improve upon the Better Bike Network and expand that into a full active transportation plan. That piece is substantially complete, and now we're on phase two, which is looking at five priority corridors throughout the city and progressing those specific locations to mostly concept level designs. So that includes looking at the right of way, looking at the overall feasibility of the project as a basically a checkpoint of can we reasonably proceed with any of these? And if we can, what will it look like? So that's what's involved in the original scope of this project. So, as we have these five concept level designs what we can do in about an additional $252,000 is. To close the gap, which means to take all of the five priority corridors and link them together for a lot of these we're only talking. couple of blocks to established bike lanes like on Cayuga Street. A couple other ones are on Lake Street. Right now the current design ends before that shared use path that the high school has and so we could close that gap and include that in concept level design. The other priority corridors are Elm Street and part of Chestnut leading down to the West Village Apartments. Hudson leading up towards IC is part of this. We have University and Lake Street as the main Cornell access point. And then we are considering a Cascadella Court Street one-way pair where we put a bike lane on each of those in opposite directions to compliment and to try to disperse loss of parking. So we would be trying to close the gaps to make a continuous network. We've called it kind of like a spine so that you can go north, south, east, west to the major areas of the city. Um, the next step would be, or another part that would be funded through this is to update the network for some upcoming work, including what DBW is proposing for the DRI grant money for the city sponsored project. Um, as well as some additional micro mobility hubs that we'd like to partner with TCAT and with bike walk Tompkins and bike share and car share, um, throughout the city. We would also include some renderings to aid public engagement. Most people can't read construction drawings with ease. And so this would be a way to kind of break that barrier and to allow the community to engage. This scope would also include a final public engagement meeting that's currently not in the scope. We would do a bit of additional survey, mostly on university, since there's a couple of retaining walls that can't move. And so we want to make sure that we know exactly where they are as they limit the roadway. And then they would also give us a full signage plan for how we would not only put up signs, but also mark the pavement to allow people to use this infrastructure if maybe this is their first time. with more complex bicycle lanes. So that's what the scope would include.

Any for Ms. Fruzio?

yeah um thanks for that so about a zillion years ago, there was this bicycle advisory Commission in Ithaca and it went on for a super long time and a lot of people were very, very dedicated to that and engaged and. I don't know exactly what they produced but i'm just curious if that's been helpful at all if you've been able to tap into any of that previously done work.

Absolutely. The large community of people who really champion bicycling and walking around the city. are a very strong community. And so they're the ones who are coming through CCT and Bike Walk Tompkins is kind of their avenue into giving information. but folks at the ITCTC, including Fernando de Aragon, and then Tim Logue when he was with the city, and then Tom Knipe, they were able to do a lot of that information sharing. I think that's part of what the Better Bike Network and also the Bike Boulevard Program that came, I think, closer to like the 2016 timeline that was published.

Right, those are more recent, and so they're probably more relevant. This I just mentioned because it's, I mean, this is like 30, probably 30 years ago. There was a very, very active group for a very long time that was an official city commission. There might be something in the archives.

Yeah, I think they would most likely kind of be like buried within these. Every report takes what was done before and then builds upon it, but I don't know the specifics.

Any further questions before we vote? We'll move this to consent as well. All those in favor of advancing this to consent agenda carries unanimously. Thank you, Natalie.

Thank you.

All right, so our next item is not a voting item. We are going to... So you have in your packet that you have all reviewed is the Acting City Manager's work plan for the current and upcoming year. I think what Dominic and I spoke about was, you know, I will summarize my endorsement of this plan. Dom's gonna give you a little bit of an overview of it. I will encourage you all to provide, to ask very brief clarifying questions or provide detailed written comments. We are not gonna vote on this so that Dominic has the flexibility to incorporate feedback and that I will member file this for us to adopt at the September meeting. Let me, a quick clarifying question.

When would you and Dominic like written question credits?

Beautiful. Leading with it. Love it. I was going to end with that. But yeah, so please, you've had this for a couple days already. Please get comments into Dom no later than end of business Friday so that he has the appropriate time not just to read them himself but to consult with his department heads if there are substantial changes that you're going to be requesting. If you are requesting exhaustive changes... Don't. This is, this is, like, I mean, I think this is my preparatory comment. Like, what we did for the very first time in the city's history, right, is we got all of council together. We spent several months identifying the priority areas for policy. We then spent more time developing vision statements and goals for each of those areas. We then spent more time putting together memos and distilling those down into a series of objectives that we would like the administration to execute on, and then asked the administration to develop an implementation plan. what you see before, and some of you may not have been on council yet when these were, this is a multi-stage process, right? But this is the template for how we're gonna be doing this going forward. There is feedback for, I think, especially clarity around metrics or suggestions for metrics. um there is opportunity to clarify if you don't necessarily see that sort of policy implementation nexus uh uh where it's sort of where the fidelity to that is as clear as it could be but we're not relitigating the goals, we're not relitigating the things that this council has already, this council as in the governmental body, not the current composition necessarily, that we've already adopted, right? We can't change midstream on the work the administration has been doing to serve these objectives. So I kind of just want to impart that, remind you all of that as you seek to engage with this document. And I'll turn it over to Mr. Recchio to provide any comments that he wants to draw your attention to. And then, again, clarifying comments. I'll take actually one from Mr. Shapiro first. And then we will not go to a vote. We will not debate this at length. We will just collect written comments and have a fuller discussion in September.

Thank you. Yeah, you've all had a chance to look at this. I will not go into the deliverables, sub deliverables, etc. in any detail tonight, but would be happy to accept those comments through the end of this week. This has been a significant effort on my part and the part of staff. My goal here is to ensure that we have a thoroughly comprehensive work plan that addresses your policy priorities. This is also though a very ambitious document from the city. These items all done in concert with one another would represent a pretty transformative shift for our governmental activities. And so I want us to make sure that we are prepared to put the appropriate level of prioritization and resources toward these. You will see requests. come in the budget process related to your policy priorities as well as the work plan deliverables and in some cases as far deep as sub deliverables or metrics. The resolution shows that there's 36 deliverables for your 20 priorities and then there's 109 sub deliverables across those are all significant tasks. probably things close to the level of what Natalie was just describing, several years long activities that really carry out the future of the city. So we've been very thoughtful in putting this together. You passed the resolution with the charge in April, and then the immediate next step for me was to bring that forward to all senior staff at the city across all of our departments in a senior staff retreat. In that session, we broke out, I assigned staff cross-departmentally to each of those priority areas to work through different ideas and concepts that they felt were relevant and responsive to those policy priorities. They drafted all of that information in that session. I took all of that in and adapted much of that into this. I also adapted different feedback from department heads throughout the process and ideas that I've heard at this table in past iterations of council or just other ideas that have floated around but not been codified. And I also learned a lot, especially in the area of policy or in the area of housing and housing development goals that you all have. The other thing I will mention, this does not cover all of the day-to-day work of the city. We still have roughly a 70% of the work of the city is the day-to-day activity that we do, the plowing, the serving customers and constituents who come in through the door. And so the shifting of some of that priorities of that 30% time, if you will, which is not equal across the organization, but it's just a sort of example placeholder, that's a significant effort and will require a lot of shifts on the part of our departments. And I think that that is a worthwhile effort because this is comprehensive and has included their input. But I don't want to miss that 70% of what we do is sort of the day-to-day operations of the city. Those also need to improve, we need to continually improve that 70% nestled within this plan are a lot of ways to look at that one example of briefly call out this is already under underway. Is the code modernization task force that we're doing we carry out a lot of work related to code enforcement on a day to day basis. That's that 70%. We're looking for that 30% above and beyond time to look at how do we do that better? How do we better meet our community needs? How do we continue to ensure safety and habitability, better responsiveness to the community? And we have a cross-departmental working group spending time on that effort, and it aligns with your policy priorities. So yeah, I'm very excited about the possibilities within this document. I've been very cautious. I do not want to overpromise, but I do believe that this is a very ambitious plan and one that will require all of us working together to unlock the resources and the prioritization to help make it happen. And the last piece I will mention too, I do want to thank the mayor for his significant support around the metrics to make sure that it's meeting those policy aspects. I think one of the things that I relied on him for in the development of this was to make sure that the adherence to the policy that council is setting is really shown through the development of some of those metrics. And that was a really, you know, helpful sort of aspect of putting this together. So that's my overview.

Appreciate that. Yeah. So in other words, if you don't like them, it's my fault, not Dom's. I had one for Mr. Shapiro and then Mr. Sewell.

Well, first I want to say, this is a very detailed, very well structured and organized and very, professional and competent piece of work and i just want to just pause there for a second and just say thank you thank you um i have two just brief questions i have read this but i'm gonna have to read it like three or four more times um um I'm just curious, two things. You do prepare a city manager's report to us once a month. Is this gonna be now the structure of how you might report to us? Is it always gonna tie back to your work plan?

What I'm required to do from your April 8th resolution is to have quarterly updates and a tracker related to this. I do hope to integrate many of these things into the work plan. or into the regular updates that come to the report. That report, what I've been doing mostly is making sure that high priority areas that are of discussion that you need information in writing for constituents or discussion here is included. It'll be a separate tracker that will develop. That'll be more of an Excel spreadsheet, larger printout type item that we're tracking progress on. You'll see that quarterly.

Okay. Well, thank you for that. I think the root of what I'm getting at is... How do we hold you accountable? This is a great document, but let's not just enshrine it and then put it on the bookshelf somewhere. But I'll give you a specific example. It's under the Finance and Administration Committee because, of course, that's where my eyes were drawn to first. But I'll just give you one of the things that you said you're going to work on. Prepare equipment replacement strategy that maximizes one-time funding provided in temporary municipal aid, etc., developing long range heavy machinery capital plan. I would say of your 109 things that I think I got your number right, that you said your deliverables and sub deliverables, that's probably not in the top 20. Maybe it is, maybe you feel differently.

Let me interject really quick with, as the older person may recall, that's probably in there because in November of 2025, council required the controller's office to produce something to that effect.

That's fair enough. I'm only trying to use it as an example. I could have picked any other example. My point being, and that's okay. I take what you're saying. Totally fine. If you don't prepare some of the 100, if you don't complete some of the 109 things, I wouldn't expect, I mean, I guess I'm asking, what kind of accountability are you looking for? I mean, this is ambitious as you've said it. but certainly you don't want to be held accountable if you don't complete all 109 deliverables. Have you given thought to that? It won't just be me accomplishing all of them.

I'll be relying on the 420 or so city staff to help assess those. Of course, I do believe, you know, this is very ambitious and get anyone accomplishing all of these. It would be a, a seriously Herculean task and not one that is entirely possible within a year, bookmark that, within a year and a half or less. But what I do want to do is I want our staff to understand the level of importance of their job as public servants and the type of delivery of service that we can provide here to meet the vision of the Public and Common Council. We won't be successful in every one of these, but I do hope that we're able to do a good faith effort on all of them. And when it comes to the accountability piece, in the tracker, one of the things that I hope to be able to do, and this may come in the city manager's reports too, is help tell you when something's infeasible. Maybe come back for an edit and say, you know, item 35 is not workable in the current solution or we're low on staffing in this department. So, you know, come back to you and say an extension really would be, you know, relevant for this one. I'm hoping to be able to provide that narrative. I see it sort of as a kind of large Gantt chart tracking things over time with then some commentary within gives you updates on where we are and you can follow it from left to right a long time and see what you can anticipate starting next and see what you can anticipate having finished before so once this passes i'll be putting into that format and then yeah the narrative is going to be where i shine to give you that information okay thank you my next is mr sewell

um, just a style thing that I believe cap, uh, is used as an acronym in two different ways. Uh, one is a corrective action plan and one is a climate action plan. And I spent like 20 minutes trying to figure out why the audits mattered for our climate strategy. Um, but, uh, so just, you know, writing those out might be useful.

Cap one and cap two.

Just try it. Yes. Um, I also, um, I want to say I really appreciate that you added the graffiti part in there, the tagging. I think that came up just recently, and it's amazing that's already showing up here. I think that's a real priority, personally. I think that's really a difficulty. But the larger question, I think this may be more for just council as a whole, something I missed. One of the things, number 16 talks about establishment of a standalone parks department, and I thought Common Council had just decided to put the parks department under...

We hadn't determined anything. What you're referring to was discussions that began during the budget season. And hold on, let me. Under our current administration, we feel that it's appropriate to be more methodical with prospective reorganizations as we've looked at this closely.

Okay, yeah, and I actually, this is one of the things I wanted to do, but since Council had just decided this, I thought, okay, so anyways, thank you.

Any further clarifying? Ms. Ferbizio.

First, yes, thank you so much for both of you, really, and the rest of the staff for putting in so much effort, thoughtfulness, you know, I love the intent, I love the aspirations, and the effort that you've given to it. I do see that department heads have been identified, but I don't see beyond that about staffing so much. And I know that's kind of granular, but the reason I bring it up is because I also see a lot of additional resource needs. So there's a lot of, it looks like hiring outside consultants or outside legal people or outside, you know, whatever. And I'm I'm not saying I'm opposed to every outside contract that we need to make with people, but I am mindful of the fact that I think you had said we were like $5 million short already for next year, even if we did maintenance of effort. And so I'm looking at this and yeah, it's super ambitious. I'm concerned that we can't afford it all. I guess I'm concerned that we don't have a number on here. So I would have a hard time signing off on this until we had some realistic view of that. And I'm not sure we can afford to do that all. Was this meant to be 2027, 2028?

26, 27, recognizing that it was always going to be half a year at best. If I may, I think the sequencing of all of this work product from Mr. Recchia's office was very important because he also has been aware of what the council's adopted budget guidance for the next fiscal year is, right? So I think... I would invite the older person to work with me or whomever to identify what would both better address some of your concerns while respecting the more operational side of the aisle, which I know you will. And I think to Mr. Shapiro's point, If the budget that we are presented by the administration is materially changed by Council that it would be more than appropriate, if not expected that there'd be a downward revision of some of the things that are here to recognize those resource deficiencies, but I think that. And he can speak for himself, but I think that the administration put this together with an understanding of both sides of our policy aspirations, as well as the financial resources and limitations that the Council has has put on city government, yes.

Okay, so. All right, well, I mean, that makes me feel slightly better. I'm just thinking about that looming, you know, $5 million deficit that we already have and adding all these things onto it. So I guess I'm just wondering realistically, like, maybe it's a smaller number of things than I'm seeing that would really be require outside help. Maybe you could clarify that for me. Like, is this the bulk of this work, like our current city staff or?

Absolutely, the bulk of this work is our current city staff. We have a senior staff retreat again, next. Wednesday yeah Thank you where you know this won't be fully passed by then, but my hope is to have a facilitated discussion there about how to take this to the next steps and integrate this into those staff level work plans. Where do you see things that are seeking outside specialist funding are areas that i've already identified or departments and heads of identified, where we do not have the staff expertise or capacity. I do believe those are limited within this document overall. I think, for example, if I think about one of the items under the parks area that I think speaks to several of your priorities would be under establishing a waterfront parks district. That is in the 2018 Parks Master Plan. That would unlock other funding streams for our waterfront parks that aren't just general fund tax levy dollars. That may require some outside legal counsel of someone who has experience creating or developing a waterfronts park district, because that's not something that we currently have in-house capacity for, but I do believe the upside on that sub deliverable is high enough to require some level of investment in making sure we get there because year over year, we might have increased investment into the policy priority that you've set. That's just one example, you brought up outside legal, and that's one that was on the page that I'm looking at.

And I'm sure that part of this would be for staff to look into all possible grant funding for some of these things, obviously. But it sounds like you would have a number to attach to these things, some kind of rough outline of what you're looking at.

In the budget process, you will see items within the budget that are related to the work plan marked as such. I hope to use the numbering convention that is in this as well as sort of another way to look at the budget within the context of your policy priorities. You should get that budget document and be able to navigate to your policy priorities within it, whether that's something that is already within our base 70% of what we do or that 30% of the other things that we're looking at. You will see some of these come forward likely as over target requests. You may also see some of these because this is a 2026, 2027 work plan. Once this is adopted, if I have things in this work plan that need to get done by Q4 2026, I'm going to come back to you and ask for potential movement of funding within our current scope to help get those done this year because those policy, this is a 26 and 27 work plan. It's happening midstream.

Yeah, I guess I just want to make sure we're not biting off more than we can afford, right?

Well, that's why we had that lovely budget guidance resolution that we all worked on and almost unanimously passed.

Now we just have to stick to it.

Yes, right.

We're staying under the tax cap.

Any further commentary on this before we provide written comments to Dominic? Bye. Bye. Close the business.

Do it on Monday so we at least have the weekend.

No, because Dominic also needs to be able to do this at a reasonable. Yeah. So also like like like very playfully, but also very serious. Like, let's be like, come on, like council challenge this time. Everyone on council is going to turn something in by the deadline. Right. We're already making history. It's got to be everybody. It's collective action.

What hour is considered end of business? 4 p.m. or 5 p.m.? I'll give you 529 p.m.

I would take 5. Well, you got extra 29 minutes. All right. With that, I'm actually going to ask council to save their liaison and community group reports for the top of the month because we have three executive sessions to do. So... Thank you, Alan. Thank you, two members of the public who are still here. We're gonna enter into a couple of executive sessions and as I'm often asked, how long will they take? That is not up to me. May I first have a motion to enter into executive session. There'll be no voting items. So yeah, we can end the live stream. To enter an executive session to discuss a personnel matter, Mr. Defendini.