Common Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the September 16th Committee of the Whole, Session B. We'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. I'd like to note that applications for the fourth ward alter person vacancy are now closed. I believe we have received two eligible applications. We are going to confirm that and then schedule those public interviews at the earliest convenience. also wanted to just note mr kirby is excused uh he is ill um given that we have a lot of folks i'll just uh paraphrase the emergency evacuation notice in the event of an emergency or do you you were to use one of the two doors either the door that most of you came through or the door that's over my left shoulder please exit onto green street and stay on this side of the street unless directed by first responders to do otherwise If you need assistance, please move to one of the stairwells and first responders will arrive to aid you. And if you are at all possible to advocate for yourself, please do so as your own best advocate. With that, any additions or deletions to the agenda? Seeing none, may I please have a motion to move and accept the August 12th and 19th minutes. Mr. Shapiro, seconded by Mr. Devendini. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of approval, that carries unanimously, which tonight is nine to zero. With that, we'll move right into statements of the public. I have the full allotted 15 cards. Everyone will be given two minutes, given the volume of individuals this evening, and I will read the name and then the second individual who is like sort of on deck, just so you can be prepared. So our first speaker is Teresa Ault, followed by David Nutter. And welcome, Teresa. You have two minutes once you begin.

I'm Teresa Ault of 206 Eddy Street, College Town. I know that many of us share the view that housing supply and quality is one of the most serious problems in this city. I realize that it is not the only issue. Some matters before Council tonight, like the water and sewer issues, relate to housing. However, I would really like to see progress reports on zoning reform, on strengthening the ability of the building division to enforce safety issues, on reforms to building codes and other legislation that they have to enforce so that they emphasize better safety and not just appearances. and ideally on ways to lower rents. All these issues have been raised, but many of us don't know whether anything is happening.

Thank you. My next speaker is David Nutter, followed by Ellen Coivisto. Welcome, David. You have two minutes once you begin.

Thank you, my name is David another 156 park road city of Ithaca the street pod application was pushed through, even though it's not ready, I think it should be pulled back and done again it lists two different companies as the owner with two different addresses, how can that be. Neither of them has an actual owner listed, you know, the person. The innovation supposedly is to severely limit the parking, which will predictably cause problems among the renters as well as for residents on Elm Street who depend on a very limited supply of parking. The supposed reason to limit parking is to encourage people to bike or walk or use buses, but that's backwards. The way to encourage biking or walking is to make each of those safer and more pleasant, and the city has a lot of work to do just to get people past Route 13. If you try to raise numbers of bike riders and pedestrians without improving conditions, you will put both groups in greater danger and in conflict with each other as they try to avoid motor traffic. We do not need more bike riders riding on sidewalks. Bus service is not convenient. Cutting through the school property during school hours to use the bus stop on Chestnut Street is not an option. It is not a public place to go during school hours. cutting down a forest an important part of the unique natural area makes this a big negative on sustainability the new road will threaten the houses on elm street with flooding and the danger of vehicles sliding into their cars or houses in winter there's just so many problems with this with this project it's there's too many to list thank you thank you my next speaker is ellen coivisto followed by jim kerrigan

Or Tim, sorry, I can't tell if this is a J or a T. Welcome, you have two minutes once you begin.

What does Lower Elm Street have that makes this PUD seem so attractive? What is Lower Elm Street lacking that this PUD will provide? Lower Elm Street doesn't have shoulders or gutters, uniform pavement, a wide enough sidewalk, a safe sidewalk, a safe slope, both for the street and the sidewalk, adequate drainage, adequate space for plowed snow, or adequate signage for the crosswalks. Elm Street between Chestnut and Floral does have a forested unique natural area, a UNA, one of the few remaining wild areas in the city. Storm and wind protection provided by the UNA, wildlife corridors in the UNA, masses of pollinators and fireflies in the UNA, active mammal and reptile dens in the UNA, cicadas in the UNA that have multi-year life cycles dependent on that forest. temperature mitigation provided by the UNA through transpiration and albedo, bird habitat and bird migration stuff over points in the UNA, substantial carbon sequestration provided by the mature forest of the UNA, substantial water storage and filtration provided by the mature forest of the UNA, and the smaller recent Cayuga Flats development at 209 Elm Street that fits the neighborhood. What benefits does the community get from the proposed PUD? More crosswalk signage, something that Ithaca, as a Vision Zero municipality, should already be providing. What are the costs to the community of the proposed PUD? Destruction of a mature urban forest ecosystem, loss of all the real services provided by the UNA, including substantial monetary services ignored in standard accounting regimes as externalities. Loss of a forest classroom and refuge for both people and wildlife, and worse and more dangerous traffic on Lower Elm Street. Meanwhile, there is a site literally around the corner, graded and paved with utilities and infrastructure, with two driveways onto better roads, with a bus stop right there with more usable area than in the UNA, and that the city already owns. We want development in West Hill, smart development that serves the needs of the community and doesn't kill the biosphere. The proposed PUD is not smart development.

Thank you very much. My next speaker is, is it Jim or Tim? I was right. Jim Kerrigan followed by Reggie Teasley.

When I was younger, it was better.

Well, mine's never been good, so you're excused. Welcome. You have two minutes once you begin.

I'm Jim Kerrigan. I'd like to briefly address the parking garage decision that apparently was at least started a week or two ago. I have a personal interest in this because it was about 45 years ago, the old YMCA, a multi-story building at the corner of Tioga and Buffalo Street burned down. And I put together a small group of people to buy what is now 200 East Buffalo Street, which we built without tax abatements of any sort. My concern is with the parking is that we're already beginning to see tenants planning to move out. They want more parking. They've always wanted more accessible parking. They are finding sites with unlimited and free parking. As tenants move out, tax assessments for the related properties go down. Not only does my building adversely affected by the shortage of parking, but sales tax revenue from Aurora Street businesses will decline commons merchants need parking all the county needs parking jurors for state and state court systems and the town court system need a place to park in an urban core i think eventually with the absence of parking there will be a significant reduction in the taxable value of all property within a reasonable distance of that parking garage. I'm deeply troubled by the prospect that moving or not rebuilding that parking will result in a hollowed out urban core for people will not shop, come to professional offices if there is no place to park that is convenient. I think there's a unique opportunity here right now for the city and the county to work together to resolve and the city and the county and the town to work together. Thank you.

That is your time. I'm sorry. I have to be impartially adjudicating. You may submit the rest of your comments in writing.

Thank you.

Thank you. My next speaker is Reggie Teasley, followed by Donna Fleming. Welcome, Reggie. You have two minutes once you begin.

Is city government promoting gentrification in Ithaca? For all the talk about housing for working people, most of the new city housing created to date is market rate. That means what the market will bear. That's pushing current residents out of the city while creating housing for people with higher incomes. That's called gentrification. And that process has not benefited existing residents in any city where it has happened. There's a rich literature documenting that. Typically gentrification displaces working class people, artists, musicians, and racial and ethnic minorities. That is basically anyone who can't afford the higher housing costs. And much is lost in the process. Think of the wonderful, funky Ithaca parade. It won't be much fun to watch a parade of Teslas and BMWs. At the same time, racial and ethnic diversity decreases as residents are priced out of historical neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, the culture and character of the city also change. Ironically, the latest downtown costly upgrade is supposed to enhance our cultural riches and city attractiveness, pricing out artists and Ithaca creatives while hoping to draw on their cache to attract visitors is working at cross purposes. If the city were concerned with the needs of existing residents, they would first learn what those needs are. and then they would creatively try to meet them. Instead, they have pursued more and more bland, big box buildings with expensive apartments. Some cities, such as Burlington, Vermont, are developing creative vehicles to help residents buy homes in the city, while other cities are helping current homeowners to upgrade their homes, safeguard housing quality for renters, and incentivize ADUs. Let's not look back with regret to say Ithaca was gorgeous.

Thank you very much. My next speaker is Donna Fleming, followed by Catherine Stone. Welcome, Donna. You have two minutes once you begin.

Good evening. I'm Donna Fleming. I served on Common Council for 10 and a half years, and I was a member of the Charter Revision Commission. I would like to urge you to vote yes on item 8.1. I have reasons prepared, but I can't read them. However, I would like to urge you to vote against or table item 8.2. While neither the charter nor the referendum defines the mayor's job as part-time, the job has always been considered by convention and tradition to be part-time with compensation set accordingly. Until 2024, the mayor was both the manager of city operations and the political leader. I was on the task force appointed by Mayor Myrick to examine alternative forms of government. After serious consideration of our options, we recommended hiring a city manager to be the chief executive of the city and define the role of the mayor as a political and ceremonial... leader with regular voter role on council the mayor's duties were significantly reduced when we hired a city manager so it made sense to realign the payer pay of the mayor accordingly a majority of you might still want to argue that it ought to be a full-time job and it's true that traditions and conventions can change i urge you to look closely at what the mayor needs to do according to the charter and what any particular mayor might choose to do beyond what is required You must also see how expensive and top-heavy the administration will appear to voters if we have a well-paid city manager, a better paid full-time mayor, 10 well-paid older persons, several of whom have city subsidized medical insurance, and a deputy city manager should you decide to fill that opening. before making decision you are obligated to research the compensation of older persons and mayors in comparable new york cities with city managers in a city our size with so many pressing needs and financial challenges these salaries and benefits will be very hard to defend please vote yes for item 8.1 and no or table for item 8.2 thank you thank you my next speaker is well done my next speaker is catherine stone followed by angel de vivo

Welcome, Catherine. You have two minutes once you begin.

Hi, my name is Catherine Stone. I'm representing Esteri Tenants, and we have a petition that we would like to submit. We've undersigned demand an immediate end to all eviction proceedings in Esteri and the wiping of all associated rent ledgers. Since the building opened its door two years ago, tenant concerns have been disregarded due to the casino group's total unwillingness to treat us with dignity and dedicate adequate resources and attention to this theory building. We have endured broken HVAC systems, which forced us to endure harsh heat in the summer, no heat at all in the winter. There's constant pest infestations and mold. Building management neglects these issues and often bars us from accessing common spaces. Lease violations are doled out at random by security who have in some cases threatened physical confrontation with tenants and refused to let banned tenants access their belongings inside of their units. For those of us dealing with addiction and other serious health issues, the resources we were promised would be in the building were totally insufficient, if not entirely absent. And building management blames us for these problems or ignores them. Nothing is fixed. We're forced to live in uninhabitable conditions. The vecino group charges us rent for these uninhabitable conditions, and many of us were charged for the month of forced displacement that we suffered in March 2026. A CRISIS THAT WAS CAUSED BY THEIR NEGLECT. THE VECINO GROUP EVEN DEMANDS THAT SOME OF US PAY THE MONEY STOLEN FROM US BY A PAST PROPERTY MANAGER WHO IS CURRENTLY UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR EMBEZZLING OUR RENT. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO CHARGE US WHEN THEY HAVE BLATANTLY FAILED TO UPHOLD THE WARRANTS OF HABITABILITY SINCE OPENING. THROUGHOUT IT ALL, THE VECINO GROUP HAS PROFITED FROM STATE SUBSIDIES, TACK BREAKS, AND DEVELOPER FEES. They are now attempting to evict people for whom they have shown nothing but callous disregard by repeatedly.

Thank you. That is your time. I'm sorry. You may submit the rest of your comments and writing. My next speaker is Angel DeVivo, followed by June Bryson. Welcome, Angel. You have two minutes once you begin.

okay i'm gonna finish my neighbor's uh petition um they are now attempting to evict people for whom they show nothing but callous disregard by repeatedly failing to provide a safe secure livable environment after promising help we have nowhere to go and we have large arbitrary money judgments haunting us into the future these evictions will not only affect us but will also serve to worsen the homelessness crisis in ithaca we demand that you as our city representatives stand with us and publicly call upon vecino to stop these evictions and wipe rent ledgers We deserve a clean slate and a safe, healthy living environment. Hi, I'm Angel. I'm from Ward 2. I live a couple blocks away from the Asteri building. I'm here to stand in solidarity with my neighbors. I'm sure your first reaction is, but we don't have the legal ability to have Vecino drop all of these rent debts. And I would agree with you. However, you do have a platform. The legal system has failed these people anyway. I showed up to one of the first housing courts when they first started mass evicting people. The judge did ask why Vecino was seeking rent for several years worth, to which Vecino said that they had changes in management, which is one way to put it. The judges are uncurious or they're not brave. Law in New York is overwhelmed. And there seems to be no mechanism to stop this. Some people are being defaulted on. What that means is when you don't show up to court, you get a warrant of eviction and then a money judgment. Some of these money judgments are tens of thousands of dollars. This will result in garnished wages. It will result in them having a hard time finding other livable I'm going to swear a little. I'm sorry. It's deeply unfair that hysteria is a giant corporate fuck up that lied to the city and social services and most of all the residents and the people who suffer the most are my neighbors. So I publicly call on you guys to use your platform to push the casino to drop these rent ledgers. Tennis deserve a clean slate after all the trauma they've been through the past couple of years. Thank you so much.

Thank you. My next speaker is June Bryson followed by Zach Wynn. Welcome, June.

You have two minutes once you begin. Thank you. Following from the last couple of speakers, my major message tonight is this. We must all look out for each other in this time of crisis. And this winter especially, we must consider and prioritize those without roofs over their heads and those barely with roofs over their heads. Those without pantries and much less food to put in them. From each according to their ability to each according to necessity, we must not hide behind technicalities and conventions. We must step up to the plate. We must do the not impossible, yet previously thought improbable. Now is the time to pull out all the stops. That includes canceling, calling for the cancellation of rent debts and stopping evictions in this time of precarity and vulnerability. People are not a resource to be extracted, particularly in the context of uninhabitable buildings with mistreatment. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. My next speaker is Zach Winn. I do note that this position is being passed around. Out of respect of the other speakers, let's file this with the deputy clerk. Can we get an emailed copy of this so everyone has it in their inbox? Thank you. Zachary Winn is next, and Laura Lewis is on deck.

welcome zach you have two minutes once you begin thank you very much good evening uh i would like to speak to 8.1 on the agenda the cost of living adjustment for elected city officers uh voting to increase your own pay during a major budget shortfall is less than ideal as far as optics are concerned uh if adopted i suggest this resolution be budget neutral When the city manager role was originally being crafted, I believe it was then-councilperson Ken Telmo who suggested reducing the mayor's salary to $30,000 in order to fund an increase to the city manager's salary to make it more attractive to candidates during the search. And Mayor Ken Telmo, I'll guess not. I... I would... assess the compensation for the mayor and this uh excuse me for the city manager and the deputy city manager roles be reduced by 45 000 to offset the increased salary for the mayor or alternatively eliminate the role of the deputy city manager and use the funds set aside for that role and the health insurance to increase the mayor's salary along with council members compensation with some despair I AM ALSO CURIOUS ABOUT THE CITY'S INTENTION TO DEPOPULATE THE EXCEPTION ZONE AND CLOSE IT PERMANENTLY. I BELIEVE COUNCILPERSON FABRICIO MENTIONED THIS LAST NIGHT AT THE LEGISLATURE. and it was discussed at the recent Unhoused Services Committee. I'm curious if the desire to depopulate the exception zone is connected to the permits for the dredging coming through and the need for unimpeded access and site security for all the trucks that will be going in and out of there with a quarter million cubic yards of silt and stuff. The drainage pad is directly adjacent to the exception zone. And how quickly does the city intend to clear out the jungle exception zone and where do you intend for people to go, thank you, thank you, my next speaker is Laura Lewis followed by john King.

Welcome you have two minutes, once you begin.

Thank you. As a city taxpayer who has lived in Ithaca for over 40 years, served on Common Council for six years, and as mayor in 2023, I am opposed to the proposed local law, the cost of living adjustment for elected city officers law, principally because it ignores the will of voters that was overwhelmingly demonstrated in the results of the 2022 referendum, which approved a change in city government structure with the addition of a city manager. In preparation for that referendum, as has been noted, Common Council conducted extensive research that included comparison studies of other municipalities that have a professional full-time city manager serving as chief executive officer and an elected part-time mayor overseeing legislative matters. Each role was defined and appropriately compensated according to their responsibilities. This research, plus multiple discussions amongst council members, as well as information shared with our constituents, provided the basis for the referendum. As noted in 2022, the council manager structure offers greater efficiency, managerial expertise, and continuity in city operations. I question why this proposed local law requesting a change to city government would not be put to city voters as was the case with the 2022 referendum. Prior to the 2024 implementation of the restructured city government with a full-time city manager, the mayor's position was defined as part-time even as the mayor served as CEO for city operations with compensations then set at $61,489. another issue i want to comment on is the consideration of expanding the police station into space that may be vacated by city court this is ill-advised due to the physical condition of the current police station which has multiple health and safety issues as i understand it a site has been identified uh for a new public safety facility that is your time you may submit the rest of your comments in writing thank you my next speaker is john king followed by anne sullivan

welcome you have two minutes once you begin good evening everyone i'd like to address two separate subjects tonight the first is the petition submitted by the residents of esteri i strongly encourage the city to use every single lever of influence it has to assist these tenants it has always been the responsibility of the city to enforce the laws of new york state which include the new york state property maintenance code the implied warrants of habitability and other standards meant to protect tenants and we have categorically failed at every turn to protect the interests the health and the well-being of the people in this building the very least we can do to make up for this categorical failure of either capability or intention to actually do The job of the city in enforcing the law of the land is to now try to advocate so that we no longer have these catastrophic lasting consequences for tenants. Someone struck stricken with these rent debts into the tens of thousands of dollars. Someone who was already qualified for low income housing will see their credit destroyed. They have already, through mass displacement and evictions, lost their housing vouchers. A substantial portion of these people have been forced out onto the street to begin with. allowing these debts to continue to haunt them after they have already been victimized by the criminal negligence of asteri and it is the criminal negligence of this company many other firms run supportive housing and low-income housing in this city without incident and yet the two buildings operated by basino have both been riddled with violations and with abuses of tenants And to allow this kind of indignity and long-term suffering to haunt people who have already been put through hell for years afterwards is unjust. I know that the city has only limited powers available to it to actually move the needle here, but I encourage you in the strongest possible terms as a way of recompense for our failure to enforce the law to begin with, to please use every single lever of influence you have to attempt to get these rent debts dropped and to prevent ongoing displacement and rising homelessness in the face of existing cuts to our shelter capacity in code blue.

That is your time. Thank you very much. My next speaker is Anne Sullivan, followed by Neil Schwartzbach.

I like other speakers today. I'm urging you to not consider resolution 8.2. There's no research. And I do know that a year ago, the mayor called for a committee that would research salaries and stuff. So to introduce something like this without any other information, except the 9% is. kind of week. And I would add that in 2023, I don't know if you know, you guys received a $4,000 salary bump up. And I would like to know how much we're paying for your health insurance now, which I think you're entitled to. I worked in a union context for almost 30 years. We were constantly weighing salary increases against health insurance. I didn't take it, but I never regretted having a smaller salary bump up so that my colleagues could have health insurance. What is it, about $20,000? So you guys are costing us who tend to have health insurance around $40,000 a year. So you've got to factor that in. As for the part-time thing, Mary can tell me you ran for a part-time job. I'm sorry, that's what you got. The money went to a very good city manager. I noticed that in the county, Shana Black, who is chair, gets 50% more than the other legislators, which seems fair. Now, you might think you work part-time, full-time. That's your choice. You have done away with committees that city council people chaired. You now chair all the committee meetings. You appoint committees. And just because you chose to take on these jobs, which you didn't have to, doesn't mean that you have to work full time. Reinstate the old committees. They worked well. They did the liaison with... city employees so right now i think if this went to a referendum it would not pass we voted to continue the part-time mayor and pay the person a part-time salary and we have the county legislator as a very good working model my next speaker is neil schwartzbach followed by uh amelia your handwriting is very tiny i'm so sorry amelia you're going to be the last speaker so neil schwartzbach and then one final speaker

Welcome. You have two minutes once you begin.

Hello. Two years ago, a proposal was floated before this council to double the mayor's salary. That proposal met with an immediate backlash from the general public, and it was immediately withdrawn by the council person making that proposal. Now we see that that proposal is coming back for your consideration. As previous speakers were saying, I think it's worth going back to the original voter support for the referendum, which was billed moving to a city manager system was billed as cost neutral. That is that the city manager and associates would cost no more than the mayor and the mayor's assistant. Under the old system with the mayor and a chief of staff, salary and benefits were $213,000 approximately. Currently, the new city manager makes around 170,000. The deputy manager makes around 130,000. I don't have the exact numbers. That's 300,000, um, add 75,000 in for the mayor. Now you're up to $375,000 versus $213,000. You folks can do the math on what percentage that represents. Whatever it is, it is not cost neutral. What I would suggest, as Ann was saying, is you go back and you reprioritize what the mayor is currently doing. Every one of you has a job. That demands 150% of your time.

That is your time. Thank you. You may submit the rest of your comments and writing.

Thank you very much.

Uh, Amelia, you're next. And I apologize that I can't read your last name. Welcome. You have two minutes once you begin.

one thing no one talks about when it comes to development is mental health concerns the proposed elm street development is right next to a school you assume students have some other access to nature but that's not true for all kids this is a forest you can look up at for for 45 minutes each day during lunch and you can't believe how much even that helps Several studies have found that nature and teen mental health are intertwined. There are even whole books about it, like Last Child in the Woods, which is 334 pages. I have read that book, and from the standpoint of it, I can tell you that this development is a bad idea. Children have enough depression, anxiety, and inability to concentrate as it is. On another note of impacts to the school, the proposed development will put heavy foot traffic for all ICS's campus. The PUD proposal says it will have many fewer parking spots than units. This is meant to encourage public transportation. Besides the lack of clarity on who gets what spot, I have never been able to pick up this plan. Currently, LICF's campus is smack dab in between the PUD and the bus stop, so unless people want to cross an unsafe road, a road which the PUD itself will make more unsafe, they'll walk up a new and improved staircase through LICF. How many people will be walking through the campus per day? I'm not quite sure, but it'll be a lot more than we currently have. The safety risks of so many people walking through campus is something I'm unsure of. Do you know? Do you know how limited security will become for LICF? But I know what you're thinking. They're going to develop it anyway. There is a solution to that. The Army Depot purchased by the city is not in use and is already developed. I'm proposing a land swap. This is an idea you should entertain and encourage. With a land swap, LICS could still keep its woods and no heavy foot traffic would be put through our campus. There would be no trouble trying to connect the PUD to Elm Street, and the way for people to get from the apartments to the bus stop would be ADA compliant. There would also be no disturbing of a UNA. UC Dunn's development is always better, but wouldn't it be the best on pre-developed land? Right here, I have some photos of how close the staircase comes to our school.

Thank you very much. And Mr. Sewell, we can leave that with the deputy clerk again to also have it scanned and circulated. Thank you very much. That concludes public comment. I will now invite up our city controller for her report.

Good evening, everybody. I appreciate the opportunity to give an update from the September monthly financial report, where I just had asked for a couple more weeks to button up some of this information about the general fund bond anticipation notes since the completion of the July financing. going into this memo i just want to thank and recognize deputy controller wendy cole acting assistant director of engineering natalie model and grant administrator emma recchio this is only a four page document but a lot of hours went into just pulling together four pages and i just want to make sure to recognize all their efforts that i get to summarize The total general fund ban debt balance estimated for the beginning of fiscal year 27 is 40.9 million, which is down 2.7 million from the total at the beginning of fiscal 26. Our scheduled short-term debt payments in 27 for the budget that we're going to be presenting to you is going to be about $5.4 million across principal and interest across 66 loans. um what i'm excited to announce is that our plan for 2027 is to pay down 12.6 million dollars in band debt so that's 7.3 above 7.3 million above the scheduled required payments um this is going to be funded through 8.2 million in capital funds and the capital funds is comprised of the reimbursements as well as the remaining balances from some closed projects can i just ask you to pause for two seconds it seems like a lot of folks are leaving the room and i just want to make sure council's paying close attention

If we're going to clear for those who are going to leave the chamber, please do so now so we can give the city controller undivided attention. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Hrabusky. Ms.

I'll just repeat that last sentence because it's the sentence I'm most excited to say, which is that we're going to pay down $12.6 million in band debt, which is $7.3 million above the scheduled required payments. And so what's great about that is that we're only planning to use $4.4 million in general funds for $5.4 million in scheduled debt payments. So that's going to be a direct savings of just about $1 million, and that's going to help us close our budget gap that we have for 27. the pay down plan will completely pay off 15 bans and the appendix that's attached to the memo in the blue section the x's along the side show all the projects that are gonna have full payoffs in 2027. The good news is that there's certainly more money to recover. That's not like, oh, we did all the digging. That's about all that we're going to get. There are still another 26 loans that we have additional reimbursement funds for. Just the Stuart average loan has a $5.2 million ban, which is really a large part of our balance that we'll look to recover next year. And that's really going to be the difference between what we've done in the past is that we're going to submit that for reimbursement right away. We're not going to kind of sit with that debt longer over time. In addition, part of you know, in parallel with all the financial cleanup work we're doing, we know we're working we've submitted 22 we're working on audits for 23 through 25. is each year we're also going to be cleaning up the capital projects which are currently off ledger and we're going to work to get on ledger moving forward. And so, as we clean up capital projects we're going to see that we can close them there may there may be additional balances available, and we can use that to pay off both serial debt and ban. And so I believe that we're going to identify even more that will either be able to pay off in the July 2027 financing or for the first financing round in 2028. So this is the beginning of the story, which is good news, but we certainly have more to go. I have a number of items that I have promised that I will also provide so I did have a the next step section here is just me being accountable to the different things I have said that I would provide to counsel. For the interest of time I won't necessarily read all of them, but I do want to specifically point out the cost estimate for converting bands, I do know that part of the directive. To the controller's office was that by the end of this calendar year to convert all of the bands to serial debt and so we've gotten advisement from our financial advisors, noting that. We ultimately cannot convert a large number, a large volume of debt into bonds in the current situation where we have not submitted our 2022 audit yet. The markets really are just not open to us. If we did something less than a million dollars, we could potentially still, you know, bond. But if we wanted to do a large action where we wanted to convert 10, 20 million dollars of bands over, that's not a feasible action that we can do in our next round of financing, which is February 2027. It's not that we aren't going to do it. We just think that once we get that first audit in, when we go back, everyone will say, OK, no, Ithaca's really doing what they said that they were going to do. And the market will look very different for us after this next round of financing. So we're very confident about that. But I kind of need that information so that then I can start to really evaluate rates and really start to tell you what the cost savings Or the cost would be of doing that conversion, so I remain committed to what Council has asked of the office and to how we approach this debt, but I am going to need a little bit more time, just because the nature of the markets and our financial standing at this point. I think that's everything I appreciate the opportunity to update you all.

Thank you very much all entertain questions from Council, I see Mr Shapiro first.

Thank you for the report and thank you for holding yourself accountable to us. I just have a very quick question that I actually know the answer to, but I see several students that I'm assuming are part of a governance class in high school. Can you just define what a band is for the general public?

Sorry, because I think, yes, it is a bond anticipation note. And it's typically debt that you take out short term that you either are going to be able to pay back right away or you then decide what portion of it has longer term debt with steadier interest rates. That's kind of typically the best practice is to have your debt held in a bond and not in a ban. And so the city has wanted to reduce the number of bans because we've had to rely on them more because of our financial standing.

Thank you so much. Any further questions for Comptroller Arbuski? Thank you very much. Next, may I have someone please summarize and move Resolution 5.1 Amendment for the Give Grant? Mr. DeFendini.

uh i will just read the uh result uh resolve that the common council hereby accepts the awarded 176 289 dollars in funding under the deal 2026 2027 dcjs gun involved violence elimination give initiative and directs the city manager subject to the advice of the city attorney TO EXECUTE ANY AND ALL DOCUMENTATION ASSOCIATED THEREWITH AND BE FURTHER RESOLVED THAT THE 2025 IPD BUDGET IS HEREBY ADMENDED AS FOLLOWS. INCREASE REVENUE ACCOUNT A3120-3389, 176,289. INCREASE APPROPRIATION ACCOUNT A3120-5477-5001, 176,289. I MOVE AS WRITTEN.

Seconded by Ms. Schvetz. The chief is here if there are questions. Oh, and Mr. DeFendini, is this being moved to consent or to main meeting? Moved to consent. Okay. And Ms. Matos, you're recognized.

Thank you. Chief, I was just wondering if you can give us a little bit of an idea or breakdown of what the equipment, what equipment will be purchased with this grant. Oh, amazing. Thank you.

I'll keep a list of other hands while the chief and deputy clerk set that up, if there are any.

You want to go to the first slide or? Yeah, so just a little bit about the GIVE program. This is the third year that we're involved with GIVE. Started back in 2014 by New York State. Essentially an evidence-based initiative. Involves a lot of different agencies, partner agencies from the police agencies like ourselves, sheriff's departments, probation, courts, and other outreach groups. And It's because, uh, adopted a program or started a program back in 23, uh, the community engagement is a key component as well as procedural justice. And, uh, voice neutrality, respect and trustworthiness are emphasized throughout the. Execution of of this grant next. It's a competitive grant, there's no obligation for matching funding, uh, funds allocated or for equipment. Overtime personnel, uh, as well as focus training. And, uh, technical assistance, uh, the technology, which we'll, we'll get into that as well, uh, is based on software equipment. That's. Evaluated on a case by case basis by. by the DCGS, the grant administrators. It is not used for weapons. It's not used for any kind of ammunition, stuff like that. There's strict guidelines around that. Uh, this year, the total grant for topics county, uh, is 400,857 dollars. 176,289 is allocated to. In the budget, we proposed, uh. 20,267 for overtime for the focus deterrence. Uh, there's a remaining 156,022 dollars. Uh, we're looking at, uh, increasing our contribution to the violence interrupted program based on. Uh, a lot of successes we've seen there. Uh, I also had. Come with me tonight to talk a little bit about this this 1st year of the program. Uh, half of our crime analysts is funded with this. Uh, there's money set aside for travel and training, which I have on our slide coming up and look at what the training is. Community and youth engagement, uh, power bi, uh. For the department is funded with this as well as 30,000 dollars that was set aside for equipment. Uh, I'll talk a little bit more about the equipment in a moment. Uh, but the equipment essentially, when we earmarked this was for, uh, to start putting some money aside for a camera trailer, which. Then we had the opportunity for the technology grant, which we have not heard the results for yet, which would fund. That so that's changing the gears, whether that's going to supplement or whether we're going to look at additional equipment. There's some things in the past that we've purchased as well that I'll get into on a later slide. And then I dropped in here if you click on that and open it as a. Short little PowerPoint for that Wilkie. If you click, click right on that window to open it.

Oh.

oh oh it's it is also in a folder just given the tech issues can i just quickly interject other other questions from council members about approving this mr shapiro you're on the list i don't know especially that i have questions but we do have uh representatives from our violence interrupter program i don't know if they wanted to share with us

I would welcome a question in the form of an invitation to talk about something as well.

Well, I know Deb Wilkie. I know there's the actual, I thought I saw the violence, the hired violence interrupter. I didn't know if they wanted to, I would invite them to speak about the success or challenges related to the violence interrupter program.

Yeah, sure.

Thank you for the the ability to present a little bit and I'll go through the slides real quick. If you can skip to the next slide, please. Since the program's inception 12 months ago, the violence interrupter has handled 771 community interventions. He's invested 100 or 1621 hours of direct on the ground and phone based interventions with the average intervention lasting 2.1 hours. The next slide please. Our mission has been to provide immediate non-police response to deescalate conflicts, support mutual health or mental health crises, and conduct proactive welfare checks across the entire community. The next slide. His effectiveness is reflected in the fact that 65% of incidents were resolved without escalation into police matters or violent crimes, and only 4.4% of cases reached a more serious level. over 950 hours of low level dispute resolution arguments intoxication loitering our interrupter significantly reduced burden on law enforcement and cost the city. The next slide please. Mental health is the core. Over 50% of the interventions directly involve mental health crises. Our interrupters providing critical specialized care where it's needed most. We don't just react to violence. In the last 12 months, the VI conducted 337 follow ups and 174 welfare checks. This continuous care pipeline prevents nonviolent disputes from re-escalating and keeps vulnerable individuals connected to support systems. Next slide, please. Obviously, we're well aware there are some hot spots in the West End. There were 278 incidents he responded to and in the downtown area, 363 incidents. What's unique about our program right now, the way it's operating is we're operating after the five o'clock business hour. So 64% of all activity occurs during the evening shift between 6pm and 11pm. We've optimized our service hours to ensure the interrupters available on the streets when the Community needs them the most. And we do provide hybrid support where things are handled on the phone through interventions demonstrating a highly flexible and a cost effective support model, the next slide please. The 12 month data proves that Community based violence interruption effectively de escalates conflicts supports male health and prevent service by severe violence. With continued partnership and funding from the city of Ithaca second one cottages can sustain this critical safety net expand our coverage and hiding zones and continue to build a safer, healthier community for all residents. And the final slide this has been a factor that I think Community members are interested in knowing who is the in terms of race, who is served and their data supports that the interventions have been pretty equal between persons of color and people who are not of color. there are a lot of things that have occurred and i would open it up to an sd to share that we just don't have the ability to share this um how successful it's been because of the sensitive nature of the events that he's responding to the people involved um

My English, I hope my English doesn't leave the room. How's it going, guys? So a little bit about the Violence Interrupters program. In order to explain that I would touch base a little bit on on my history and and, you know, where I came from, and how I got to to do this work. I was homeless in Ithaca myself for 2 years. I slept at the encampment locations and various locations around the city where I could deem safe at the time. Um, during that period, I built a lot of relationship with a lot of the folks that were struggling same as I was on in the streets. Um, over time, I got stabilized. I got a job. And then I started going back to those same locations because of the relationship I had. And then I could do a little more now that when I had that little bit of money. So I started helping out where I could, bringing supplies, bringing medical supplies, helping with internal disputes, arguments. And then slowly I... You know, started going to certain calls where the police was interacting with the vulnerable population to see if I could be that 3rd option that could could divert the whole situation from from resulting in arrest or or even worse. Um, you know, um, over time. A relationship was established with a lot of the folks with individual officers on the ground with Community partners and then the call started coming in almost frequently to me regarding incidents internal disputes assaults of all kinds possibilities of planned assaults weapons of all kinds. Over time. We established and that's that's how the violence interrupters program came about. Um, we're hoping to expand it. Uh, it is based on relationship with the individuals is based on trust. Um, many individuals reach out to me. Um, for a variety of reasons, including navigating the legal, the legal system, um, you know, uh, addressing warrants or, uh, addressing internal disputes within, um, their situations. Um, and and those disputes various. A lot of that is leading from unhoused populations regarding the housing shortages and lack of. Systemic move, um, when it comes to their situations and and those, I also help with navigating those particular aspects of of the job as well. I'm, I'm able to guide them through the paperwork, address a lot of the, uh, other stuff that needs to be addressed when it comes to mental health and so on. Um.

Thank you, Mr. Spiro. Thank you. I'm trying not to take up too much time. I appreciate this program and you'll have my support. I'm just curious if you can describe, is there any level of frequency that you spend responding to incidents at a Stary house?

The frequency has declined since the evictions have taken place, and a lot of the population was moved back or are unhoused at the moment. So that shift of responding to calls to hysteria now has shifted in other locations in the city.

So you're still responding, just the location that you're responding to has changed? It has changed, yeah. Okay, thank you.

Any further questions on this resolution? Ms. Fabrizio.

I just thank you for your work. That's so important. I guess I'm just wondering about your engagement on the commons. I'm on the DIA board, and I hear from many of the business owners there how often they're calling IPD, and I'm just wondering what your engagement is with that group.

My engagement is extremely high, especially on the west end of the comments. I spend frequent, a lot of time there. A lot of the folks do spend a lot of time on that end of the comments. I've been trying to create a pipeline where information would come directly from DIA to the violence interrupters program instead of the police department. But that's, it all depends on call type and the severity of the call, right? So, I mean, if, um, nonviolent crime or crime that could be, or, or situations that could be resolved without getting the police involved. I would, I would definitely love, um, to, to work that relationship further.

You would be very, very appreciative. More presence would be very, very appreciated.

All right. Mr. Wynn.

Um, can you briefly describe like what your day is like or how you get dispatched? And I'm curious because it may be relevant to the way we plan out the roots program as well.

Um, the dispatching strategy. Usually I get contacted directly by the folks on the ground when they're going through certain situations, or incidents have occurred, or whatever. But there is instances where our organizations in the city call me outreach organizations. They pass along information that could be helpful to keep an eye on during the night when other services are not available. the calls are high, the need is high, but there is not much to navigate. especially folks that are experiencing a lot of you know from from the home to substance use to mental health to so on and so forth we can you can de-escalate someone but being able to have effective in order to be effective in moving forward with the individual that would have to be other areas behind or in front of me or what have you that i can you know refer to

All right. With that, all those in favor moving this to consent? That carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next item is... Something I'm bringing forward in ordinance to amend the city advisory groups. So I will summarize and move and I'll summarize by saying, as folks may be aware in 2017, the city. Consolidated an enormous number of. advisory commissions and boards around the around the municipality into four which was approved by voters in referendum because it required us to dissolve a number of boards some of which existed in the charter some of which didn't because as we've heard from the city attorney the city has a proud tradition of not putting all of the appropriate things in the same place and they're kind of all over the place These commissions were approved by the voters, and they were specifically designated to be public safety and information, mobility, accessibility, transportation, parks, recreation, and natural resources, and community life. Then under the Lewis administration, there was an addition of a fifth commission, which is the only one that is still functional, which is the Sustainability and Climate Justice Commission, of which Mr. Trumbull and Ms. Schwetz serve as council's liaisons. One of the very first things I did was appoint a working group to look at these defunct, ineffective bodies and make recommendations as to how we can get them working again so we can get community feedback. They serve a really important purpose in amplifying the voices of members of the community and advising us on issues around policymaking. These commissions ceased functioning, with the exception of the climate justice, in 2020 when many city staff were furloughed because of COVID. And I think appropriately, given the scope of city business, and as we heard from the controller, like in certain cases, we're still catching up and paying off the wages of our capacity deficiency. They also were pretty uniformly noted by staff as not having the clearest organizing principles and aim. They were very, there's a lot of variance in how they operated and how effective they were in making recommendations to council. All those things together kind of bumped this down as a lower priority. Mr. St. Perez, who was a city council member a few years ago, chaired the commission or the working group that I appointed. And they basically made recommendations that we should work to preserve these, but modify them in such a way as to make it easier and more agile. And so the proposal that you see before you is to retain advisory commissions, But to instead of us being a bound by a specific number of 11 members of which, again, when we don't have a quorum, we can't conduct business. We reduce that to no fewer than five and no more than nine. And that we also do not put. Immutably. what the domain of uh policy focus each of these commissions might be that council may from time to time just like we uh did with the fees um around or fines or fees what we just did fees the fees uh that we did our last meeting right like council can now pass a resolution that organizes those and so the the proposal before you here is an ordinance that would enable council to establish advisory commissions of varying sizes to meet the immediate needs of the public. And I think, for example, I heard Alderperson Fabrizio mention the commons to our previous staff speakers, right? Like there might be such a time that there is a discrete project downtown that an advisory commission is warranted for. It might be the case that we want an ongoing one. Like, I imagine everyone at this table would be really interested to know what regular thoughts on housing are, right? But I think the broad sort of strokes here is that we want to just give council the tools to be able to say, hey, these are advisory commissions that we can task from time to time rather than leaving them in their current unwieldy format. The only other sort of noteworthy change here is surprising probably no one at this table and hopefully no one in the audience. I am also proposing we reduce the number of non-city residents that may serve from two to one. So with that, I move the ordinance and looking for a second. Seconded by Mr. Trumbull. Discussion, Mr. Sewell.

Thanks, I've got a couple of questions. The first is, so this is a resolution? No, this is a draft ordinance. It's a draft, okay. So we're not actually voting on anything tonight. I'm a little confused on what- We're in a committee.

So what this would do is if you were to approve this in concept, we would just do a kind of final pass of the language. bring it for the vote in October. Mr. Kessler also has prepared a resolution at my request that will automatically reconstitute the Sustainability and Climate Justice Commission as the only one that operates right now with its current membership, just to ensure that their work continues uninterrupted. And then I certainly have suggested domains of what we could get to get the commissions restarted. But I think that would be just council's collective decision to make upon approval of the ordinance to decide what we want community engagement on. And again, not limited to five as we currently are.

So what this does do is gets rid of Public Safety Information Commission, Community Life Commission, that sort of thing.

It does in so much as it eliminates the specific earmarking, if you will, that it must be five commissions and it must be these five topics. Those four commissions that you're referencing do not exist in their present form and have not met since 2020 when I was a member of one of them.

Okay. Hold on, I gotta find my notes. Thank you for that. I think it would be useful to have, If we were going to change the Commission, you know if you're going to do this some ideas I guess you're saying we would change this first and then come up with additional Commission correct I think the my sort of my.

sort of vision of how this might move forward is we have been sitting here for six years with only one functional Commission. And there is a genuine interest in these being reconstituted. But we also know, again, in their current forms, they had not been successful from 2017 to 2020. A lot of squirrel hunts, right? I think only at the very end was council moving in a direction of like, hey, we should probably provide affirmative guidance for how we want issues tackled by the public in a way that helps policymaking. I applaud the effort of the folks who made these recommendations. But as we do anything in government, we had an idea. It didn't work. And now we're trying to come up with a way to tweak it to make it better. And so you could potentially request, by way of council approval, have all of the same five commissions re-established plus extras. Shout out to the Shade Tree Advisory Commission, which is the one that I hear the most about people missing.

um but this effort at like omnibus consolidation was a cool research project but it just didn't work out the way that it was intended okay um so then just within the language because i'm a little confused about the language um the first so under eight four membership it talks about voting members and then number three talks about commissioners what's the difference between a voting member and a commissioner so just we're just going to air all the dirty laundry, right?

There were some like really, there was a lot of satisficing that occurred the previous time where like it was really important to some members of council that they had commissioners, but that they also had non-voting advisors who could also be appointed to support the work of the, what you're picking up on, and we can clean up the language, what you're picking up on is everyone's a commissioner, right? It's just, this is vestigial in that

uh that mr kessler has been line editing this so the council can see the markup but that we yeah so make it consistent obviously my first request use one word to be yeah thank you um the second thing is where so where are these when we make these commissions then where are they being housed great question so i have preliminarily talked with the city manager about this

uh sustainability and climate justice will continue they're housed sort of supported broadly by the clerk's office right there they meet like other advisory boards um the other uh piece of that is uh we are including language in this ordinance that will enable council to um ensure that the administration provides appropriate staff support from the appropriate office, right? So like one of the ones, and I know all the person for Brizio will be excited about this, right? One of the ones that I would propose would be about housing, right? And get a diversity of perspectives about the needs. And I think obviously, the discretion of the administration but i think it makes good sense for that staff support to come out of the planning department right someone who could directly speak on the feasibility and legality and the practicality of the work um i also am particularly passionate about as as is evidenced by some of the work we're doing in the dri um i really think if it needs to do more to lean into its reputation and stats as an arts and culture destination right i'd like to see members of the community ideally from our arts community right like help ideate over policies and initiatives that council could then take hold of adapt modify pass support um so i'm giving you a really long-winded answer but i think the the the intention here is to provide the flexibility with us to be able to say the appropriate staff people will support this depending on the policy depending on the policy and i can see mr kepler has something to add

Yeah, sorry. I just want to jump in on that voting members distinction. So the voting members are inclusive of the commissioner is the generic title for a person who isn't one of the officers. So voting members, sorry, voting members generic. It would be Commissioner, vice chair, chairperson, a vice chair.

Oh, OK.

So it's beyond commissioner. Right. I see. Thank you. One of the there's another piece in here that says you're changing no more than two commissioners to one commissioner can be from outside. Yeah. Is that per commission or is that. Oh, that's a total mission. OK, because that's not I don't think that's clear in there either. So I just double check that. Like it doesn't I don't think it says per commission. um 114-4b um this is this is very interesting for some of us never had a chance to review this so i'm it was very exciting to read through all this stuff um that references uh natural areas i know i'm losing it um except for an emergency a necessary emergency repairs the water supply so on and so forth any advisory commission designated by the common council for such purpose

Yep.

Yeah. So what do we have a definition of what a natural area is? Yes, it is. We do. Is that can I get confirmation from the city attorney on that?

We do have designated natural areas. I don't know what they are offhand. I know there's one of them that's around the around Fall Creek. Okay. It's different from a park. It's a it's its own special sort of.

It's chapter 114 of the code.

Oh, and is it separate from the counties yes, yes, okay that's Thank you, I want to extrapolate on that and then the last oh yeah The last thing was this it's really interesting because this references the Rangers which we used to have which we don't currently. It looked like one of the sections where the rangers were being mentioned, section 320-5, was getting removed. However, it looks like they're still within 114-8.

I'm really glad that you actually read all of this. It makes me delighted as an attorney and someone who spent a lot of time working on this. Yeah, it was a duplicative section. So it was already in that natural area section. And then as I was going through the code, I noticed it was also in 320 for some reason. So I just removed the duplicate. So we're not actually getting rid of the rangers. Correct. We're just making it...

okay we're putting in one place instead of having two two duplicative which is interesting because they basically are non-existent so which is a separate separate problem okay so we may want to it's not a problem i mean i love the idea of it they're completely impractical um because they're in our ward basically you know the south hill area and and we just i love the idea never saw it successfully executed so we may want to look into removing that at a different time Okay, thanks.

Great. Mr. DeVenditti, I think I saw your hand a few minutes ago. No? Okay. Any further discussion on this?

miss fabrizio yeah thank you um you know i think having commissions it's just so like incredibly important and i'm really glad that you're um that you're getting this into action now we have so many uh really amazingly talented uh people in this community to draw on and i hope that in setting this up that we as a council will make a commitment to help tap the people that we know in the community to bond here to be on these commissions

um i just wanted to clarify um that council so the council member liaison would not be the chair of the commission is that correct correct they are non-voting members um and and i want to recognize mr reccio who has a point but then i might invite my two colleagues either of them to kind of comment on what the role of a liaison is presently um just to because because they're the only two liaising to a functional commission at the moment but mr reccio

yeah i just wanted to say i wanted to thank alan karrison from the dice department he has put together uh after some conversation with the mayor and i a rollout plan for the potential commissions that may start so that we can make sure it's well publicized and that we get it full of interested members with resources on you know potential language and things that council members can share with constituents to help get them more fully up to speed so that's one thing that i think will really increase the visibility of these and the interest public interest AND THEN WE ARE RENOVATING SOME SPACE ON THE FIRST FLOOR WHERE THE FORMER CONTROLLER'S OFFICE WAS SO WE CAN HAVE A PUBLIC MEETING SPACE FOR THESE THAT'S MORE ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC RIGHT ON THE FIRST FLOOR OF CITY HALL. AND SO I'M REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THOSE TWO PIECES BECAUSE I THINK THEY'LL INCREASE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCESSIBILITY TO THESE COMMISSIONS WHERE WE MAY HAVE HAD THOSE CHALLENGES IN THE PAST. THANK YOU.

MR. TRUMBLE.

um yeah and feel free if you want to chime in as well um but yeah i mean serving on the sustainability and climate justice commission allows them to kind of vet ideas um by us the city liaisons that they might otherwise have to go through you know emails waiting for responses things like that we also get to hear about problems um before they come to council like the elm street putt has been something that's been talked about you know, a couple of weeks before any of that hit council. Then finally, too, I think just being present on these commissions kind of allows for the public to engage with council and maybe a little more of a, I don't want to say casual, but an easier to approach role. Like, I think people will ask me questions there that might otherwise, you know, in like this kind of setting, feel harder to just ask someone point blank. But really, we're just there as like a kind of reference point, a tool to rely on, and obviously we take notes and then get back to you as well.

So I still have the floor right though?

You don't, but you can be recognized again.

Okay, thanks. Just to follow up on Dominic speaking about, you know, rolling out the information, I think we need like a really great article in the Ithaca Voice and the Ithaca Times that identify, you know, once we decide what they are, right, so that people can really, you know, understand what we're looking for. And I would like to see what we'll use for an application, because I think that's important too. And then I wanted, I see, I didn't look at this really carefully, admittedly, kudos to Pat, he did. I need to look at this more carefully, but I did note that there's a few references to the Board of Public Works in here. So maybe like just a check for that.

So this is the proposed strikethrough amendments to the code. right so um so they are already in there and dissolving the board of public works is something that would necessitate a referendum this is in the code i am all on board with the proposal that you and all the person matos and the other person who i can't remember who it was the report you all had about like hey oh it was all the person kumar back in the day um hey let's let's consolidate this into an advisory group council is more than capable of setting water and sewer rates and yada yada yada um but we can't strike that here because that is a more involved process

Right. So what I was going to ask is maybe if you, Mayor, would just for the public, you know, just name the things that you have in mind. And I just wanted to add that I'm thinking about, you know, the commons community, the downtown business community, landlord tenant opportunities for people to come together in a commission I think would be super helpful. But maybe if you could also just help the public understand, you know, the vision that you have for

Yeah, I appreciate that. So what I've done is actually using the old noodle. already solicited over 30 applications because I have the authority under Article 4 of the City Code to appoint advisory groups to myself. I haven't actually appointed any of these yet, but I have a stable of prospective appointees to bring to you all, and you can also push it out to your listserv, but I just wanted to make sure we had momentum here. And the areas that I was saying what I'd love to see involvement in are housing and neighborhood opportunity, local business and workforce development, transportation and transit, and arts and culture. that's not an exhaustive list again like these will all have to be approved by council and um it's you know we can sort of iterate on this i i would certainly urge you all to it sounds like like as you have done mr bertio um i would urge you all to bring your ideas pre-written to the table uh when we discuss this but i think like you know we want to make sure that we have some clear guidance for how these uh groups will take shape as soon as we change the sort of um structural legal challenges that get in the way of us standing these back up presently ms matos mr win

My question for you, Mayor, is what I guess what would be the rollout for this as if we approve this tonight? So would the next steps be another resolution naming the advisory groups? And then after that would be a number a number of appointments to set up to a question.

Great question. So what would happen is. this would go to the october meeting uh conditional on that approval uh what i would then do is work with uh the city manager's office and dice to sort of reiterate that this is moving forward uh that interested uh volunteers you know um who maybe missed the previous call for applications you know get out there um i think you know, what I would sort of gently urge all of you would be if you have ideas that don't fit into the broad buckets of the four things that I've just articulated, plus sustainability, of course, just like let's get those like kind of percolating before the October meeting. And then we can advertise for these commissions. And then kind of on a rolling basis, We can work with the clerk's office to get prospective appointees before council for approval. And that's the sort of broad strokes of how this I do see your hand. Don't worry the broad strokes of how this will move forward. Mr. Wen. Thank you.

I do want to stand up for. So first of all, I appreciate this effort to get them restarted again because I think they're important. I want to second what Margaret said about trying to get people involved, and I appreciate that the mayor has a stable of applications. And even though the previous system was flawed, some good work came out of it. In fact, a former chair of the Public Safety and Information Commission once came to Council and convinced us to legalize dogs on the comments, which has turned out really well. I was a liaison to the mobility and transportation commission and they did really good work on surveying people about snow clearing that remains an issue so we didn't solve it obviously but like they did a lot of work on that um I did work a lot of work on again we never legalized scooters but they did an amazing amount of research on um um safety with regard to scooters and came up with a regulation framework so that if we wanted to do that if an interested vendor came into town

council would be ready and so um I do want to point out some of those successes and and express that I'm really happy that we're moving forward to get them restarted appreciate that go dogs um and uh yeah and again I think like really good point I do want to emphasize like just because just because the execution of the idea was flawed doesn't mean we have to throw everything out and I think like when we when we legislate right we might think a certain Institutional arrangement makes good sense at the time, and then we want to change that, and that's our prerogative as the legislature. Mr. Shapiro, this is your first comment on this item. It is, thank you. Mr. Shapiro, and then repeat hands.

One of the things I've appreciated this year is the formation of the mayoral advisory committees, specifically for me, the finance and administration advisory committee. But to Ms. Fabrizio's point, there's also a lot of really talented people in our community and the advisory committees are appointments from folks sitting around the room here. I'm just curious if you can describe for me why we would want an advisory committee versus a commission or if we would want like to establish a finance commission as something more established.

Great question. I think that if one is interested in I think I think I'm going to give you my like sort of personal normative answer. With respect to the finance issues that the city is grappling, I feel that the folks who are best equipped to weigh in on that are our professional staff in the finance office and council who has to own those decisions. It is only because of a lack of imagination that I can't see where engaging outside members of the community in an advisory commission capacity could be useful. And I'm certainly open to being persuaded of that. But I think narrowly, that's my thought. And I think again, like this would have a lot of benefit. You know, I know a few years ago, you know, Mr. Brizio was really interested in like, Finding a way to get a sort of official dialogue between housing providers and tenants and activists and like this is the type of forum that that would be well suited for. You may have a more creative thought for how we would do that around city finances, recognizing that these folks wouldn't have access to our internal information until it's public. But again, purely a lack of imagination on my end, not to say it's categorically inappropriate.

Okay, thank you.

Seeing no first time, oh, you were recognized already. So then Ms. Fabrizio and then Mr. Sewell.

I was just gonna say, I'm sure that you've given this a lot of thought and I was wondering if you have like a couple sentences for each of the ones that you have in mind and if you'd be willing to circulate that to us so that we can give that some more thought and then You know, we want to be able to say something about the scope of each of these before we advertise them, obviously. So we would need to do that. And so I'd like to see that that that's circulated before our October meeting so that we could all have some input on that. And for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So to comment on that, I would say conditional on this moving forward tonight, if it is roundly defeated, then I won't do any of that. Um, but you know, conditional on this moving forward tonight, uh, what I will bring to the October meeting in addition to this ordinance that you all may approve tonight will be, um, one a resolution re-establishing the sustainability and climate justice commission so their work can continue uninterrupted i know i'm being repetitive but just want to make sure that that's clear to those folks um and then two a list of exactly what you're asking for which is like hey this is the broad sense of domain and scope of what i'm proposing and then we would kind of workshop that together at a committee meeting before then approving that at a voting meeting in November. And so we would give ourselves about a month and a half to get the word out. I see Megan Zarez from the Ethic of Voices here. Hopefully that will be helpful. And then, because I think it's a little bit of a, it's iterative, right? Because I can propose stuff to you all, but until you approve it, it's not the thing we're recruiting for, right? So it's gotta be a little bit of, I will bring my ideas, but then, you know, it's kind of conditional on council's approval before we can actually advertise for those specific positions.

Right, yeah, no, I'm just saying, get them to us long enough ahead of time so we can digest it, think about it.

Yeah, so I will bring the proposed scope to the October meeting, and then later in October, we will discuss the specific resolutions in committee. So you'll have two weeks to chew on it, then we'll debate it, then it'll go to the voting meeting in November. So we're looking at a six-week time from six to eight weeks from now before anything is finalized.

And if we did have some that we thought maybe didn't fit into those categories that maybe stand on their own, we should get those to you soon so that you would then potentially include those in what you sent out for October.

Please do, because one of my colleagues just asked me to make sure I had all of it ready for October. So please do get that to me as soon as possible. Yeah, thank you. Mr. Sewell.

uh just another some annoying details um um but I I do think that if I'm reading it right it looks a little light on the prescription for like how people are appointed and things like that I mean just comparing it with what shows up in the Charter so things like terms vacancies reappointments that sort of stuff I don't know if that would be specific to each Commission how that's done or if we want to structure that a little more in the language of the code

my preference and the reason it is under specified here is that my preference is and i'm kind of mentally using these special committees as a template there we'll take two examples we might create a housing commission that has a five-year duration and then specify within the resolution creating that commission what the term lengths are we might have a waterfront commission because you know what? We're gonna knock the DRI out of the park and then we're gonna apply for another one, right? And we might create a commission that is, intended to exist for a year or two. And so what I want is not to try and again, recognizing what Mr. Wynn said, there's a lot of value in the work that had been done. But I also think that we recognize that there's not a good like one size fits all approach to dealing with community engagement around policy issues. And so my answer would be the resolutions creating Future commissions should specify term length membership, total and commission duration. Which it could be indefinitely as well, right? But like, so that we're not sitting in this situation where we're, we're, we're feeling the absolute need to keep something. In perpetuity, that's no longer germane.

yeah i like that idea i support that i would actually just keep put that in the language and saying make sure that you're right because in there you say the number of uh people who are going to be on the commission are in gonna is done by the resolution but it doesn't say anything about these other things and i do think those are important so like also term limits or whatever are also going to be term lines yeah yeah are going to be done in the resolution as well do you see what i mean i do yeah um do you if you have something in mind or do you just kind of want the city attorney and i to work on that and bring forward a reason i like victor okay yeah okay

Well, so we'll work on that. I mean, again, conditional.

I mean, just, you know, the basic things I got are questions that'll come up about, you know, replacing people or whatever.

Okay, great. Ms. Rizzio.

Sorry, one last thing. These meetings would be open to the public?

And like, yep, like in Zoom, like full open meeting law compliance.

There would be a public comment at the meetings?

We would have the right to determine that in resolution creating.

because there might be people who were not appointed, say, or who don't want to make that longer term commitment, but who could bring something really valuable to the table, so I'd want to make sure that they had an opportunity to come and speak.

I I I think that's completely appropriate. I think I might take a page out of Mr Sewell's book and say that if we I think it's appropriate to include public comment. I think we should make sure that. The public comment at Commission meetings is narrowly scoped to agenda of the Commission meeting. We get paid to hear. Any issue I think the commission's you know most municipalities do enforce like a a Germaneness requirement, even on public speaking in general. So, like, I do think we should we should probably try to satisfy the issue there. Yeah.

But what if someone, you know, they have an idea and it's not it's not something that's what they're that's what the point is. They're coming to the commission to bring an idea. It's something that they want to have scoped or something.

that they've been thinking about it's not on the agenda so it's really an opportunity to put this out there so i wouldn't want it to be so limited that they can only speak about what's on the agenda i think um this is appropriate conversation to have around the authorizing resolutions when we get to that stage um because i think there's nothing in this that prevents public comment and the previous commissions did have public comment so there's precedent for it um i just think that it's going to want to we're going to want it to be on a case-by-case basis and it might be the cases all of them right i'm just i don't think it's a decision for us to make tonight um any further discussion on this uh i will call for a vote to advance this to the october meeting with the understanding that uh with unanimous consent that you know the city attorney and i will propose a term limit uh depth languid a term length language for these commissions all those in favor okay

if we have any additions to the advisory groups do you want them before do you want that done at the october meeting on the floor or do you want that before before please okay did you just go rob do you have a deadline like in a week or two i'll i'll give you one don't worry uh september 25th i'm not sure if i heard you say you wanted to move this to the consent agenda but just okay regular voting yep fantastic all those in favor

Still unanimous nailed it Thank you colleagues, I think this will be a great way to again re engage the public in a way that they've been agitating for appropriately um. sidewalk improvement plan and budget presentation re welcome up.

or have you met i know you haven't so maybe you guys should both just briefly introduce yourself to the rest of council good evening and thank you all for having us uh my name is ari hamam the civil engineer with the engineering division sidewalk program manager also and iris pilani she is our engineering technician she works with the cyber program and she oversees construction around the city So thank you for having us. Tonight we're going to talk about the 2027 Sidewalk Program work plan and budget. So to give an overview of the Sidewalk Program, we all know that Sidewalk Program was established in 2014. It was established to address the growing need for consistent sidewalk maintenance and improvement. Before the side of program the city was. Making the resident to fix their sidewalks, which was a burden on the residents so after 2014 we came up with this program and city was divided into five side of districts. Each with an annual fee so funds coming locally use it for repair and new set building new sidewalks all sidewalks should meet Ada and product standards. So this is a fair, safe and smart approach and the funding structure annual is an annual fee $80 for homes and for one and two single homes and other type of properties are $150 fix it. So for one and two family homes, the annual fee for square footage fee is zero for frontage fee is zero. However, for other type of properties is two cents per square feet and $50 per 55 feet. So you might ask like before 2014, there had been like some sidewalk fixes by residents, by homeowners, how we will reimburse those residents. So we have a sidewalk credit program, which anyone who built a sidewalk before 2014 or during the 20 years, they can apply for this credit and work must have been permitted, undocumented, valid street permit, itemized receipt, proof of payment. And credit cannot exceed the annual seat fee and, uh, like, and eligible work includes driveway prints, private walkways or repairs required by site bound review. Applications are 1 time only, and can be submitted to the city engineering office. So how we prioritize sidewalk improvements first community on condition priorities through public voice and conditions. So voice of residents cyclic fix request emails, imprints, in person walk-ins. We take all those inquiries, requests, reports, and we built our plan based on those. Also sidewalk walks with residents and come console taking consideration school business apartment traffic and pedestrian activity, focusing on children elderly and mobility challenge users and also we take. The condition perspective also severity of the defects cracks following displacement and also. Compliance to Ada and accessibility standards. So as behind the stage engineering and teamwork, we give it an engineering view and the budgeting history, we look at the budgeting history, long-term value via short-term fixes, the scope, long continuous sections via short spot repairs, exploring funding beyond the sidewalk program budget like seeking state or federal grants. So i'm happy during like these two years we have established a good internal collaboration between the other divisions, especially streets that we are having more collaboration to fix sidewalks and curb runs together. So also supports from public work stuff. So up to date sidewalk programs since establishment we improve it 372 blocks. Only this year we are improving 85 car brands. 37 new blocks of sidewalks installed were not existed before and 29 miles improve it out of 70 miles of sidewalks citywide. These footages are from this year work plan, and this is a brand avenue. Unfortunately, I think the connection is slow, so it's not very smooth. Also, some of our work on Turner Place, Delaware Avenue, and the intersection of Mitchell Street and Elmwood Avenue. Before and after footage. I'm very disappointed for the connection speed. So talking about the 2027 sidewalk program budget and work plan. Okay. This is our budget table. Okay. In total we have 1,156,000 as the whole budget, and this budget will cover admin like program manager and engineer integration salaries, insurance fees, credit or repayments to all capital projects, work performance created by homeowners that we talked about the uh credit program also uh construction inspection of material which would which we outsource it to a third party so available for each district will be 154 000 for district 116 000 for district 2 and 275 000 for district 3 157 000 for district 4 and 87 000 for district 5. in total we will be Having 792,000 for construction project out of the 1.156 million. And just to clarify that the sidewalk program district map is different than the word map of the city, so you might see three or two or four. word my words are like overlapping in one district. So for the 2027 work plan to see it at a glance, we will be improving 43 blocks of sidewalks scheduled across all districts, 5910 linear feet of sidewalk improvement, and this number can go up or go down depending on uh contract that we will get from the bidders and taking other causes key issues we will be improving our displacement due to roots spalling cracks pending icing and missing sidewalks we will try or we are trying to focus on high traffic areas school roads and accessibility And to show it as a map, of course, these maps will be all uploaded to the city website at the sidewalk program section, everyone can check it in a better quality. And just to clarify that orange lines are new sidewalks being built in places where we don't have sidewalks in it, such as 400 block of Elm Street. Green lines will represent the existing sidewalks that we will be improving and, of course, including either replacing those sidewalks or patching or minor repairs. So, talking about each district at once, so the work plan for district 1, which includes, uh. Upper limit of the city and East side of the city, uh, we will address West, Tompkins street, Utica street, 100 block, uh, Utica street, 200 block, Paul street, 300 block, North street, Auburn street, North street, North street and West Lincoln street. Of course, all these tables have been shared with you and it's going to be uploaded on the city website to include the district number street name blocks side of the street length of the estimated sidewalk that we will be preparing or replacing in linear feed. Also some remarks and knows why we chose those. uh areas and you could see like there are reports from 2021 our older reports or requests from presidents ask it for changing or replacing these sidewalks that we try to focus on for next year And these are some photos of the condition of those sidewalks where you see like spalling, cracking, missing sidewalks and high displacement above five or six inches. For district two we have a Same issues displacement crockings falling, we will be addressing lending avenue Mitchell street oak avenue Irving place Blair street cornell street East street. And same as the other table has contains all the block number district side of the street on the estimated links on the remarks on the comments that based on why we chose those streets. Some photos from 100 block of Oak Avenue, 400 block of Mitchell Avenue, and 100 block of Blair Street. For district 3, which is our most funded district due to the nature or type of the properties in it. Uh, it will have a longer list and, uh, all these locations were chosen based on. request from common council members request from residents and the business owners as well as us taking in consideration the roads that those streets are taking from and to Some photos of 300 block of first street hundred block of Parker street 500 block of West Clinton street on 200 block of second street. For District 4, which includes south of the city, we will be improving 500 block of Hudson Street, 100 block of Hudson Street, south Tyrus Avenue, 100 block, Gila Street, 100 block, and Fair Street, 200 block, Grandview Circle, 100 block, Pleasant Street, 200 block, and Pleasant Street, 300 block, which we will be rebuilding the curb ramps. and some photos from District 4 where I want to talk about 100 block of Jolly Street and it doesn't look like it is like a very bad side of this section however when you go up more there I've been walking over there for a long time and I I tripped over there in the winter because all this section is like being bonding and there's like a huge ice sheet Proposed district 5 for plan will be include 400 block of Elm Street, building new sidewalks, approximately 500 linear feet, West State Street, 900 block and Bolivar 200 block. And you may ask why we chose to build new sidewalks on Elm Street. Overall, Elm District 4, District 5, sorry, have good condition sidewalks, because relatively to the other sidewalks, they are new sidewalks, and the funding was helpful to direct it to that Uh, street, and we had a lot of complaints on a lot of requests from residents to extend that sidewalk further at the end. It will connect to a bus station. I also remember we had a resident, uh, who made a public note a few meetings before asking for extending those sidewalks. So 900 block of West 8th Street, also the proposed site plan for 400 block of Elm Street, which was prepared around five years ago by a consultant as the city and engineering hired. And I want to talk about the residents or your role in the sidewalk program. As you know, we have a lot of problems with vegetation around the city and they are creating obstruction for people with mobility. And as an example, I put this photo where this vegetation had grown on the sidewalk by 1.5 feet, which reduces the sidewalk width from five to less than four, which is like putting it out of ADA compliance. Also, in the winter, residents can help by using better quality salt like calcium chloride to reduce damage during winter. Also, we encourage all residents to submit and email us or come and walk into our office to give suggestions and ideas for places to improve. And thank you.

Thank you very much. Appreciate the presentation. We will take feedback from Council and of course clarifying questions. Mr Trumbull, you're recognized.

Yeah, first off, thank you guys so much. That was a fascinating presentation. I've reached out to you guys several times on behalf of constituents through Dominic and have always gotten really expedient responses. So thanks again. One maybe clarifying question on the process of deciding blocks. I love the attention to Collegetown, some of the worst sidewalks in the city. No focus on College Ave. Could you just walk me through that a lot? It's probably the most complained about block, unless maybe I missed it. Um, call a job. Uh, well, really, I would say like the 400 and 300 block, um, or two of like the most problematic areas that I think I got during the sidewalk improvement rollout, um, cycle, probably like four or five different constituent emails about. I think Mr. Recchio has a comment on this.

I just want to briefly say the 400 block of college app is due for a larger redesign project. My intention is to include some version of that in the five-year capital plan that you'll receive. Certainly, there are sidewalks that happen before a redesign, and they get torn back up, and people use them, and that's okay. But in some cases, we might want to hold off on improving those, even though we know they're big constituent complaints, until we put together the full package for a comprehensive redesign, and you will hopefully see that investment in the future.

awesome yeah I mean that yeah just to add on city manager comment that we already did some improvement, this year we patched all the spotlight or the defective sidewalks on the 400 block of college.

yeah i'll actually shout you guys out, I had a constituent who had a tripping hazard on that block I reached out to you guys, and I think it was fixed within like two or three days so props keep it up, thank you.

Mr. Shapiro is next and then Ms. Fabrizio and Mr. Nguyen.

Yeah, briefly, I just want to say I appreciate the outreach that you did to all of us as council members and the outreach you did to the community as well. I know that when I shared the outreach on our listservs, many of the areas that they wanted repaved, I'm in Ward 3 or perhaps District 2, were on your list. So it seemed like you were very aware of the needs of our community, or at least in my ward. So I just want to say I'm very appreciative of that. Um, I am curious though, um, do we ever have money set aside in the budgets to install new sidewalk where there isn't previously sidewalk?

So we don't have money dedicated to building new sidewalks, but we are always seeking for alternative funding from state or federal through IRA, like for an example. That's how we were able to install like around 1,000 feet of new sidewalks on Sesame and Cherry Street last year. And same as this approach, I will be applying for a grant to IRA maybe in November. For cornell avenue that's in my mind it's like a significant shortcut from university avenue and. campus.

Great Thank you. Miss retail.

You know I could talk about sidewalks forever, but just to make my colleagues gasp except i'm not gonna be able to speak anything.

um I have a few questions, but just want to follow up on that where does the I you are a money come from sidewalks so it's coming from programs like hood I think it's you and also another yeah gotcha um.

Does the organization of the districts, the way we're doing it still makes sense, in other words, are some districts like super caught up and other districts are still lagging way far behind and i'm just wondering if this structure still makes sense.

In my mind, I do want to actually rule that as not germane because that is a question about whether we should rewrite the underlying law for the sidewalk program. And that is an appropriate question for the city's attorney's office, which designed that program admittedly for the previous incumbent. Um, that is outside of the scope of our review.

Let me rephrase it. Um, I will still rule that non germane if you ask whether we should do this differently just so, you know, I'm just, I wanted to ask you, did you feel like, in this sidewalk plan that you were able to get to the sidewalks that most needed it within each of the districts? in my opinion yes okay that's great um and i wanted to ask does it include you know i'm big on shaving patching lifting um doing whatever we can so that we don't have like wholesale demolition of like big stretches of sidewalk when there's just one or two blocks within the middle that needs to be repaired and i i can see that you're really paying attention to that and i really appreciate that i think it's a big shift and how we're operating, but I am wondering if you were able to incorporate what you're thinking about shaving, patching, lifting.

So on the screen, we have the last row, which is like downtown area. When I'm saying downtown area, I don't mean only the commons. It will be the 100 block of North Aurora, 300 block of East State, 200 block of East State, seneca seneca street 100 block of east seneca 100 block of north cayuga and 100 block of east green state street so all these blocks next year will have patching and shaving and minor repairs that is really makes me very happy around all the blocks around the downtown area

That's excellent. Because there are a lot of places where we have tree root issues, but we would not want to cut down all those trees, I presume, right? So it's going to require some special attention.

The whole problem about grinding is, so for an example, you have like two sidewalks, okay? You have one of them is places. When you shave or grind this one, You it's like impossible to have a sidewalk have been displaced vertically perfectly yeah so they're going to be like one side or the other side, so when you have one side and you're going to. grind it then you're going to create a cross law, which is out of the compliance of Ada and pro that's the biggest problem of grinding.

Right. No, I appreciate that you can't do it in all cases, but I also appreciate that you're trying to do it where it makes sense. And then are we using, I guess what I'm wondering is our better long-term plan and how many more years you think, I mean, it looks like we're making a huge amount of progress. How many more years do you estimate that we're going to be before we can say like, yeah, our sidewalks are in?

Which we're definitely not going to answer on the spot. But that is a question that is, I think, appropriate for the staff to take away and give an informed analytical response to rather than estimating in the moment. But I think that's a completely appropriate question. I just don't know that they were prepared to do that as part of the annual presentation.

Gotcha. And OK, I'll just ask one last question. Are we using AI or some way to really efficiently put together your mapping?

uh i believe this question came from my idea before of hiring a consultant to do a comprehensive sidewalk assessment for the whole city 70 miles but after rethinking and discussing with our internal staff we will utilize what we have internally from stab and cartograph and gis to see how far we will get to do it in-house against hiring a third party uh so we will next year we will implement that techniques in-house and see what the result is going to be and then we will compare it to a different consultants that provide such services and from there we can decide have a good decision of whether we're going to do continue in-house or outsourced right i guess i was thinking um i just do that

Okay i'll call you.

beautiful Mr way and Mr sewell.

yeah thanks ari and iris um ari's memories photograph because you know i walked around with the disability advocate at flick and she would point things out it's like that's on the list that's on the list that's on the list it's incredible um but this is related what to what you just said um to margaret um you mentioned on one of those blocks that we might be able to get um like 3d scanning of the sidebar so you're saying that's not gonna happen now

So the burden of this position is not like going out doing the sidewalk. The burden is like the responsibility of having this money from public and how you spend it. So after like rethinking it, I will try to utilize what we have in-house from staff and from like technology. We already have the city purchase it to do the same thing that those other companies do. i mean we should be able to do it we are engineers and we have the technology so from there we will have an idea like how much we can get far with our in-house effort against uh or versus uh outsourcing it then from that point we can have a clear decision on it gotcha thank you mr sewell

I appreciate you being thoughtful about the city's money we all appreciate that and just I think you already answered this, but a constituent specifically asked me the city does do some grinding occasionally is that what i'm hearing.

Last time we did was four years ago.

Oh, so it doesn't do it very often. And the reason is because of Ada compliance.

Well, one of the reasons, Ada compliance, and other reasons they are temporary fixes. So due to nature of our city, we have a lot of tree rules growing, and trees are like growing every year. So whenever you are doing a grinding, then next year you're going to have a way dangerous tripping hazards, because when you shave a sidewalk, uh the unshown or the unseen part that will miss match the other sidewalk will be very uh sharp due to the grinding so once that tree road lifted a little bit you get a knife over there showing i see so unless you're able to to keep up on it regularly which would be very difficult exactly yeah they were pointing to there's an area just outside our ward where they do constant grinding but i think it's a constant thing and so

Um, thank you. That's actually what my question was.

All right. Thank you very much. Um, I think you've gotten some good feedback from Council. Uh, if Council does have any further comments or questions, uh, for our iris, please, uh, email them and copy, uh, the city manager and myself. Uh, sorry city manager and all of council. Um, and then we will expect the, uh, next step in the process in October or November, October, and then the finalization of the assessment role and, um, or the, uh, sidewalk plan by by budget season. So thank you very much for joining us this evening. Thank you. Next item. is an amendment to the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Facility with respect to the capital project upgrade. Is there a mover, please? Mr. Trumbull, will you please summarize and move?

Yeah, so the city is in a long-term plan right now with Barton LeJudice on a $37 million near-term project to address basically the state of the facility in conjunction with the other partners in this agreement. We had authorized a capital improvement project for 26J in the amount of $2,285,000. And in there, queries they realize that this is going to cost more um we're basically authorizing a 560 000 increase to the capital project 426 j which will later be reimbursed through the efc low interest loan financing um or as determined by the city controller thank you mr trumbull is there a second second by mr difendini uh mr gibson any preliminary comments or just here to answer questions

um i have no real comments um i think the resolution spells it out pretty well are there any questions from colleagues miss matos what does efc stand for environmental facilities corporation thank you you're welcome

Mr. Fabrizio.

Just a quick question. The way that the capital improvements get assigned is to just give us like a little sketch. Like I said, the same proportions that all the water treatment costs are assigned?

It's interesting you ask that because we're pondering that at the moment because there are priorities and then there are priorities, right? So most of the near-term things are 40-year-old facility things, new pumps, sludge management facilities need to be cleaned every five to six years. There's piping repairs that with thin wall pipes that have to be completely replaced and valves and there's a new treatment process involved. So we certainly want to spend money wisely, but don't want to leap into any kind of financing all at once. And so right now we're looking at sort of prioritizing the need for 27, 28 and 29. And we think that this will be a three year plan for the 38 million. um so i'm not sure if that answers your question but right now we're looking at things that could break that we lay awake at night thinking about like we can't pump wastewater into the plant which is kind of what happened last january those pumps have to be replaced now that'll definitely be a 2027 plan but unfortunately all five of those pumps each one is about three hundred thousand dollars to replace so so that's a that's a definite 2027 project

So I guess what I was asking, though, is how does it get apportioned?

You're talking about the cost for everything?

Yeah.

Well, everything is estimated based on, you know, we know that the last time we cleaned a digester out, it cost us a million and a half dollars. We know that each valve costs about $5,000. And so a lot of that is just factored into the overall cost. And then we have a recipe, if you will. You know, it takes so many valves to make a digester. And then we just replace those. As we go, um, this amendment really is for Barton and Judas to do the design work on the entire project. So they'll come in, um, they'll, they'll pull each component out. It could be something as simple as new windows in the administration building. might cost you know fifteen hundred dollars a window and there's not a whole lot of design work for something like that as opposed to putting a brand new tertiary phosphorus system in place where they have to evaluate the plant determine what concentrations that they're treating for how that affects the permit and we absolutely need a professional to help us out with that

yeah i i'm sorry i'm not being clear i think um this is the ithaca area wastewater treatment facility so it's serving more than the city of ithaca so that's what i'm getting at is how is the cost i'm sorry those you know these new like capital costs how are they apportioned so um the entire capital project is divvied up based on percent of ownership so we have the city of ithaca owns 57.14 percent the town of ithaca owns about 41 i think it is and dryden own

makes up the remainder, which is about 1.8% or so. So that capital amount is divvied up based on, so the city's controller's office is the administrator of the plant because we own the lion's share of the plant. And so Carissa comes up with a budget, distributes that accordingly, and then each municipal entity pays into it as debt service based on those percentages.

And those percentages are based on volume of water that's run through the plant they're based yes they're based on.

Water consumption from water meter data where it's assumed that a percentage of that water used goes down the drain and into the sewage treatment and.

Following that response, the next question, please about the resolution we're voting on. we can absolutely, I could attempt to reappoint you to the SJC if you'd like, if you'd like to learn more about the plant, but like we are debating the resolution and we have a number of agenda items left.

Right, right, right. Well, it has to do with the money, right? So I just want to know, I just want to have some assurance that those percentages are based on like real data that's actually fairly current, right? Because I remember a conversation with the previous superintendent and He said there were some really old numbers and they hadn't taken into account like development in the town of Ithaca, etc And those this is not germane.

I'm sorry all the person The next person was mr. Sewell Yes

uh mr trumbull yeah i will just say if anyone ever wants to tour the facility um it is fascinating the people working there are really like diying a lot of issues there um i happened to visit on the day after a really heavy storm and like one of the main four years had been literally submerged in water they couldn't even access the bottom stairwell um so these are hard-working guys working with a very little amount um i think when they're making an ass like this is coming from a serious place

And Mr. Trumbull, was this a motion to move this to consent? Yes. All those in favor? That carries unanimously with Mr. DeFendini currently out of the room. Next, may I please, actually, Mr. Gibson, overview of the water and sewer building renovation.

I'm going to share my screen here. Ah, fantastic. I can't tell you how pleased I am to present this tonight. The reason being is that I'll be a 25 year employee in April of this coming year. We've been talking about this project since day one, which is April 8th of 2002. I know my predecessor before me talked about it. I know his predecessor before him talked about it. This is not a recent renovation plan. This has probably been going on for about 50 years. So I'm happy to say that I'm thinking and I'm hoping that we can push this thing over the finish line. And that's what I'm presenting to you tonight. Water and sewer has been um if i can figure out how to change my slide okay it doesn't want to do that okay well this is going to be a really short presentation let's see i'm gonna i'm gonna try something else here i'm gonna stop oh there we go you know what maybe i'll just put it into presentation mode that might work and it did okay let's try this now hey there we go John Potter, Water and sewer has had its headquarters at 510 first street since 1931. John Potter, Whether you can see this, this is an aerial from May of that year and anybody that knows the first street area might pick up some landmarks there that railroad track that's running through just about all of the screen there is now route 13. Um, to the left of that as a large tank, that is, uh, the former NYSEG coal tar gasification plant where our current wastewater treatment facility sits. Um, across the street, there's a cluster of buildings sort of toward the right center. That was, um, the DPW. There was no streets and facilities division or water and sewer division. It was just most of those buildings are no longer there. There is a row of buildings that sits on route 13 that we call 600 1st street and that is where our current construction crews are housed. You'll notice the cluster of buildings with the chimney to the north. That was the original wastewater treatment plant and that, uh, brick chimney structure. Um, some of you may recognize, um, the chimneys no longer there, but the brick structure is that is now the science center. Um, the, uh, the sort of construction to the right center of the screen is our water and sewer building being built. That facility was completed in about a year's time. It originally housed the water and sewer building office, the metering office, and was our general water and sewer service office. And we estimated probably housed about five employees at the time with 20 external across the street. Those five were probably the superintendent, several secretaries, a meter manager, and probably a foreman. The finished product was a real classic institutional art deco style building of the era. It was built to last. It's I-beam construction and concrete with a brick facade. Here it is 95 years later and we're talking about a full renovation. It has served us faithfully and it has served us well. In 1931 dollars, they built it for about 36,000 bucks and that's about 788,000 today. um no we cannot build a building for 788 000 uh but it's just a real footnote um to see that it took them about a year to construct the entire thing um right here on the left is the building footprint um my pointer's kind of delayed but right here in the middle John Potter, Is warehouse storage now that warehouse storage went floor to ceiling ceiling was about 18 feet high on the left was a meter. John Potter, room with a shop and the front were all the office space and there's kind of a rectangle in the middle there it's a vault and we were a billing office, so we kept money in there, we kept accounts in there and. What happened over about 100 years is, well, we evolved. And as early as 1950, they realized they didn't have enough space. And what happened in post-World War II was population exploded in the city. And in about 25 years' time, we doubled our number of water and sewer services. I envisioned that they had an engineering team, then they had a field locating team, the meter department expanded. And so basically they had to construct a wing, another shop, more storage in the back. And then in the 50s, they realized they were so strapped for space needs that they had to put a second floor in and they built a mezzanine. And this was done with forced labor. Forced labor was basically folks that were skilled in the trade. They didn't necessarily build things to code. Sometimes we find walls that are 24 inches on center. Sometimes they're 16. Sometimes they ran electrical correctly. Sometimes they didn't. But they basically cut all of our cold storage in half by putting another floor on top of it. So what changed? Well, things got bigger, badder and better. Trucks, just a trivia, does anybody know what the most popular truck in 1931 was? The one they made. Not quite. It was a Ford Model A Ford. It was a truck that was about 13.5 feet long by 6.5 feet wide. Why I'm telling you this is that the garage that's on the right-hand side of the wing of the building was built for a Model A Ford, not a Ford F-150, which is what is crammed in there. There's about six inches of space between the hood of the truck and the concrete block wall. and we can sort of close our garage doors behind them if we're careful. Just an anecdote, if you go to the side of each of those doors, there's large chunks missing out of each one of the garage doors because the side view mirrors like to clip them on the way in. You know, we have engineering teams. Now we have GIS professionals. We have a full environmental staff where we really need office space needs for about 20 where the building as it sits now probably has enough space for about maybe 13 or 14. Is it up to code? Absolutely not. Everything is male oriented lockers and shower facilities. We have no elevator. It's not ADA compliant. All of the utilities date back to 1930. And it is loaded with asbestos. And I just, of course, cherry picked a bunch of pictures for you here. But, you know, you'll see holes in ceilings. You'll see exposed utilities. This is my office on the right here where it rains. And you can see the moisture trickle down onto the floor. The top right photo is the ad hoc locker room that was built probably in the 40s or 50s. serves its purpose well, but certainly not into the future. It's deficient. It's grossly undersized. There's no secure public access at all. We have very little security at the building. I won't go into detail why that is. There's no HVAC system. You know, everybody's got a space heater under their desk in the winter and a window unit in the summer. You can see, snapped a shot of our bricks that are just underneath the roof member. They need to be repointed. We find a brick occasionally out in the landscaping. And it's grossly energy efficient. It has no insulation. This is the plumbing inspector's office with a recycling bucket to catch the water. And this is the GIS administrator's office on the top right. It's not compressed for presentation. It's truly four and a half feet wide by 10 feet long. Joe Piazza, And here we are so in 2021 we knew we needed a new roof, so I embarked on a campaign to get an architect in to do a roof evaluation. uh, where they did an invasive inspection of the roof members. And they found that there's about six different roofs on top of each other, uh, where they would overlay a new roof member every single, uh, you know, probably I'm going to guess every 15 years or so, 20 years found a lot of underlying issues with the roofing members. Um, but overall they discovered that there was a lot of ad hoc construction that went on the last roof, uh, reconstruction. John Potter, Including the electrical for the mezzanine so the electrical service comes up the side of the building they needed sub panels to power the mezzanine so they just ran conduits across the roof deck. John Potter, And then plugged in where they needed to all of those utilities would have to be moved for a new roof. John Potter, They found the mezzanine wasn't built to code siding and disrepair windows weren't installed properly. Obviously there's brick repointing and what we had originally anticipated for a new roof of a million dollars became a $3 million project. So we went back to the city administration and we said, look, our best guess is to renovate this thing would be a nine or a $10 million project. Here we are spending a third of that on a roof and haven't really fixed the real deal, which is underneath. So they bought into that enough where we retooled Kingsbury to come in and do a full renovation option. And basically they came up with a $9 million project in the end. successively uh city administration gave the green light to go ahead and do an actual design on a renovation project and so tetra tech came in on a competitive proposal process uh and by as early as this year they had a full design and bid package ready We had a couple snafus where we had to go in and make some extra flood mitigation design changes after it went through the city building code division. We realized that it could be eligible for historic registry, which was great because that meant that a lot of the flood mitigation measures are exempt from the existing structure because if they weren't exempt. This project could not go forward. The building might as well be raised to the ground and we'd have to start over again. And it would just put it beyond the cost stratosphere. To date, we've invested about a million dollars in professional services to get us to this point. And this is what they came up with. You can see the gray shaded mark is the original footprint of the building. You can see that we're looking to expand the building a bit to the right with a new conference room and kitchen facilities. But most importantly, the building will be dedicated entirely to office space. They're planning to remove the mezzanine entirely and rebuild it. And we have enough space now for about 25 folks. We're very excited about this. We'd have storage, archival space, a proper network cabinet. And the bottom line is what does it cost? You'll see here, if you can read this, the opinion probable cost by Tetra Tech. If you follow my pointer here, we're not too far off the Kingsbury architect mark. We're around $9.5 million for construction. What Kingsbury did not give us was soft costs, furniture, temporary office trailer space, things that You know, because they weren't really tasked with putting us into a project. They were kind of tasked with giving us an idea what the project would have cost, just face value. So the bottom line of this thing is that the opinion probable project cost is about $12.3 million. And right now, we have squirreled away enough money to meet about three quarters of that. So right now we have about 9.5 million in the coffers, or at least authorized to be in the coffers, with our delta of $3 million. So what I'm saying to the group here is I'm imploring you to maybe push this thing over the finish line during the capital hearing period. get us to that point where we can actually move through this thing. Because if this project is approved, we're actually ready to go. I mean, it's kind of interesting because our consultant emailed me this morning and gave us a schedule where we can go out to bid next week. I said, well, you know, I pulled the reins back a bit on them. But the point is, is that if this project is approved, we could probably go out to bid as early as December. award the project in February, begin the project in March, and complete the project by next, well, two Junes from now, June of 2028. So it's about a 14, 15 month project schedule. Right now, staff is looking at evaluating all of its archives to determine what it is that we need to push into the future. Um, we're looking at probably moving in construction trailers into the parking lot of the bowling alley, uh, where water and sewer would be temporarily housed until the project's done. Um, so I just want to bring up the speed where we are, how we've gotten here, why we've gotten here. Um, I thank you for your time and I'll take any questions.

Thanks very much for the presentation, Scott. I see Mr. Recchio has a comment, so I'll recognize him in a moment. I think mine will just be very brief, which is to say, as I have said every day since I got here, I'm tired of deferring maintenance. Let's do it now while it's as cheap as it is because it's only getting more expensive. Mr. Recchio.

Yeah, I'm very excited to present to you all the five-year capital plan with a five-year plan to initially address deferred maintenance while looking to our critical facilities over time. I've personally toured nearly all city facilities at this point, and i can tell you that this city facility is in the worst shape for our employees and for our operations in terms of efficiency i can really back up a lot of what scott said being that there is so much pre-authorized money to address different things that can be put together for one larger project and that this would be within the water and sewer capital plan that you'll receive i definitely recommend that we move forward with this project and you'll receive additional information in the capital budget as we move forward and that will come to you at the same time that the city budget does. And we'll have a capital presentation night mid-October where we will discuss this again.

Mr. Nguyen.

Thanks, Scott. I'm very convinced. But will you need to do any work on the bowling alley to be able to house employees there?

Well, originally we thought We would house temporary offices within the confines of the bowling alley. But I would love to give you all a tour of the bowling alley. But basically, they turned the key and never came back. So it looks like it's ready to be fired right back up. The problem is it's been abandoned for five or six years now, not climate controlled, and the mold smell is pervasive in it. There's a hole in the roof where a tree limb fell on the back end of it. We do want to offer it up to the contractors to make it a temporary conference area for them, which is something that we typically would do. Not our building, but during the College Ave work, the developer used the nines as a temporary office space and conference area. So it is done. City Council Chambers, But they would be wholly responsible for reigniting the utilities and turn in the power back on and all that stuff and my guess is they're not going to want to do that, so I think what we would end up doing is just renting construction trailers and just living in those in the parking lot. City Council Chambers, yeah.

City Council Chambers, Mr Brazil.

Well, I guess, I just wanted to say this is like unbelievably shameful that we've had this much deferred this long deferred maintenance on this project it's very sad. I want to ask you mentioned that you thought the building would potentially be eligible for stark designation with that open up any funds for us.

We did look into it, I think, through want to say it was Brian mccracken we had a conversation with him. John Potter, Probably a year or two ago, it has to be registered first and the timeline is not correct for the building. John Potter, And I don't know if he was very hopeful about us getting any funding in the first place, so we did have that conversation, though, yes.

John Potter, Great thanks very much appreciate it.

Thank you.

um mr reccio uh raising parking penalty fines for our discussion item i'll turn it over to you give me one moment here mr sewell right i'd like to move for just a five minute recess you you may you may yeah yeah i'm gonna i'll throw it out there all seconded by mr shapiro all those in favor of five minute recess those a post mr shapiro voted like four times but yeah it passed it passed uh uh i'll uh uh trumbull schwetz mayor against uh deputy clerk i will keep this one very short And I know it'll take a 2nd to unmute us on zoom, but now I think we're done. So, Mr. thank you.

Time allow me to pull pull up some details. So 1 of the things that we have been eager to discuss is. parking fines. And I'm going to talk about some of the dollar amounts and get some feelers from you all on them. We're doing a few different things all at once to move forward with parking fines. You all increased a parking fine earlier this year for overstaying a meter from, I believe, $15 to $25. I see that as a precursor to the I think several dozen few dozen finds that we have across a bunch of different areas which have not been updated in quite some time. The last time that parking fines were holistically updated was, I believe, in two thousand and eighteen, and holistically might be too strong of a word, because I don't think it included absolutely everything being thoroughly considered, and it was done by resolution. it needs to be done uh by an ordinance and so what we'll be bringing you in the future is um Correcting for us, having done it through resolution. So then all the fines will be able to be found in the city code. Um, and so what we've instructed our. Parking staff to do the, um, folks who, uh, run our community service officer parking, um, enforcement and are out on the streets looking at the bigger picture of of parking issues is to look at the. areas where um fines are not discouraging the behavior um in the city um and that uh so we want stronger fines or more sizable fines both to keep up with the cost of doing business and general costs raising but we really want to do these fines so that we discourage bad behavior in parking which creates many unsafe um situations in the city and so 2 things that are upcoming that I don't have for you in this conversation, but we will have for you when the ultimate resolution or ordinance comes forward is some research on comparative other cities and what they charge for different fines. We've done in an initial way to set this some baselines, but we're going to do some specific comparative analysis and then revenue estimation. So, if we do increase some fines by certain amounts, what's the city's revenue increase going to look like as part of that. I'm very interested in the revenue increase, um. Being done sooner rather than later in terms of analysis, so that we can build something in appropriately for our budget next year. Um, and, uh, we'll go from there. So I'm just going to talk through some of the example finds that, um. that we're looking to increase so over time meter um i believe is currently at 25 i think 30 as the floor is an appropriate amount comparing to other cities that's where we have done a little bit of the comparative analysis increasing over time zone uh overnight if someone's parked in a in a zone that's not marked for parking overnight it's currently 25 increasing that to 50. Um, let's see, I'm just going to go to some that are that are much more, um. Critical in terms of safety, so parking in a prohibited area that might be a loading zone or otherwise we experience this all over the city. It creates the double parking issue. It limits the ability for cabs or otherwise to drop people off. It does create unsafe situations. That's currently a. $30 initial fee fine, and it could ramp up to $60. My initial proposal is a $50 initial fine, but ramping up to $150 in that area. There's a couple here that were $25, and we feel like $50 is a new floor for those. Anyone who is parked in a fire hydrant or fire zone blocking fire access to a building, that's currently $50. And the initial proposal will be for $100. increasing someone parked on a sidewalk or in a crosswalk from $25 to $50. Again, I think $50 is an appropriate floor for many of these because we're really trying to discourage the behavior. Let's see here. Parking on the wrong direction, which also could include, that's my personal least favorite in the city. I think it's very unsafe. It happens right near the the childcare center that I go to and puts kids at risk every day, I cannot stand it. That one in particular is the lowest, it's $15, and would be proposed to go up to $50. That also could carry a fine from, or a different penalty if someone is actually crossing a lane of traffic, they could have an additional $100 fine from police, but that's not included here. Increasing abandoned vehicle from 25 to 100 dollars handicapped spaces, increasing the floor by 50 dollars from 100 to 150 with a maximum penalty of 250 parking in someone's yard. Um, doesn't happen very often. Uh, so increasing that. Or to 35, um, and let's see here and obstructing a, uh, lane or alleyway is currently at 50 dollars, but raising it to 100. um, and then, uh, people are residential permit zones is the last 1 where the floor is only 15 dollars for violating a residential permit zone. We're proposing that new floor to be a $35 fee to pair with the overtime be comparative to the overtime meter fee. And we're also side note, but just mentioning it here. We are considering based on the resolution and the subsequent state legislation around residential parking areas, increasing the number of areas with residential parking permits in the city based on an analysis of how those are used. So we're hoping to build that in as well. But this is the i'm looking for a general sense of if you feel like these fine amounts are reasonable, this is based on my initial analysis, we will do the revenue and comparative city analysis. as well, but we want to discourage this behavior we have some frequent flyer areas in the city college town being one some areas of downtown being another and then other notes. Um, that creates some real issues and I think that we want to discourage the bad behavior and increase safety on our streets. So, um, thank you to Victor for helping lay the financial or the, uh. Uh, legal groundwork for this, and thank you to our parking staff who've helped give me the information to help set us up for success here.

Thanks, Mr. Reggio. I would invite comments from council with an understanding of like, we're sussing out general vibes right now, not specific dollar values. And I think I would just, since the press are here, i would welcome anybody who feels like they want to come and say that they should not be penalized for parking in a fire lane or a loading zone i would love for them to come and for me to not listen to that because that's an obscene unsafe behavior that we should do a lot more to dis uh disincentivize ms matos mr divendini

Thank you for this, Dom. I actually wouldn't mind seeing your floor go up a little bit more, especially on the $50 fines. Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing those at a floor of 100. And I'm also wondering when comparing to other cities, are we taking into account the influx of folks that we're seeing during the days that are working, or are we just looking at our population?

I am trying to take that into account with comparative cities. It's a little hard to find cities of our size that have that type of influx of people. So the one that I'm including is the comparative there is Syracuse because they do have a large influx to the city of workers every day. The caveat there is they have a significant number of parking garages. So we're kind of unique in that area that may support us raising the floor because of the amount of Amount of issues that we have, but that's how I'm hoping to address that issue. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. I'm glad that we're looking into this. I think these fines work really well as a means through which to disincentivize bad behavior. As I've mentioned previously, I've been a victim of our robust parking enforcement that we've seen increase as of late. And I think it's, I learned my lesson. But I think that there's a lot more room to disincentivize that and you know these are like this is like a has the potential to be a regressive model of uh of of not just like revenue collection which i don't think is our intention but more so it uh and even enforcement and so i i urge us to look into how we can take that into consideration but i think i largely agree with uh my colleagues uh uh including all the first models we just spoke about wanting to see that floor increase to incentivize um sort of this bad behavior that we're seeing across the city there's a trumbull

Um, yeah, I would also echo the sentiments of all the personal toes and David needy. Um, I think the floor, especially for double parking, maybe you could go up a little bit. Um, I would also counter the idea of it being revenue generating. I think if we focus on college sound during dinner delivery rush hour, that would solve all of the city's budget crises. Um, but now this is amazing. Um, and thank you for the work you put into this.

All right, folks. So I'm here. Any dissent on that the proposals are too aggressive? You've got your marching orders.

Great. Can I make one Collegetown comment? Please. In the two weeks preceding September 4th, community service officers issued 748 tickets in the Collegetown area. But I will say that very few of those were written for failure to pay or overtime at a meter. So people are paying for parking, but it's the other behaviors that are the problem. And that shows exactly why addressing these particular fines is appropriate. People are paying for parking specifically in those high demand areas. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Recchio. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to entertain ordinance 7.5, the parking signs ordinance. Please summarize and move, Mr. Sewell.

This is an ordinance amending Article 3 of Chapter 346 of the Ithaca City Code, private driveways. The proposed changes, this involves individuals getting no parking signs near a private driveway. The proposed changes to the code increase the fee for that from $50 to $150. And in addition, it removes a five-year time period upon which a $25 renewal fee must be paid. Thank you, Mr. Sewell.

Is there a second? Seconded by Mr. DeFendini. Any discussion on this? Seeing none, let's advance this to the October meeting. It's not on consent because it's an ordinance. Oh, Mr. Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Sewell, where would you like to move this to? I want to put it on consent, but if we can't, then we can't.

All right. That's fine.

All those in favor? That carries unanimously. Next item of business, item 8.1. Mr. Shapiro, you're recognized.

Thank you. This is a resolution authorizing a special committee on governance reform, and I'll read through the resolves. Resolved that the mayor and common council of the city of Ithaca establish a special committee on executive leadership, professional administration, and governance reform for the purpose of studying the city's governmental structure and recommending potential improvements to the lines of authority and relationships between the mayor, common council, city manager, and be it further resolved that the committee shall examine at a minimum the respective policymaking, executive and administrative responsibilities of the common council mayor and the city manager, the appropriate role of the common council in conducting formal oversight over the executive branch and exercising legislative authority for the betterment of the city, three the appropriate role of the mayor as chief elected officer and political leader of the city in providing executive leadership establishing strategic and policy direction for the administration for the council's consideration representing the city and ensuring democratic accountability for the appropriate role of professional administrator and supervising and coordinating the day-to-day operations of city government and implementing duly adopted policies Five, the appointment, confirmation, evaluation, supervision, and removal of the city manager. Six, the relationship between the mayor and city manager with respect to personnel, budgeting, intergovernmental relations, and emergency management, contracts, and administrative coordination. Seven, mechanisms for ensuring that Common Council retains appropriate legislative, fiscal, and oversight authority without unnecessarily interfering in the day-to-day administration of city government. eight comparative experience in municipalities employing city manager mayor council administrator or substantially similar forms of government including the experience of the city of poughkeepsie nine the legal and charter amendments that would be necessary or advisable to implement any recommended changes and ten appropriate transitional provisions to ensure continuity of municipal operations during an any change in governmental structure And be it further resolved that the committee shall include five members of the Common Council appointed by the mayor pursuant to Charter 11 of the City, Ithaca City Charter. And be it further resolved that the committee shall invite written or oral testimony from each of the appointed Charter Revision Commission members, irrespective of whether they have yet resigned their charge. And be it further resolved that the committee, through its chair or other such means, that it may decide shall be empowered to direct the city attorney's office to support the research and legislative work drafting work of the body and be it finally resolved that the resolution take effect immediately and the committee shall expire no later than june 30th 2027. thank you mr shapiro is there a second second by mr difendini any discussion

Mr. Shapiro as the prime sponsor, and then I'll recognize Mr. Sewell.

Sure. I think the resolution is pretty self-explanatory, but I think what What we've tried a few different times in the two and a half years I've been on council is try to take us from where the referendum that put the city manager form of government into place, try to then institutionalize what our structure of government is by defining clearly what the roles of the mayor are, what the roles of city council are, and how we all interact with each other and the city manager. And I think the most appropriate place to have that conversation is via committee, where we can then make recommendations to the full body. Also, I just want to make it explicitly clear, I think it's really important that we listen to the folks that were on the Charter Commission Committee. We've heard from several of them in the last several months, and I think they want to tell us what their experiences is, and I'd like to give them a forum to share that with us. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Shapiro. Mr. Sewell?

thanks uh thank you i um completely sympathize with what you're trying to do i think it's really important to try to suss out what our role here is there i there's a little bit of confusion for me in this resolution um i think one is so for example number five the appointment confirmation evaluation supervision removal of the city manager i mean that's pretty straightforward it's in our charter that language is already there so i'm not sure why We would want to revisit that that seems clear to me. And I guess I don't want to do that I don't know how to do this is it okay to ask that question and then. Do like a backup I mean i'm not trying to do it back and forth, but I think you know your answer. okay fine uh so so yeah i i don't know why that's in there um because i think that is clear so there are some things that are not clear uh that i think we would look at but that one seems pretty straightforward to me again i think it's in the city charter um I also want to point out, in number four, the appropriate role of a professional administrator in supervising and coordinating the day-to-day operations of the city government. I assume that's referring to the city manager. The city manager is not a professional administrator. The city manager is a chief executive officer. Those are two very different roles, two very importantly different roles, and that really ought to be recognized because we don't have a professional administrator. We have a chief executive officer, and that is within the city charter. um so i i just feel like this is setting us up for something that's a little bit different than what our current governance structure is what i would like to see us do is discuss how we relate within our current governance structure not try to change our overall governance structure uh and following along with that number eight says comparative experience in municipalities employing Council manager may or Council administrator or substantially similar forms of government, including the experience of the city of Poughkeepsie. That is really odd to include and it's really odd because the city of Poughkeepsie does not have a city manager. Like it in fact. it has a city administrator, and that city administrator is hired and fired exclusively by the mayor. In the city of Poughkeepsie, the mayor is the one who hires and fires department heads. I mean, it's a version of a strong mayor form of governance which is antithetical to what we have and is not what we have so i don't understand why that's in here so um i would recommend or i would i move to amend this and strike this language um because i don't think what we want to do is try to redo the entire charter that, again, a super majority of Ithacans voted on, our city structure, and instead stick with the governance system that we have. I guess I would do this all in one lump thing. One would be to change the language of number four from the role of a professional administrator to the role of a chief executive officer in supervising and coordinating the day-to-day operations, specifically because that is what's in our charter. Five, I would remove the appointment confirmation, evaluation, supervision, and removal of the city manager because that is in our city charter, and it's clear. And then lastly, I would definitely remove the language that says in number eight, mayor, council, administrator, or substantially similar forms of governments, including the experience of the city of Poughkeepsie, which is completely unrelated to how our government structured.

So moved. Is there a second?

Thank you.

There's no second motion fails for the debate. Ms. Fabrizio?

Yeah, I think it deserves a bit more conversation.

Which other person?

Well, a lot of this is about the mayor's relationship to the city manager. And the mayor is, by our charter, is the person who selects who would be on this committee. So I think there's a little bit of a conflict there. And I guess I'd also think that, I think this lacks opportunity for community involvement, and I'm not sure what form that would take, but I think that it should be something that is looked at. We've made some significant changes just in this last year with regard to the role of the mayor. Specifically, I'm thinking about the budget and the mayor being very closely involved with the development of the budget. I think that that was, I spoke about this when we did that. I think it isn't exactly how it was framed when we changed to this form of government. So I guess I'm wondering how we might make the engagement a little broader so that we could include some community engagement in this and not just people who will be appointed by the mayor to review this. So it's a little more objectivity. You know, I mean, I don't...

I have myself next. I would say I fully support Mr. Shapiro's resolution here. This is something I had hoped would come out of the Charter Revision Commission. I think to just sort of opine on some of the points that have been raised, we do, in fact, have a professional administration and a professional administrator, and they are in lowercase, which is a covering term for the occupation, not a title. So that is... I would argue hair splitting uh it's just covering just like voting members is uh tantamount to saying commissioners I also think uh that uh some of these you know we we're being honest with the public right this was a uh the previous city attorney did a control find and replace for most of the things in the charter we know a lot of that shit didn't work We ended up having to be in a situation where we've been patching it on the fly. I also think that the acting city manager is doing a tremendous job. I also know that council had experience with a previous administration that was not effectively implementing the will of the elected body. and the policymakers. And part of that was because of blurred lines of authority that exist between the elected policymakers and the administration writ large. I think to look at the comparative experience of other municipalities and systems of government couldn't possibly be more appropriate when I think I often hear from folks who want more information. So to sort of affirmatively prevent the committee from reviewing those things feels, as to borrow a phrase, like it's trying to do some other things here. Ultimately, it's going to be five members of council making a recommendation to the whole council on the basis of the written and or oral testimony of the Charter Revision Commission, which no longer operates. And I think there's a number of things that require clarity, not least of which is recognizing that I think things are working smoothly with the current instantiation of our government that didn't work as smoothly over the last two years. And I think it's worth codifying things that make sense now while they are working to forestall the possibility of negative outcomes in the future when different personalities might be in those respective roles. So again, I fully support Mr. Shapiro trying to bring this issue to a head, given that we have had two and a half years of an incomplete transition, and we should make a different affirmative decision one way or another. Ms. Schvetz, you're next.

Is there currently going to be public comment for this special committee?

As currently formulated in this resolution, no. That's not... I don't I don't know if I don't know if the older person I don't I don't know that that's an intention it's just but no like the the the current committee authorizing resolutions we have include and there will be you know and resolved we'll set aside 30 minutes of public comment at each committee meeting which I kind of see where you're going with this that's why I fed you the language okay could I amend it to add in that there will be half an hour public comment to allow for public engagement uh we'll say that that'll go uh the fourth to last resolve just to not mess up the flow of the nba furthers um so moved by ms schwetz a second seconded by ms matos discussion on the amendment of public comment seeing none all those in favor oh i'm sorry mr shapiro you You had a hand for that.

It wasn't a very comment, but I just wanted to show my support because I was actually one of the folks that was arguing or not arguing, suggesting that we should have public comment at all of our committee meetings.

So I appreciate you bringing that forward. Thank you. All those in favor. That carries unanimously. Main motion is amended. Mr. Sewell, you're wrecking. Sorry. Did you have Mr. Trumbull's not spoken on the issue yet? And then Mr. Sewell.

um yeah no i also love the idea of this in general um i think a lot of the conversations around like expectations of the mayor and stuff have been brought forward over the last few weeks this will be awesome um petitioning for the upcoming election would start in february i think for the mayor um and i think you know there is an interesting relationship there like with someone running and then us looking into what exactly their job would be um so i don't know exactly what this would look like but it'd be interesting if maybe we could have some type of summary report um you know earlier than the june prescribed date maybe it doesn't have to be the finalization because there's so much involved here um but even you know just kind of like three month update or something like that, I think could be really useful. Also, will this be examining the role of the deputy city manager? That's something that some people brought up today at public comment. And I'm just interested in that and whether or not this committee could decide if that role could be absorbed into something else or if it should exist or things like that.

Just as a procedural answer to that question, this is outlining, as I'm taking it, shall examine that minimum. Mr. Shapiro, you're recognized.

Yeah, I just want to add to that. We currently have an acting city manager, so I don't think it would be appropriate to think about what to do to the deputy city manager role until we finalize having a formal city manager.

Okay. Mr. Sewell and then Mr. Rizzio.

So to clarify why I find Poughkeepsie a weird choice, Elmira, Oneonta, Geneva, Canandaigua, Auburn, Batavia, Corning, all of these cities have city managers. They all have governance structures that relate to ours. If we're trying to figure out what the best way is to relate to our city manager, I would recommend we look at cities that have a similar governance structure. KFC does not. That's why it's such a strange and outlying thing to look at. That is not going to tell us anything about how you relate to city manager because they don't have one. So it just baffles me that this is in here and that it seems to take away from the purpose of this to require, to specifically require this committee to look at a governance structure that we don't have, whereas there's lots of government structures, lots of governments around us do have this government structure that we could look at, that we do have, that might be more informative. That's it. Ms. Fabrizio?

It's not, it doesn't exclusively say to look at the city of Poughkeepsie. So I think we're, exactly. So we can look at other things and of course we should. Sorry, I'm losing my train of thought here. That got me off on another track.

Would you like me to add you to the stack?

Yes. Can you come back to me?

Mr. Shapiro. Sure. I just want to respond to my colleague, Mr. Sewell. Part of what I think I was getting at in the two different areas that you mentioned, both Poughkeepsie and in how we define how we supervise the city manager is I think that was one of the complications over the first couple of years is we aren't really sure who was providing day to day supervision to the city manager and how those kinds of outside of the directives that we give here in the meeting room on a day to day level. How is the city manager being supervised and evaluated? And I think that was just for me why it was important to just consider models where Well, just to consider what the right way is to supervise the city manager. That's where I was coming from with that.

Yeah.

Okay. Mr. Rizzo.

Um, I just point of clarification was, did, did a council ever decide that there was going to be a deputy city manager? What we're talking about that, like, like that's a confirmed position and I'm just point of clarification about that.

So, um, a couple of things i i think so the the the narrow specific answer to your question is of course yes uh council created the role of deputy city manager um in 23 24. it was us okay so 2024. um it's in the charter as a as a position And the there is still supporting documentation from the local law that was changing forms of government. One of the things that it said. I would commend this to everyone's attention because it is still on the city website. But one of the things it said is that, yeah, there's likely to be an assistant city manager, right? And so it was always conceived of as something that would exist. I think the nomenclature matters less than the fact that it's a big job to be in charge of the day-to-day operations of an organization and that person needs support. And I think that was envisioned sort of as a through line through, and I would actually invite if Mr. Wynn wants to comment as the only member of council still serving from that time. But my understanding, that wasn't a thing that was voted on because it's not, it didn't necessitate a vote via referendum, but it is absolutely a thing that was planned for, stated in these supporting materials.

um among other things and uh yeah later adopted by council yeah i'll i'll look at that and you know i i hear what you're saying i just didn't i didn't remember that as being part of it because when we made this switch or when it was being discussed when when um duckson was on council it was about streamlining it was about sort of saving operations money etc so i didn't remember that there was a whole other position put into into that

Mr. Nguyen.

So I mean, so City Council Chambers, Saving money was an incidental part of the conversation, as I remember it, and like the mayor said it was in the supporting material that it may be necessary, and it is in the faq on the city manager transition. City Council Chambers, I say it's incidental because I think the thing that we were mainly going after was professional administration of city hall professional full time administration of studio. City Council Chambers, For which we've seen I think excellent results from. And moreover, when the committee that the mayor appointed to see reimagining public safety through, well, first of all, even before that, there was a recommendation to create a position to oversee basically RPS functions. um and then when that committee was appointed we figured the deputy there should be a deputy city manager for public safety um that was dominic dominic did in fact focus his time when he was deputy cm on that topic so even so it was part of the original conception but even if it weren't um we have incorporated into the government structure um i think to good effect mr difendini

Yeah. First, I'll say I recall that conversation as well during my first term on council that the conversation around the deputy city manager position was around like a position that could hone in specifically around reimagining public safety and make sure that was discussed. In fact, the concern around additional costs associated with that was something that the council at the time just determined was something that we'd be willing, that we thought was a worthwhile pursuit, despite the added cost associated with it. Regarding this resolution, I'm in support of it. I think I really appreciate what all the person, Shapiro, is attempting to do with this. A point of clarification that I think I'd like to get, and I think could maybe help alleviate or assuage some concerns is, My perspective coming into this resolution is that for me, what I personally would be hoping to get out of this would be a formalization of like our current operations, because I think how we currently operate right now is the council body. The mayor is sort of viewed as the legislative leader, first of equals, if you will, and is the main is the first touch point with the city managers, the chief executive and the rest of the common council. We all have other things going on for the most part and have different responsibilities and are not as. uh plugged in or is in touch with the day-to-day uh as the steam manager and the mayor i think is best primed especially if a certain resolution later on goes a certain way to handle uh uh those that first point of communication as opposed to being a little bit more uh pulled in the direction of like 11 other people which i believe is the spirit of the reference to the poughkeepsie model as opposed to like creating a system where the mayor has the ability to like fire or or um or hire the city manager at will which our current laws currently don't um allow it was a long-winded question but like is that do you get where i'm coming from is that the spirit of what you're looking for this resolution

uh i'd say yes i think i mentioned uh at a prior meeting it's felt to me that there's just a little bit of role confusion at times that um i think uh we've all been um we've well i don't want to speak for anybody but i think that you know like i think there's just at times there's the perception from we heard from some folks in the community that the mayor is overstepping what he's expected And then there are times where I think some of us think, well, thank God the mayor's doing this kind of job. And I think it'd be, it's important to me that we just get that clearly structured for what the expectation is. And to Robin's point, there is a mayoral election next year. And I think it's also important that we make that clear to the public before people express interest in running for that seat. Did I answer your question? I'm sorry if I didn't.

So, yeah, and I just think just to, like, really just put, like, a fine point on it. Like, in looking and referencing, like, the Poughkeepsie model, there isn't, like, the sense that, like, council would be sacrificing any of its sort of oversight abilities or main avenues of communication with the city manager compared to, like, how it is currently. That's not my intent at all.

Okay. Thank you.

I I just have myself next and then I think, you know, speaking of the role confusion, I think 1 of the things that's like. Of chief importance is, um, again in these materials. My office is tasked with leading the development of policy. the there is no carve out to facilitate that absent going through a resolution of the council directing the administration to support that. Now, again, in practice, Dominic and I work really well together, right? But like, You know, we heard tonight the public voted for a specific thing. And I think that maybe, in fact, I know even just looking at folks at the table, we don't all have a shared understanding of what that is, despite the fact that everyone wants to appeal to their interpretation of it as the optimal outcome. I think one of the virtues of a system that has full administration but also preserves democratic accountability is that proposals can be more thoroughly fleshed out and brought to the legislative body who retains ultimate authority over all branches of government to make those decisions. But again, we don't currently have any formal architecture for making that happen. Ms. Fabrizio, you're next.

Yeah, I guess this is a bit in response to Jorge. I don't see this so much as about a confirmation of what we have, but more an opportunity to sort of take a comparative look at how other communities are operating who have city managers. I mean, this is still really new for us. I'm pretty sure that there are other communities that have less, there's a less mayor involvement with the city manager where the city manager is not checking in or the mayor checking in with the city manager on a daily basis. So I think it warrants a look at how we're operating and it's very relevant to how much time I think the position requires. and to what the expectations would be in the future for any future applicants. So I think it's, again, it's not about like, oh, let's just confirm what we're doing and put that in writing. For me, this would be more about how do we stack up compared to other places? Are there other ideas out there that are you know, that are working well that we might want to adopt? Are there some kind of adjustments that we want to make? So I guess I would want to ask David if that is in line with what you're thinking, or are you more in line with sort of exploring this to confirm what we're doing? Sure.

i'm not sure there's a way to confirm what we're doing because i think at different times we've done different things so i think for me it's about um standardizing our structure any further discussion on mr sewell

I do want to point out, though, that there is something in here that says bring proper, you know, bring possible changes to the charter and things like that. So it does seem like that what what you're saying within the scope of the resolutions, we may change the entire governmental structure. Not that you're necessarily proposing that, but that is sort of what we're saying is possibly what what the committee might do is that.

Well, I think I also I think what I was getting at there also is that what I heard from when the some of the charter commissioners came here and then we later, I think it was affirmed by our city attorney where there are some things that we can take up as about ourselves and that don't have to go to the full community for referendum. And there were actually some changes that the commission. had already researched that are probably good ideas that we just need to hear from them that we might be able to implement as a body ourselves.

I'll also just recognize myself to say we didn't have a strong mayor system under the old form of government. That's as someone who appreciates precision. I know you'll like this. We absolutely didn't. That's not what we had because the mayor couldn't discipline department heads. And guess what? The previous city attorney did control, find and replace. And so now the city manager can't discipline department heads. without an act of counsel right that's the kind of thing that would have to go through a charter change irrespective of any of the concerns that i'm i'm hearing in some cases right there are there are legitimate problems with our charter that need to be fixed because they half-assed the revision and like we've been holding the bag for two and a half years trying to make do And things are working really well right now, but in one way, we need to clarify the way that the process is intended to work, not move as quickly as possible to implement the ICMA's recommendations. Any further debate? All those in favor of Mr. Shapiro's resolution? That carries unanimously. Mr. Trumbull, you're recognized.

Um, yeah, so this is a local law, um, looking at raising the salaries for the mayor, um, and then cost of living adjustments for members of council, uh, which is a dominant practice and other municipalities. Um, should I just dive into my kind of opening pitch? All right. Sorry. I need a second.

So moved is the, is there a second second by Mr. Defendini, Mr. Temple, you're recognized.

Um, yeah, so I've got some prepared stuff. Um, but first I just wanted to bring up, um, on the city's website, there's a fact, um, uh, from when this was initially proposed, some of the things they talk about, um, include the difference in the mayor and the city manager's responsibility, um, To some people in the audience today who described it as a kind of part time figurative role know the mayor is still responsible for leading the development of policy appointing boards of committees presiding over Council meetings. They are representing the city to other levels of government there's no mention on this fact at all about. seeking grants, being competitive on a statewide level, which is something that we have benefited from with our current mayor. And then also on the same fact, actually, they discuss, will this cost the taxpayers more money? And the exact quote is, with salary and benefits, the mayor, the mayor's executive assistant, and the chief of staff cost the city approximately $213,000. Under the new structure, the full-time city manager will earn a bit more than the chief of staff And the mayor will earn slightly less than the current mayor. That is verbatim from the city website. Um, instead what we saw was that the mayor's salary was cut by 51%. Um, so both halves of that promise were broken. Um, and I think that when colleagues say voters approved reducing the mayor's pay, I'd say they approved a slight reduction. Um, nobody in the city was asking to cut the office in half. I'm not asking us to undo the referendum. I'm just following up on like what we actually said. Um, and I think this is beyond arithmetic too. The mayor is currently paid less than every full-time position in the city's own vacancy report. Less than a city clerk, less than a maintainer, less than a half-time youth medical care provider at GIAC. When we price an office that way, we're not saving money, we're deciding who gets to hold it. We decide it gets to go to someone who's retired, someone with savings, someone with a partner carrying the household, or someone willing to do it badly enough that they're putting themselves at a financial risk. Every Ithacan who has held this office without independent means held it when paid roughly twice what it does today. And paying public servants isn't a perk. It's the mechanism that lets people who need an income serve it all. And I'd rather this council decide that on purpose rather than let it happen by default.

Mr. Sewell?

Just first question. In October of last year, an advisory committee was formed by this council or the mayor or someone to study the financial compensation of the city's elected officials. What happened to that? That seems like the appropriate way to go about deliberating. Mr. Keel was the mayor of that body.

And it ceased operation. I'm sorry? They met a couple of times, I think. But Mr. Keel and Mr. St. Perez were the council member representatives on that body, and it kind of just stopped meeting.

I mean, it makes sense to me that that would be the way to go through this process, would be through some sort of committee to actually evaluate the things. I appreciate... Mr. Trumbull's, I don't know, feelings on this. And I definitely appreciate you getting me this way ahead of time. I always really appreciate that. And I'm sorry I didn't talk to you earlier. I think the $75,000 suggestion is kind of out of nowhere. And what I mean is it's not really tied to anything. It would mean that not only would the mayor be making more than any previous mayor, I mean the previous salary was $61,000, this current mayor would be making 20% more, which I just have no, like I don't know what that's tied to. um i saw in your uh preamble that the mayor had full-time obligations i think it was the the word that was used or something like that the obligations for mayor um the last time the charter was changed declined and they declined they declined significantly because the the mayor is no longer tasked with taking on administrative things um So this proposal is not being combined with any new obligations. I heard you say something about seeking grants or I think being competitive with New York, neither of which are really the mayor's role. I mean, we have a grant department that does that sort of thing. I like the idea of a mayor going out and doing this sort of stuff. I certainly would not require it. And I think broadly what's happening is as a council, I THINK, AND I SHOULDN'T SAY THIS IS COUNCIL, FOR ME PERSONALLY, I THINK FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE ON COUNCIL, WE FEEL LIKE ROB IS DOING AN INCREDIBLE JOB. I MEAN, I'LL JUST SAY THAT. I THINK ROB IS DOING A REALLY GOOD JOB. I THINK ROB IS REALLY GOOD AT A NUMBER OF THE THINGS THAT THE MAYOR NEEDS TO DO. HE'S A GREAT FACILITATOR. HE'S EXCELLENT AT GETTING IN COMMUNICATION. HE'S GREAT WITH WORKING WITH CITY MANAGERS. I MEAN, YOU KNOW, THE LIST IS LONG. And what this feels like is we want to give Rob a bonus, but we can't because that's just not within our abilities. But this isn't a proposal about Rob. In fact, he should be removed from this entirely. This is a proposal about the position of mayor. And so does the position of mayor, do we think it's important that the mayoral position be changed such that it is due the compensation of $75,000 annually? And if that's the case, what are those additional, um obligations that we're going to add to the mayor's position that would justify that level of increase

I have myself, Mr. DeFendini, Ms. Matos. I would only just narrowly say Mr. Sewell is correct about the enumeration of duties, one of which under the code is that the mayor must act as council directs. And I would point you to a list of resolutions that this council has approved directing my office to do certain activities. I was also asked by all the person, Fabrizio, about whether or not I need to recuse myself. And turns out under the previous city attorney, I was given bad advice because chapter 55 says, gee, says provision of this chapter shall not be deemed to prevent any city official from voting or taking any lawful action with regard to the establishment of salaries or benefits for elected officials. So there's an explicit carve out in our code of ethics. I don't want to speculate as to why I got that advice from the previous city attorney while I was running for mayor in August of that election year when it was changed, but it was incorrect. Mr. DeFedini.

I will say that I first off, I appreciate all the pressure from working on this on this resolution. I also agree with all the person schools points that this isn't about any individual elected official, whether it be Robert or the rest of Common Council. I think this should be about the mayoral position, and I think. This level of work is what I want associated with the mayor of our city. I want someone who will go above and beyond to do this as I think our current mayor has done, and I will say that I think that this current crop of common counselors is the most working class that the city has been in. certain last couple of years I would say and that. This job as a common counselor is incredibly difficult to do while also balancing a full time job. I am and so I think if we want accounts that's reflective of that, we need to make sure that it's possible to do this. Otherwise we should just go back to feudalism and just let landed elites make all of our decisions. But I think we need like people who know what it's like to work and informed by that and who currently have to struggle and to make ends meet to do this job and they have to be able to give it their all and paying them to do that is what I think is necessary to do that. And I will say that I think you're getting a lot more bang for your buck from both this mayor and this common council, not just by who is in this position, but what we can do in terms of that capacity. we engage in like meeting with our state representatives lobbying for legislation at the state level at the local level not just reviewing the policy that comes before us staff but actually developing policy ourselves really difficult to do this in the current a lot of time that on paper it's set to do to do this so that's why i'm supportive of this resolution and uh uh appreciate the work that's gone into it ms matos

Thank you. I'm going to piggyback a little bit off of Alderperson Defendini's thoughts. I do think that if we expect our next mayor to be performing at the same level that our current mayor is, I think matching a pay that matches that level of duties, I think right there alone is explanation enough. And I'm going to mimic an argument that I said on the floor two years ago when a similar amendment came forward. At the end of the day, our city manager position is a chief executive position that requires background in education that not all folks have access to or even achieve. And for me, a position like the mayor with a salary that actually pays a living salary, symbolizes and allows for us to create opportunities for those folks who don't have those opportunities to go to college. I used this example on the floor two years ago, and I'm gonna use it again. Myself, I don't have a college degree. I fell in love with politics, right? Maybe there is one day that I would aspire to be a mayor. I can't be city manager. Like I said, I don't have the college degree, right? And so I'm just thinking about the other children, the other youth that will be in a similar position to someone like me. And then additionally, If you break down the $30,000 salary after you take out taxes, our mayor is barely being paid enough to afford an average one bedroom apartment in our city of Ithaca. And I think we really have to start looking at the discrepancies in there. And we heard from the public today, they expect us to put 150% of our effort into our jobs. So if that's the case, how are we supposed to have give 150% to a part-time job while also carrying full-time job and responsibilities on top of it all.

Ms. Fabrizio.

I think that compensation should follow an analysis of the position rather than an automatic assumption about a cost of living increase. And Robin drafted this as cost of living adjustment for elected city officers, so that's why I'm going to refer to it that way. What's being proposed is a 150% increase. That is not a cost of living adjustment. Even if you use the old salary, it's still 22% higher. And if you adjust the old salary for 8.6% inflation, which I think is about what you did, right? Since January 1st, 2024, that would be like 66,800. So I think that what you've proposed is, it's like 12% above inflation adjusted value of the old salary. So I think it's out of line, but I think more importantly, we do need to figure out what does this represent in terms of new work. So for the record, I think that in all of these materials that were drafted when the change was made, with regard to the function of representing Ithaca politically, and I assume that would mean representing with other electeds on the state level, et cetera. The mayor and the city manager were supposed to have that intended responsibility. So that's a point of clarification. So it's not just the mayor who is supposed to be at beck and call for those kinds of things. What was taken out was supervising departments, negotiating labor contracts, developing and presenting an annual budget, though we added in some responsibility for that, administering city operations. All of those things were removed. So I think what we heard from some of the people who were part of Ithaca's common council then, including a former mayor, was that they reviewed the position. They removed those things and they set a salary that they thought was reflective of the lowering of those expectations. That's probably not the right way to say it, but the lessening of the responsibilities that the previous mayor had had. I don't think that, I mean, I hear what Kayla is saying, but I don't think in the history of this city that the mayoral position was ever meant to be a primary occupation for anyone. And I think given that the idea was to have a professional manager, that I think the mayoral position, I'm not saying it's ceremonial and I think that that is, I think that if people think that in the community, I can see how they think it because that was talked about when Savante was here and it was like ribbon cuttings and I think people got the idea that like yeah, it's just a ceremonial position. And we all totally get that that's not the case. And we recognize what the current mayor is bringing to it and how much responsibility the mayor does still have with regard to setting policy. I think he's taken a huge amount of initiative I do sometimes think that it's an over involvement in the, you know my concerns about the budget. That's one example. But just to go back to the nuts and bolts of this, this proposal is 150% increase and we are in a budget year where we're looking at Already a five to six percent deficit, a five to six million dollar deficit that we have to try to meet. I think it's the wrong time to be doing this as it is the wrong time to be looking at increasing council member salaries. I know we're not onto that yet, but it's related. so you know i i can feel the temperature in the room that people are are interested in this so i guess i would say this um if you're going to look at increasing this i think you need to increase it in a way that's fairer than than giving 150 increase and calling it a cost of living adjustment i don't think that's appropriate if again if you use the old salary 61 489 um And we're 22% higher than that. So my recommendation, if you're going to really do this, is that you make this much lower than what you are currently proposing at $75,000.

I have Mr. Shapiro and then Mr. Nguyen, and then repeat hands.

I definitely very much appreciate all of the dialogue in the room. Um, I'm hearing a few different, I'm hearing lots of different opinions and I just want to say, I appreciate all of them. Um, I do, um, especially kind of, it resonates with me, what, uh, with all the person Sewell said about what is this tied to? Um, and when I thought about, um, the resolution we just passed to create a new governance committee, it was with that thought in mind that we need to do a little bit of research and a little bit of thinking about what we want from this role so that we could quantify what that role should be valued at and i don't think we're doing that here so i'm uncomfortable with that which is why i'd like to move that we just table this motion until after the governance committee comes back with recommendations to the full body so moved seconded by ms fabrizio discussion on the motion mr trumbull

Um, yeah, I guess I would just push back a little bit and say that I think, you know, June is super long down the line on the last time we had a committee looking at this. Um, you know, according to what we heard tonight, they didn't meet or they didn't accomplish much of anything. Um, and I'm, I'm not completely against it. I just think that. that if anything like we could always amend this to have a sunset provision too where maybe based on that committee we then revisit it at that point i just think right now to kayla's point if i'm thinking about running for mayor next year um and i want to be able to support my family that was one of my early points you know it's impossible to do that in Ithaca on $31,000. And I think to Alderperson Defendini's point too, this is an amazingly efficient form of Ithaca governance right now. We've gotten a lot done this year. And that's exactly what I want to keep seeing going forward. And I think if you um set a bar and then you just kind of let it collapse under you um it's it's debilitating it's really hard to rebuild things back as we've seen in some of our current work trying to fix mistakes made by some predecessors so um and and for the seventy five thousand dollars i'm not super tied to that number two i mean if someone wanted to try to amend that to something more like you know cost of living adjustment that's fine but A POLICE OFFICER FOR IPD STARTS AT 75,280, AND IT WAS JUST, YOU KNOW, A KIND OF REFERENCE POINT WHEN I WAS LOOKING THROUGH DIFFERENT CITY ROLES.

I'M JUST GOING TO NUDGE THE OLDER PERSON ON GERMANENESS AS THIS IS THE DEBATE, THE TABLE MOTION.

SORRY. BUT, YEAH, SORRY.

DEBATES ON TABLING. MR. SEWELL.

Yeah, the reason why I would support tabling it is, again, just to have some metric that this is tied to. I like that it's coming from somewhere, but this is very vague. If I go back, I mean, my constituents would kill me if I voted for this. But even if I was going to, I would want to at least say, here's what it's based on. I mean, normally, like at the county, we base it on, I think it's based on what they say, one and a half times what a regular legislator makes or something like that. like we could make it double what a common council or something but right now it's just not tied to anything so i think it makes a lot of sense to have metrics that then we can use to go forward and justify to people here's why we are deciding to make this a 75 000 position and having the commission go forward would be the best way to come up with those metrics miss fabrizio

I do agree with that. And I think, you know, I just went over the things that were taken out of the position. I guess, you know, I'm really interested to hear, and I think the public would be interested to hear what we think are the additional duties and responsibilities that have been added to the position that would warrant that kind of increase. because the salary that was assigned to it, again, was assigned based on the duties and responsibilities as written. And so I think that we need to articulate really clearly what are the additional things that have been added that would merit 150% increase. Ms. Schvetz?

I'm against, sorry, I'm against tabling for the time being, because I think the question here is whether or not you can survive on a salary like this. I think regardless of what the duties of a mayor are, it is not possible to be a mayor on 10 hours a week or 20 hours a week, even at the minimal duties. And that's what a part time job is. You need to be able to have a full time job and a part time job or two part time jobs. Nobody is doing this on 20 hours a week. So we're saying that the person who does this, whoever it is, has to either do it very poorly or they have to not have another job or have a part-time job. So I think we should tie it to the living wage for 40 hours a week. That would be around $62,000, I think. And then we can later kind of decide if that's a reasonable amount based on the duties. But I think we should make it a living wage for a full-time job.

We're debating tabling, which I'm... Against tabling. No, no, yours was. I just saw other hands go up. Any further debate on tabling the motion? Because I do actually have a list of other folks. Yeah, so any further debates on tabling? Seeing none. All those in favor of tabling the motion? Those opposed? Okay, that fails three to six. Mr. Nguyen, you're next.

So I agree with a lot of what my colleagues, old persons, Trumbull, Diffende and Matos have said, and Hannah, old person Schwartz. The mayoral salary was always too low. I had discussions about this with Sivante. He thought it was a political third rail. And so I offered to work to increase it. He didn't want me to. And as a young, he has two kids now, but as a young single person, he could barely eke by on that salary at the time. But it was not a glamorous lifestyle. And it's why he eventually took on like a part-time job. And when I think about what the mayor does, even today, even after they're not running city hall, there's nothing I'd want to carve out of his duties. Robin already mentioned this, that his advocacy for things like the dri i'm sorry i'm saying he i'm talking about the office that's the other thing too is that someone mentioned like we're giving robert a raise which i would agree or sorry disagree with vehemently uh i want to give the office a an increase to match the amount of dedication and um and time put into the office to advocate for the city to Rangel Council to interact with the city manager and do the due diligence needed to give performance reviews and feedback and all those types of things. And so... i'm not really compelled by the position was never meant to be i'm observing the position today and what i want to see out of future mayors and that's why i'm supporting it ms montos

Thank you. Piggybacking a little bit off of what Alderperson DeFedini said earlier as well and kind of addressing what Alderperson Fabrizio said earlier, I think one thing that this council can agree on is that we've heard several of times there's been years and years of deferred maintenance and previous administrations didn't handle X, Y, Z, and now we're dealing with it today. I think once again, and we're hanging our hats on The opposition is hanging their hats on the fact that previous mayors have said or in previous administration it has been right and And at that level of hours performed on the job, obviously things weren't getting done. Things were falling by the wayside. Balls were getting dropped. Once again, this is ensuring that our mayor in our position is working with our city manager diligently and making sure the deferred maintenances, the things that are falling by the wayside are not happening anymore. They're also working to advocate with state officials, federal officials to bring in more money, to bring in policies, so on, so forth. So to me, just this doesn't make sense.

Mr. Trumbull.

Um, yeah, just to kind of go back to what I said earlier, um, about the 75 K number, it was just, again, based off, um, you know, looking at other comparable positions within the city, a planner is making $69,599 right now, police officers making 75,280. Um, I I'm totally fine if we want to go the route that all the person suggested. Um, I think this is again, just a step towards restarting the conversation in a good way. I'm also again open to adding an amendment to make this, you know, sort of a sunset provision where you revisit it after Alderperson Shapiro's committee has come forward with their conclusion and findings. And maybe then we reevaluate whether or not it is merited. But I think, like I said before, with petitioning starting in February, with a bunch of, you know, people in the city may be considering whether or not they want to take this role on. with our current mayor, you know, living on a salary that I think is unbecoming of the role of mayor, but also just, you know, almost any salary in the city. It's like, it's really hard to live on that full time. So I do think it's still important to me to try to get some sort of change forward. But I just kind of wanted to explain my thought process there.

Mr. Sewell.

yeah i'll i'll take you up on that i'll make a proposal that we had a sunset provision to this that we reevaluate it after the Commission goes finishes its task. Is that clear enough language.

All the person's tool and i'm only attempting to interpret yeah yeah yeah right well here offended all the person's tool is moving that the common Council. be required to reevaluate the salary of the mayor following the adopted recommendations of the newly established governance committee?

Yeah.

Seconded by Mr. Trumbull. Debate on the motion? All those in favor?

just a procedural point sorry um because this is a local law if you guys change the language now we'll need to have the language in place and we'll need to be laid on the table again so that it's just yeah what which which is fine because this is a committee meeting right there's time to do it i'm just saying if you guys are going to make changes uh it will have to be laid on the table again in advance of voting i just wanted to flag In other words, it means it needs to be brought before us. Like that email sent that Rob sent out saying, tell me what that means. Yeah. So just this is why you guys pay me. But a local law has specific procedural requirements. One is that it has to be presented to the body a sufficient number of days in advance. I don't want to misquote it. It's like around two weeks. I think it's ten days, ten days counted. Funny. It's around two weeks, so they just need to be the head of the language in place ahead of time, and there needs to be a public hearing on it. after it's been laid on the table and then and only then can you vote on it so there's going to be substantive language changes that'll just need to get sorted out before it gets laid on the table again and out of clarification does there would there need to be a public hearing for this yeah oh there will be oh yeah there will be a public yeah for this one it has to happen okay yeah that's thank you for that so um i will call for the vote with at following the clarification um i uh so the

we will um do we trust the city attorney to have fidelity to the intent i trust the city attorney fidelity to the intent so that we're not wordsmithing the particular okay so all those in favor of mr sewell's uh amendment those opposed that carries eight to one with mr win against um and then next in the queue was City Council Chambers, Miss for Brazil took me a second remember I didn't write it down sorry.

City Council Chambers, yeah I guess i'm just uncomfortable with again pulling a number, a number out of the air. City Council Chambers, If we're talking about like I guess I want clarification from Robin I mean you titled this as a cost of living adjustment, so if it's a cost of living adjustment, and I think I don't have the math in front of me, but I think we should go. the 30,000 of the current salary and add the appropriate cost of living adjustment onto it, if that's what we're talking about doing, which I think is less than what Hannah has suggested.

Ms. Schwartz?

I'm sorry, I'm a humanities student. I miscalculated that. The correct calculation, so I'm using $26 an hour, that's based on the worker center alternatives credit union living wage, 40 hours a week, times four times 12. I think that's correct, is 49,920. So that would be paying the mayor a living wage. I think that is kind of the minimum that I would support. But I think we should explore if the duty is actually more than 40 hours.

Thank you for redoing the math.

So like normally, this is when I call for a vote, but none of you have actually put forward an amendment on the Mr. Spiro.

I'd like to make a motion to amend the salary of the mayor to reflect the living wage times 40 hours a week, which was the

uh so one let's just uh let's just do the math really quick and then two i'm pre-empting mr kessler for things like this we can i think your attention is the calculation of whatever that is but we have to put a specific dollar value not a formula You could just do that math again.

With 52 weeks, instead of 12 times four because there's more than four weeks and some oh that's all yeah I just want to make sure that the number is if we're going to call it living wage and we have other living. Okay, i'm job 26 oh sorry no if we have we have we have specific requirements in our living they want to make sure the 80 the.

26 times 40 times 52 is $54,080. it's like 2560 I think we can.

living wage whoa hold on let's let's all like this is real i want to take back my motion i don't feel educated enough to make this motion let's just stop interrupting and cross-talking mr shapiro i'm gonna your intention to move whatever the tompkins county worker center living wage number is

I am going to withdraw my motion and invite my colleagues to do something similar if they feel so moved.

Mr. Sewell, you're recognized. I will take up that motion. And the motion is the, so, so, so the idea is, so let's all, let's all get on the Google machine. Let's get on the Google machine. Hopkins County worker center. Thank you. Living wage.

It's calculated as $25 and 8 cents or what's Google is saying. It's $25 and 8 cents per hour.

And then we should use the city's particular method for determining how that comes out.

40 hours and 52 weeks. You're proposing $52,166.40. That works. That is moved by Mr. Sewell. We have the attorney math. Thank you. Maybe the second worst person to check. Seconded by Mr. DeFendini. I can debate on Mr. Sewell's amendment. All those in favor of Mr. Sewell's amendment. Those opposed. That carries eight to one with Mr. Wynn against. The main motion on the table is now the unaltered council proposal and $52,166.40 for the mayor's office. Further debate, Ms. Schvetz.

I think it would be consistent for council to be paid a living wage at 20 an hour. because we are supposed to work 20 hours a week and we should all be paid a living wage because we deserve the right to live. So that would be $26,000. Yes.

Moved by Ms. Schvett, seconded by Ms. Matos, recognizing Mr. Sewell.

I can't remember the order. I'd like to divide the question. Can I do that now? Can we do that? Come on, Victor.

So this is going to have to come back and we're effectively rewriting a local law on the fly. Like, if Council wants to local laws. Yes. If if Council wants to make it into 2 local laws, we can do that because the one that's on the table now isn't passable in its current form. So we've got to go through this procedural steps again. So I think I think administratively, if you just want to.

i think that would be fine because these really are these feel like two very separate things to me so i that would be fine with me and then i'll make robin do the heavy lifting of writing all of the words and i'll just legalize them but that i'm proposing that we mr sewell moves to divide the question is there a second second by mr shapiro debate on dividing the question i would just say that i think it makes sense to do this because it's going to help the discussion move along quicker um because we can approve the mayor's thing and then we can talk about our own which are really kind of two different things

Mr trumbull you recognize yeah i'm and i'm totally willing to, as for city attorney kessler's you know words to the heavy lifting.

All those in favor of dividing the question. unanimous. Which one do we go to now. we're on that okay further debate. Mr video.

I just want to say that I will be voting against it. And it's not a reflection of the current mayor in any way. I think that we need to do an evaluation. And I don't think that we should be making these kinds of budgetary decisions outside of the budget season and this close to a budget season, especially in a year when we are looking at a looming deficit. So I will be voting against it. Mr. Trumbull?

I will just counter that I think it makes sense to do it before the budget season, especially before the new fiscal year, and that now, for perspective, with the current adjusted $52,000, the mayor will be making slightly more money than a late equipment operator and maintainer for the city of Ithaca.

Mr. Sewell.

I would like to point out that the way that this is being done compared to how this was done two years ago is much better, and I was going to vote against this, but I am now going to vote for it because Mr. Trumbull has been so accommodating. Alder person Trumbull, and I really appreciate that. Thank you, ma'am.

Seeing no further debate, all those in favor of the local law being advanced to the October council meeting with public hearing? This is for the office of the mayor. All those in favor? Those opposed that carries eight to one with Ms. Fabrizio against, um, we are now you're technically the prime sponsor of this, Mr. Trumbull, just cause it was originally your, but you know, we're now on the council, uh, debate, uh, Mr. Uh, Shapiro, you are recognized. Sure.

I just responding to, uh, all the president's vets about the, uh, 20 hours a week. Um, I think it'd be great for us to do a time study. If that were the case, I I'll admit to everybody, I do not work 20 hours a week on this job. I COME TO ALL MY MEETINGS PREPARED. I SIT AT ALL MY ASSIGNMENTS AND I PREPARE MYSELF FOR ALL MY ASSIGNMENTS. I RESPOND TO CONSTITUENT EMAILS WHEN THEY RESPOND TO ME. I READ MY NEIGHBORHOOD LIST SERVES AND STAY UP TO DATE ON THE COMMENTARY THAT IS MADE AVAILABLE TO ME THROUGH THE LIST SERVE AND THROUGH THE WAYS THAT PEOPLE GET IN TOUCH WITH ME. AND I DO NOT WORK 20 HOURS A WEEK.

um and i wonder if other people feel similarly but i do not think most of us work 20 hours a week if i had to guess i have uh miss schwetz miss matos and i would just other hands if they went down quickly because i okay miss schwetz you're first

The reason why I say 20 is because when we look at the current council, almost every single person here is in a higher point in their career in some sort of supervisory position and has control over their own hours. So either remote, a manager, et cetera. It is not possible, in my view, to work a 9 to 5, 40 hours a week and do this job with the work that it requires and that constituents deserve. And the reason I can do it is because I'm a student. But if I were to work 40 hours a week, I don't think I would be able to do as much as I currently do for this. And I think all of you are able to do this because you also have flexible job schedules. I think, I mean, it's pretty clear here. Like, can someone raise their hand? Is anyone here work a nine to five, not remote and has a boss? You're at a high level in your career.

I work a nine to five and I have a boss.

Okay. In a place where you.

Don't work remote.

Okay. The point is we have a lot of flexibility at this table is what I'm saying in our schedules. And that's why we're able to do it. And I think council should be, you know, designed for somebody who is at an early place in their career or, you know, not able to have that control over their schedule to be able to do a good job. And I think 20 hours a week is a reasonable way to do that. but i'm flexible with like 15. but right now we're not even right now it's like it's not even a living wage at i think 15. yeah it's less than 15. so miss matos

Yeah, I agree with Alderperson Chavetz. I think, honestly, I'm privileged in my own full-time position to have flexibility to allow to do the work. I would say, though, to Alderperson Shapiro's point, I think each one of our schedules look a little bit differently. Yesterday I spent an hour and a half alone in just one meeting that was pertaining to the city and one of my roles as a council member. And on top of that, I'm going to use my previous argument. Average one-bedroom apartment in the city of Ithaca is $1,861. We aren't even touching that. So once again, we want the folks, we want real representation here at the table representing our different wards. We have to create more opportunities for this position to be attractive to other people. So I do support this amendment.

Mr. Sewell. So we have like an incredible privilege here. We are one of the few groups of people that get to set their own salary. There's just not something you get to do. And so we need to take that very seriously. Not that you're not, but I just, I wanna say we have to take that very seriously. My life is different this year. I'm not teaching because teaching's changing. So I'm working. I'll be stocking shelves tomorrow morning at 7.30 a.m. And I know we've got a brother there who also works. We have regular jobs. And I have gotten a number of emails from constituents about priorities I'd like to see. Got one today about someone who really, really is frustrated about the roads and the state of the roads. And the roads are not good, and we screwed up this year. Um, and there we're not even going to get it all paved and if I could take the portion of my salary that I would get from this and put it directly into public works, I would so much rather do that. That is so much more useful to me. I would rather my money go to. uh someone in the controller's office i would rather this money go to to another grant uh person i mean i just i see a lot more useful things for this money and also no jobs pay 26 an hour like that is not a thing i understand it's a living wage we can make it a thing because we get to decide our wages But I can't go out and just apply for jobs. I mean, that's not true. People do get paid, right. But your basic level job, you don't get $26 an hour. It doesn't happen. So we are very privileged to say, you know what? We're now going to start paying ourselves $26 an hour. And it kind of bothers me. Mr. Fabrizio?

Thank you. It bothers me too. public service. There have been so many people for so many years who have done this job, who have worked full-time jobs and raised families and everything else. So I just don't buy this thing that people can't fit this into their lives. There are different chapters in our lives. We all have many chapters in our lives if we get to live long, right? Some chapters, it's going to be more conducive for people to do it than others. If you have young children or you're starting a business or you work a zillion hours in another job, these are chapters when it's not going to be feasible. It doesn't really matter what the pay is in that sense. You just don't have time to fit it into your life. I just don't buy that argument. What I would say is I don't think that people are spending 20 hours a week doing this job. I think that we're more than fairly compensated for what we're doing and I don't think we're doing like a really bang up job. So to your point about roads and so many other things, deferred maintenance, so many other things, we're not exactly getting gold stars. I would say this, this is the only job in your entire life that you are going to get without having to have provided a resume, without going through an interview, without having a job evaluation, without having any experience that's relevant to this. You don't even need to know the street names to be able to get this job. You don't need to know the street names of the city. You don't need to have seen a tax bill, let alone paid a tax bill. So you can tell I'm getting pretty worked up about this. I think this is an outrageous proposal to pay every council member $26,000 a year, if I heard that correctly. And if you look at any comparative salaries for council members in other communities, there are plenty that are $6,000, $8,000. We are being paid a lot. And I think it's also just so insensitive and callous really to our community that you would think to give ourselves a big raise that would be over, $200,000 a year, $260,000 a year in a year when we are facing a deficit as we are facing and when people are paying the kinds of taxes that they pay to live in this community and everybody on this table talks continuously about affordability. think about the affordability of paying your taxes, which are passed on to your people who own property, who rent property. And this is, it's an outrage, and I'm so disappointed that we would even be having this discussion. It's really disturbing.

I just need to briefly jump the queue. I will need to entertain a motion to extend if we're going to continue debate. We'll auto adjourn in seven minutes. I think Ms. Matos, for how long?

I'll start with 10 minutes.

Is there a second? Second by Mr. Nguyen. All those in favor? Those opposed? Eight to one. Ms. Fabrizio against. Next in the queue was Mr. DeFendini, but I think he withdrew. So any further debate on this? Mr. Shapiro. I mean, I could see whether with a

where everything's going here today. I just want to mention what I know some of the public speakers mentioned today that so many of us do have jobs, right? So that means many of us are getting health insurance through our jobs. But some folks are able to get health insurance through the job here. And it's not often the case in many employers where you can work a part-time job and get full-time health benefits. And that's something that we get offered here. And I think that's just something we should consider in the future. And I'm not going to make any motions or amendments about that, but I do think it's on my mind.

I kind of want to recognize myself, but I haven't done the Googling that I wanted to do. Anybody else want to? Mr. Trumbull.

Yeah, I just did the 9% cost of living increase for this one. I didn't expect that to jump up that much. But I mean, I do hear Alderperson Schvett's points. I think that it's really hard to estimate the amount of hours a good public servant puts in. That said, I think given some of the concerns about incoming budget stuff, I think that, you know, jumping all the way up to $26,000 should be nearly a $10,000 raise for each person does feel like a lot. So, I mean, I think this is a conversation to have maybe the 15 hours we talked about, which I think would come out to a little more like 19,000 or something. but that's not too far off from the 18 600 i proposed to um but just food for thought um because i do think that you know as to all the person sewell's point it is an uncomfortable position to be deciding your own salary i just want to recognize myself briefly um i do want to note that given the 16 districts at tompkins county legislature

There is a differential of only 100. Every legislator represents 108 people more than every council member, if that is a useful metric by any means. There's more of them. I think they're paid 22-something. But we represent functionally the same number of people individually. yeah each ward because it's weird because our war i'm sorry they have 16 legislators at 22 yeah i'm just i'm just saying they represent they each represent 66 000 uh 6608 people ish going off of the census numbers of 105 000 in uh uh and the clerk is nodding yes uh in tompkins county uh mr shapiro you're next oh Oh, that's your next and I thought I knew I saw a hand in my. You're on the list, Margaret.

Thank you. I think decreasing to 15 is reasonable, but I think we're not talking about just our salaries. Like we've said, we're talking about future council members and making this accessible for people in all parts of their career and all walks of life. And I think that's important. So, um, I'm going to withdraw the 20 hours and if someone would like to amend for, uh, 15 hours to the 19,000, um, that would be friendly.

Mayor Mrakas, Mission even Danny i'll motion that motion to. Mayor Mrakas, To amend to 15 hours at the living wage at was it 19. Mayor Mrakas, 2508 2508 is it 2508 yeah oh but.

Mayor Mrakas, Which is 19 562. Mayor Mrakas, Yes, thank you. Mayor Mrakas, Again anybody else um. Mayor Mrakas, Oh, I need a second second by miss mottos discussion is for ratio. amend to 10 hours you can move that i would like to move that and i i have some other things is there a second second wait hold on wait so okay you guys know how much i love russian nesting amendments um okay we're all because we're also so okay oh Okay, now that I've- Amendment. Okay, couple things. So, amendment on the amendment, Russian nesting amendments, my favorite, no problem at all. Problem, Ms. Fabrizio, the calculation of 2508 times 10 times 52 is 13,041, 60, which is illegal because you cannot reduce the salary of an elected official during their term. okay fair enough which i know wasn't your intention i just until i actually did the calculus i was like right that's a new york state law thing probably not your intention right i would whatever the math comes out to to keep our salary at the same salary as what i would like to motion there you go yeah that's that's just yeah i mean that's that's just yeah Like, I think I think so. Let me discuss. I know we're all getting a little punchy. Yeah, I think for discussion purposes, you are interested in knowing what that works out to on an hourly basis. But it's sort of immaterial for the resolution because you would be voting against whatever the motion is.

Well, OK, let me let me speak to the last motion then. So two and three quarter years ago, the council salary was increased by 30.1%. That was in 2024, 30.1%. We have asked the departments to identify a 5% decrease in spending or a 5% increase in revenue if I'm understanding the city manager's direction correctly, yes? So giving ourselves a raise after only two years ago when we got a 30%, 30.1% increase, that was a major salary adjustment. That was not a cost of living increase. So average salary increase I think like for this year is something like 3.5%. What you were proposing originally, Robin, was what percent? Nine percent, that's what I thought. That's hugely more than what any average people living in the city are getting at their job. I worked decades, I never got a 9% increase. I don't know anybody who did. So if you wanna do an increase, I think you should go with an average salary increase, which is like...

do you know uh can i ask the city manager oh no that's still too complicated i'll just do cpi if that's what you're asking yeah um and it was last raised in 23 in december i think like three and a half percent is sort of the an average uh it would come out to eighteen thousand six hundred and nine fifty one i would like to propose that if if okay all right

Wait, but isn't that 8%? Isn't that 9%?

Folks, folks, folks. You actually do have the floor, but everybody else, please stop with the crosstalk. I'm sitting here on the Department of, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and I got, I'm doing this so Megan can sit here and just do it with me. I got 17041, which I think is what you all make,

091.

Okay, so it's going to go up. 091, December 2023. Has the same buying power in August 2026. September is not over. We can't do that calculation. $18,664.12, which just since I'm sitting here playing math, 664.12 divided by 52 weeks times 2508 comes out to 14 hours a week and change. 14.31 hours per week. If that triangulation is helpful to anyone, I'm just sitting here doing the math for you. That's still $6,500. Point of clarification. So that's $2.50 per constituent.

Just a point of clarification. Margaret, are you in the middle of a proposal right now?

She has the floor. She's maybe making a motion.

Yeah, make a motion. We can second it or not, but let's move on.

I think that is too much. I don't know. I just don't agree with increasing the salary by 9%. So I would say I'd make a motion to increase the 17091 by 3%.

Okay, so all the person Fabrizio is amending all the person Defendini's amendment, which all the person Defendini's amendment is $19,562.40. And all the person Fabrizio is moving that the salary for common council be set at $17,603.73. Is there a second? oh boy okay that motion fails we are back on i have my i have my stack don't worry um uh we are back on the amendment proposed by mr difendini mr sewell you are recognized thank you uh i just ran across this in my email i forgot about this so i wanted to share with you guys if you didn't get a chance to read it this person asked us to read it in council meetings

I like to try to hold up to some of it. I'm not going to read the whole thing. I'll paraphrase heard on the radio that common council is voting tonight to give itself a significant cost of living raise all the person.

I'm only going to interject because we have as a practice, a statement to not read written comments into the record. Oh, I didn't know that. Then if we get rid of that, anyone can email us saying, read this into the record and we will, you know, like,

they have to come to public comment or we can read what they send us but we don't read statements into the record all right i'll skip it then and what apologies no that's okay um i i will say it was pointed out to us that and i don't know if this is true or not but it was said that uh all other city employees got a three percent raise so uh nine percent seemed like a lot i don't know but the thing i was gonna mention i'm not i'm not totally sure why the county came up but um i do want to point out that the county's budget is three times the size of ours so you know compensation it's a little bit wonkier that way i i i only did it because i thought i heard someone reference the county and i was like oh okay so yeah that's maybe i don't i don't think they're necessarily good comparisons miss um miss matos you're next i'd like to call the question

Is there a second to call the question? Okay, seconded by Mr. DeFendini. All those in favor of calling the question on the amendment, which is just... So... I know I have four more minutes. Don't worry. So if you vote in the affirmative, you are going to immediately vote on the amendment we still would have to then dispose of the actual local law as amended, right? But the amendment by Mr. DeFendini is 18,000, no, 19, sorry. I have so many equations up here right now. $19,562.40. All those in favor of calling the question, which is to end debate. Those opposed. That's the weirdest. That's the weirdest constellation of votes I've seen in a while. That carries six to three with the mayor, all the person win and all the person Fabrizio against. All those in favor of Mr. Defendini's amendment for amending the main motion to come in at $19,562.40. Those opposed? That carries five to four. Main motion discussion?

None.

Five, I didn't see. It was, yeah, no, no, no, it's fine. It was Schwetz, Trumbull, Matos, Difendini, me. And so... For further debate, I want to just look at this.

So this is 19,540.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Sewell, what is it? Five minutes. Seconded by Matos. All those in favor? That carries. Those opposed? That carries eight to one. Mr. Shapiro against. Yeah. So this OK. So this does work out to be exactly 15 hours a week. i feel a couple of things i feel that i strongly agree with mish vets that this should be that the formula should be pegged to the living wage because i think that again a the city's living wage employer um my understanding is that even our temporary

It's not true of every single position within the city for some minor complicated reasons, but essentially we are living wage employer across a vast majority of our positions at the city of Ithaca.

I think. We've been here for 4 hours. I know that Alderperson Fleming used to regularly say 15, and I know there's a lot of heterogeneity. You don't want the credit. I'll give it to you. I know Alderperson Fabrizio works well in excess of that, as did former Alderperson Brock. But I also recognize there's a lot of heterogeneity. Um, I think it needs to be pegged to the living wage because I think. At core, something that's always been a through line for me is. We do want public service to be accessible to people and. I'm like, I have three jobs, right? Like I have, I have three, I have two other part-time jobs in addition to this, all of you have other jobs, but I also recognize that that 15 is a sliding scale where we're about to enter a period of time where you're going to be regularly putting in 30 or 40 hours. Um, attending budget meetings and presumably preparing for budget meetings um it is a large number but i'm sorry um but i think I just don't see what, like, I guess the only thing that would really just kind of like push me to think a different way is like, if, if, if many of you were like, I work well in excess of that. Cause for me, like the, the adjustable parameter here is number of hours, not what the, not what the per hour figure should be. Cause I just have a, I have, I personally have a moral belief that people should be paid a living wage like I just think that like we live in a very expensive community and yes, like that's often driven by the extremely, uh, large, uh, non-profit property owners in this community that has trickle-down effects through the cost of housing in this community. We have two really fat tails on the income distribution here, rather than a standard normal distribution for incomes. We have a lot of folks who work downtown who don't make a tremendous amount of money, and then we have a lot of folks who work up the hill who do. so for me like the the the driving dollar value parameter has to be the living wage i just think that that is a can to mr sewell's points earlier about like what are we tying it to um it has to be i think that's just like the good baseline hourly rate so to speak um i guess i would just yeah put it to the group like You know I know two of us turn in records of activities for the state retirement system, I know what mine is I know what yours is because i've seen it. If 15 feels equitable in terms of the actual amount of time that y'all work i'm supportive of this, but I. got a little distracted by the 15,000 counter proposals and. the dollar value is a real thing all the person it is absolutely a real thing um but i also think that the council here now and the council that comes after is entitled to be compensated fairly for the amount of work they put in and i want to know um what yeah if that's true of you all i'm sorry oh okay um sorry uh miss matos how long i'll do 10 seconded by Mr when all those in favor. Those opposed. Those opposed. Okay, so unanimous unanimous just for the was annoyed as we all of ourselves, we are, we can be let's just make not make a deputy clerk job harder than it needs to be um who was next sorry I kind of just asked you all an open ended question anyone want to respond to that. Mr. Wynn, yeah.

I think Robin's number is the right balance between hitting the time we put in and I voted against, sorry, I'm trying to be respectful of both the taxpayer and the optics of the situation. It is always going to be at some, to the mayor's point, it's always going to be kind of arbitrary. And it does go on a sliding scale. There are weeks, the fifth week is my favorite week of the month because my obligations are very low. Budget, super high. If I have any of my liaison weeks, also very bad. I frankly sacrifice the, so I'm extremely privileged to Hannah's point, probably the most out of anyone in this room. um but i put it at risk for this job that pays very little because i i'm in love with the city and i i love working for it um so it's i have such a hard time with this um because uh so i'm gonna pledge to any raise i get on donating but again that's because of my extreme um privilege here and i want to the points made around the table get much closer to i think you all deserve a lot more and the only reason why i've tempered the vote is because i am trying to be respectful of the taxpayer and the optics of of uh the challenging budget situation that we're in um but i am now that we're if i have kept track of things properly we're back to robin's original proposal and i'm going to support it

Um, yeah, I would actually completely echo, um, all the person wins points. Um, but that's what I love about, uh, this council floor. Um, and all the bright minds here, um, is that I, I completely agree. It should go cost of living. Um, that 15 hours is more reasonable. Um, and I'm just continuously impressed by our abilities here to disagree, um, but also to reach compromise. Um, so yeah.

No further discussion.

All right. All those in favor of advancing this to a public hearing and vote at the October council meeting. Those opposed? That carries six to three with all the persons Sewell, Fabrizio, and Shapiro against. May I request unanimous consent to move council liaison reports and committee reports to council email that copies the clerk's office for record keeping and the city manager's office just in case, you know, it's something that he should be aware of. Oh, just consent. Any objections? All right. With that, all our business is disposed of. We are adjourned.