Common Council - Special Meeting

You got to start giving out their fastest one. I think you can get us done in 22.

Good evening. Welcome to the November 12th special meeting of the ETHA Common Council. We'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. I'll note that Alderperson Brown has texted me a few minutes ago that she is unwell and will not be joining us this evening. The rest of council is here. Since we have some members of the public and presumably some number of high school students completing their uh course requirement, I will read the emergency evacuation notice. Uh in the case of an emergency, we are to take one of two exits. Uh the one that most of you came through or the one over my left shoulder and we are to head west towards the corner of South Kuga and Green. Please do not cross the street. Those with restricted mobility, in the event of emergencies, it is best to move to one of the stairwells and first responders will arrive to aid you. Uh, and that might include Mr. Keel, which is a little riff. Uh, in the event of other emergencies, you'll be notified at that time. We want everyone to be aware of the surroundings and offer help to when it is not to your own detriment as you were your own best advocate. With that, uh, agenda review. Any additions and deletions to the agenda? None. All right. Uh, with that I will invite up Rich. Are you representing the town or is I don't Oh, okay. CJ, come on up. I thought Rod was coming. My apologies. Uh, we have representatives from the town of Ithaca here to talk a little bit about a project that has been bouncing around between uh towns corporation council and the city attorney's office around a proposed joint uh historic preservation ordinance. Uh this is an opportunity for council to be briefed on this proposal as it was started CJ five years ago.

Uh yes, 2020. Yes. So it's been a while. I think Mr. Wyn is the only member of council who is still on from when this was initiated. So we thought that uh since the town has a vested interest in moving this forward that we would have an opportunity to let council uh hear a little bit about the background and ask any questions that they might need and then we will move on to our budget vote. So, uh, CJ, floor is yours, unless there's anything you'd like me to add further. Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you. And can you just I think it is, but just make sure your green light is on for your microphone. Uh, yes, I believe so. Everyone can hear me. Okay. You'd be amazed at the Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. Um, well, good evening. Um, uh, my name is TJ Randall and I'm the director of planning for the town of Ithaca. And uh a little background on this. Uh so my predecessor Sue Ritter uh worked for some time with um Lisa Nicholas predecessor Joanne Cornish uh to uh begin investigating the idea of a a joint um Ithaca landmarks preservation commission and a joint historic preservation program. So, um I believe uh town supervisor Rod How had sent a memo or just briefly um hitting some of the high points of of why um this particular shared service would be in both the benefit of the city and the town. And um I'm here to essentially answer questions about those kinds of uh shared services, a potential timeline um and and obviously answer any questions about our experience working with um historic preservation planner Brian McCracken uh who has done a series of um public outreach already um including a historic tax credits for homeowners webinar and uh other public outreach which is really uh interesting and um entertaining as well as informative. So, um really lucky to have him on staff and we would obviously love the opportunity um to be able to share in those services um and the duay the cost um of his work. So, um yeah, in in a nutshell um I'm happy to u answer any questions you may have.

Thanks very much, colleagues. Mr. St. Perez, I just want to say that uh I'm very excited about possibility of this furthering collaboration. In my experience, a good number of ethicans uh do not know whether they live in the town or city of Ithaca. Um and I see us working together to to do our historic preservation as just absolutely good and a costsaver. Mr. Letoman,

thank you very much. I appreciate your interest and willingness to collaborate across municipal borders. I think it's better for for everyone. Um, I'm I'm personally not supportive just because I don't believe how the ILPC currently operates is conducive to effective historic preservation and to our housing goals as the city. Um, and I think they sort of end up erecting a lot of barriers that are only that are only able to be crossed by people with uh significant means. Um, and I don't think that's good for our housing goals and I don't think that's good for a lot of our constituents, but I do appreciate the effort at trying to make this work and um, look forward to further municipal collaboration. Mr. Ke, no. Um, I do have a couple of comments and questions on my end, which is um, I think that as this item moves forward for further discussion, um, I do I know that there have been items that have been working worked back and forth the last few years. I do think that um to the point of some of my colleagues raised over email, I'm less sharing services I support. I do have some open questions about the idea of granting non city residents uh the authority to make or break historic designations within our own right. there'd be like two board seats that are proposed to be secounded for town members um uh town representatives rather and so like I think that on the one hand uh I think my position on like if we would like to closely collaborate government to government across the board on everything uh I'd be more than happy to do that but uh I I do think that there are some um challenges to uh incorporating you know at the end of the day city taxpayers are the ones footing the bill for the majority of city services. And um I have

some concerns about granting votes to members of a city body that don't reflect uh our community members. Um I would perhaps be open to a conversation where uh the town uh expressed preferences or nominations of city residents uh to reflect their shared interests. But I think that or if there was such a way and I'm not going to ask the city attorney to weigh in on this with zero uh prep time, but um you know if there was such a way to ensure that these these members were voting members for uh decisions that were townsp specific, I mean I think that would be another alternative. But but creating a sort of uh more diffuse accountability structure for how the city makes these determinations is something I'm a little bit uncomfortable with. Um Mr. Shapiro, did you have a hand? No. Mr. Gil.

Um, I guess I'll jump jump in here just briefly um to say things I've already said before, but um I think that there's there's drastic problems with the way the ILPC functions in the city of Ithaca. Um, I think as I've mentioned, College Town is a perfect example of this and the kind of the distinction between uh the new development in College Town and the older housing stock which has been created by a historic district that as far as I can tell um is completely arbitrary. Um, and I don't think I can support uh moving forward with this plan. I think for all the reasons that the mayor stated and and Mr. Letterman. Um, but also because I I think that in order for us to even have a conversation about the ILPC, we need to seriously consider uh reworking their charge and the way they go about thinking about historic preservation in the city of Ithaca.

Miss Ritzio.

Yeah, just a quick comment. Thank you for coming and thank you for being interested in in talking with the city and uh and in working with the city. Um, this is not, however, on the top of my list of things that I'm hoping that the town and the and the city put their heads together on. We have so many things to get sorted out. Um, on the top of my list would be that fire contract. Um, so I guess I just want to say I welcome the opportunity to get everybody to the table. Let's talk about like some really big things. um housing, uh fire, etc. Um this is someplace in there, but I just I I see these other things as being um just unresolved and I don't think that they should be at this point. So I really urge those discussions to just take care you know let's take care of the matters that we have at hand that we need to uh put our heads together on. Thank you

Mr. Leman. So I should ask are there other areas where you feel that uh increased cooperation could be useful in addition to this or exploring maybe on the land use housing side or more generally just wherever you want to take that? No, that's a really good question. And I'd have to think about the implementation that the town has done on the uh 2014 comprehensive plan really alongside the city's uh 2015 comprehensive plan. I think a lot of good progress has been made. Um but um going back to this, I believe there was one point about the concern about the makeup of the uh preservation commission. My understanding is that city residency is not a requirement um for membership

presently. Okay. Okay. I don't believe anyway I may be mistaken about that but

a sort of larger comment about um as my colleagues alluded to uh exploring how we are going to uh look at some of our quao digital bodies. Um you know at the end of the day uh there's an enormous amount of right everyone's heard me say this before I'm still going to do my thing. um right large we're the largest incomuter city uh in the state um as a as a percentage of our population um you know our residents bear an enormous infrastructural cost um and while I recognize that it is limiting uh for us to only have you know our six square miles uh as as a geography for including members on our boards I do think that at the end of the day folks who are making decisions that uh have an indirect or a direct sort of financial impact on the um are we need to ensure that there's the appropriate sort of like balance of uh the impact that the actual rateayers or taxpayers are going to have in our community. Um and and some of our boards and commissions don't require that. Right. And I think that's something that you know as we look more holistically at re at revising elements of the charter that's something that's going to be looked at.

Okay. Uh yeah. So we are always um open to collaboration. Um you know especially with um Lisa and her team and planning um I think this was seen as a initial foray we could make in terms of um small some small part of land use and um the thing that I think would be great about it is extending historic preservation throughout our um shared geography. I mean you um probably know um and um council member did mention that sometimes people don't even realize whether they live in the city or the town and this seems like a really um wonderful way to advance um that shared identity while also um advancing these shared services even in just a small way. So it' be um something of a token I suppose in uh the dollar value of it, but I think it'd be very meaningful um to people in the town and and perhaps even the city too and defay some of the costs of the historic preservation program. So

yeah, all the president, please. Yeah, I was just wondering, can you give us a sense of the scope and the size of of the town's planning department? Yes. Uh so uh we have uh myself and we have uh five staff as well. So we have two senior planners uh planner sustainability planner and our administrative assistant and uh we cover 35 square miles here as our town supervisor says we are the quisant um around the city and uh yeah and so your planning your sorry your building department is completely separate. Uh that's correct. So that's uh zoning and code enforcement. That's right. And how many people are in that?

Off the top of my head, let's see. I believe I want to say eight or nine. Um maybe 10. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Of course.

Um I don't see any further questions. So I think I think um you know this has been a uh helpful initial conversation from this council's perspective. I think um council members as you've had time to digest the materials uh that were circulated please um follow up with any questions and we do have presently a sort of government-to-government working group looking at a number of issues and so we can incorporate uh any prospective changes uh on a future issue. CJ, I'll have to thank you and apologize that you're likely to have this conversation again not too soon since five of my colleagues chose not to seek re-election and this board will be substantially revised uh in a couple of weeks here. But we appreciate having you. Um

absolutely it's five. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Thank you very much.

Thank you all for your service. Very much appreciate it. Colleagues, with that we're going to go real slow because I know there are some questions about procedure. So, don't worry. I will be here to to handhold. First, may I have someone move the 2026 budget for adoption? Moved by all the person St. Perez. Second by all the person Kumar. All the person for Britzio, it is my understanding that you have a motion to reconsider a previous question pertaining to the elimination of a park manager position that you intend to reclass to the initial funded position of the assistant supervisor of streets for the dollar value of

$115600 115,697. Does that correctly reflect your motion? It does. [clears throat] Thank you. Is there a second to the motion to reconsider? Seconded by Alder person Haynes Sharp.

Um I will turn the floor over to older person forio if she so desires, but I will just note that this was the older person's intended motion to um zero out a vacant position uh that was being proposed to be reclassed from DPW to Steuart Park. uh the position that was zeroed out was already unfunded because it was a new creation. And this is an attempt to sort of clear up a um what I'll call procedural misunderstanding by recouping those dollars um from the vacant position currently held. Uh anything to add to that older person?

Right. And the idea was to to take this money um and instead of uh using it to fund a new position that it would be split uh between the downtown community outreach worker program and the violence interrupter program and coincidentally those two things come out to $115,000. So it's a very elegant uh sort of swap. Both of uh those programs I think have just proven uh their worth many times over, not just to the individuals in our community who need assistance, but also to our business community. And I think that um it's imperative that we continue to fund two programs that um have proven to be effective um rather than fund a new position at this point in time when you know we're just we're not flush for funding a new position. Um, but I absolutely, you know, I was disappointed to see that these were not included um in the city manager's budget to begin with. These were put in as overtarget requests, but I I know that council uh does have an interest in supporting um some of the most vulnerable and needy people within our community as well as our as well as our the health and vitality of the downtown. So, I appreciate your support.

Mr. Shapiro, your hand up. you were the next hand. Okay. Um, well, she kind of answered a little bit of what I was thinking as she was talking through. So, just for clarity, she's putting through a res this has this resolution been seen by anyone like is this

this is a clarification was passed in the previous budget amendment session. uh it erroneously through through a misunderstanding. This erroneously defunded a position that had not yet been funded and is just being corrected to fund the vacant uh to defund the vacant position that was going to be repurposed for the new position.

Sure. But I guess in the way we were putting forth amendments during the proc during the budget process, we had to defund as a separate action than funding something. So, she's not presenting that here. I just want to note before I'm voting if this is something we're allowed to be voting on. But the other person's uh comments about the intent were were contextual. The only thing you are voting on right now is to correct the defunding of a vacant position from one department to the correct department. So, this doesn't actually fund anything else? Not yet. There are subsequent motions to reconsider that will be advanced this evening, but this does not do anything other than return those monies to the general fund. Okay. I don't have any other questions then. Thank you.

All the person MTOS, please. If this motion was to fail, does that mean that there's just $115,000 being put back in to the like I guess what happens? Does the vacant funded position stay vacant and funded? Does it go to Okay, so it wouldn't go back to wouldn't revert back to what city manager recommended for the park the park strictly speaking no because that non-existent position was voted to be defunded. Okay, so then Okay, sounds good. Thank you.

Any further Mr. Well, building on that, so I've seen differing communication on this. Would that park manager position still be on the roster, but unfunded? Um, because I am interested. You know, I have a tough time with this. I represent both Steuart Park and downtown. They're both very important to me. Um, and Steuart Park needs a lot of love, as does downtown. Um, so I don't love this. That said, there are acute needs right now downtown that I'm empathetic to. And so I, you know, I understand. But that said, my longer term goal is if the administration rep prioritize things, you know, I want to make sure that the position is still on the roster and if we find money later that we can fund it.

I'll turn to the administration. My understanding is that defunding a position shouldn't remove it from the roster, but I'll seek clarification there.

So you didn't actually add it to the roster. That's what you opted not to do. So, what was in the proposed budget was to take an existing vacant position and transform it and essentially other than the title change, it took a DPW position and moved it over to um to the you to be supervised by the youth bureau. So, and we've sent some additional hopefully helpful context as to why it was done that way. So, all you did last week was not allow us to do that. So, basically what you did is you just left the assistant superintendent of streets on the roster funded.

Bacon and funded. Bacon and funded. Thank you, Mr. S. Press. I'm I'm sorry. So, just to clarify that, were we to wish to leave the uh Steuart Park manager position unfunded, but have it on the roster, we would need to both pass this reconsider and and well, we'd have to reconsider another item, correct? because we'd have to undo the amendment that we did last time and instead do this amendment which was the intent. Uh so if you're asking about whether we were to undo the decision from last week. Yes. Correct. Then yes. Yes.

Okay. Mr. Ke this is a motion to reconsider, right? So therefore we wouldn't have to undo the last one if we're reconsidering the previous motion. Correct. Correct. I think the all the person in her comments um is also well so I so yes I assume that you're also moving to amend the initial resolution as described in our as as I articulate we're going to yeah so so um you are moving to amend okay um second Perez okay and then also recognized

so just to be clear if we pass this this both restores the park manager position unfunded. No,

no. What the older person is looking to do is just the intent of her previous motion was to defund the vacant position. Um that position that was defunded was one that doesn't exist yet. This is attempting to correct that to defund the vacant position. Thank you. Mr. Shapiro, I'm loving that there's kids in the audience that that probably have not following this. I'm not following a lot of this, though. Um, so what we're voting on if we vote yes, it's to free it's to put this money back into the general fund. Correct.

Thank you.

Any further Mr. Mr. Letterman? Uh I guess I should express not a question but a thought uh which is I am in favor of this resolution. Um certainly the position already went through civil service as I understand it from Katherine's email and so it exists to be funded in future years. Um but I would prefer sustaining the existing programs we have that a lot of people in the community have spent time working on and that so far as I understand it have been um effective. So, I will support this in order to make sure that we can support the outreach workers in the give grant in I again I voted against the outreach workers last week. I know that's not exactly the question that's pending, but it's sort of downstream of it. And we did get that letter today from the DIA um expressing how they've worked on it and I think that is sort of persuasive to change my position on that.

Mr. Keel.

Um thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I um want to follow up on my colleague's comments um and just express a thought I brought up last week, which was making sure that we're identifying alternative funds, alternative streams of funding to be able to fund positions like this in the future. Um everyone knows it's been a tough budget year. Um, and I think one of the things I told myself last week was if we funded or if we decided to go ahead with non-resident parking fees in Steuart Park, then I would be okay considering additional expansion of staffing opportunities for Steuart Park. Um, but we didn't do that and I feel like, as I've said before, I've got to stand on business. Um, and I think one of the things we talked about last week was um, the administration bringing us forward a proposal that was more fleshed out in terms of what parking would actually look like, charging for parking. And I think from my perspective, especially if the if the position is created by civil service, that if the administration wants to bring forward a proposal for parking fees, um later this year or early next year, I guess probably early next year at this point, um then I would be open to considering funding this position at that time. Um but as of now, I'm in support of this. I think it's important that we are um not cutting active programs to fund ones that we don't have yet.

Right. Let's go to a vote. Uh, all the person Matoss, no. All the person win. Yes. All the person, all the person Hay Sharp, yes. All the person St. Perez, yay. All the person Shapiro, yes. All the person Keel, yes. All the person Kumar, yes. All the person Letterman, yes. All the person Fitzio, yes. And the mayor votes, yes. That carries nine to one. I understand there's another motion to reconsider. All the person Hay Sharp. My understanding is that your motion to reconsider is as a member of the prevailing side to defeat the amendment to add $50,000 to the budget to support the second wind cottages violence interrupter program. You are now seeking to reconsider that vote. Is that correct? That's chair.

Is there a second? Second by hold the person Kumar. Any discussion on this? Thank you, city attorney. Any discussion on this? Seeing none. All the person Moss. No. All the person win. Yes. All the person Hayne Sharp. Yes. All the person St. Perez. Yes. All the person Shapiro. Yes. All the person Keel. Yes. All the person Kumar. Yes. All the person Letterman. Yes. All the person Fitzio. Yes. And the mayor votes yes. That carries 9 to1. All the person St. Perez. I understand you have a motion to reconsider the previous question when you were on the prevailing side defeating an amendment that would fund $65,000 for the community outreach worker program that is a partnership between the county and the DIA. You have a mystic way of just reading my mind. Thank you. Is that so moved?

It is. Is there a second? Second by all the person H sharp. Any discussion on this? Seeing none. All the person Moss no. All the person win. Yes. All the person H sharp. Yes. Person Perez. Yes. All the person Shapiro. Yes. All the All the person Keel. Yes. All the person Kumar. Yes. All the person Letterman. Yes. All the person Fitzio. Yes.

And the mayor votes yes. That carries 9 to1. The net change in the budget is is projected to be about $697 to the good. Is that correct? to the approximately this this this nets out to be uh I I I know from speaking with the city controller this is uh functionally not impacting our tax rate at all. Um with that uh bless you bless you all the person please

I'm just I guess this is a clarifying question for you do we still plan on bringing forward a separate resolution regard in regards to unarmed responses. Okay. Yeah, of course. Um, the Sorry, I'm just trying to pull up the agenda now, folks. We have a package of resolutions that we now have to move. So just give us two seconds. Okay, here we go. So, first we have the motion on the table to move the budget as amended. Any further discussion on the budget? Alder person Moss.

Yeah, I just want to make my vote clear to my constituents tonight. I will be voting no on this budget just simply because I don't agree with a lot of the way that this budget was built out, the lack of unarmed responders, the lack of supporting infrastructure through DPW, so on so forth. Um, so yeah, that's it. All the person saying Perez,

I actually do share uh a degree of lack of faith in this budget. I don't think it's a great budget. I will be voting for it because the alternative is a significantly worse outcome. But like if this budget does not pass, we we attempt to implement a budget that contains a $2.1 million shortfall, which is as I see it, not an option. That doesn't mean this is a great budget. And I would encourage uh council over the coming year to amend this budget as needed.

Thank you. Older person Shapiro. Um [snorts] I think I'm still on the fence. I think I've already voiced that this budget process. I don't feel like we came to the right choices. Um certainly um when we identified there was a $2 million gap and um we had to make choices again. I don't think um I agree with a lot of those choices. I don't think our community had enough time to really um or at least I don't feel like I had enough time to really talk to the community about what we're doing with things like parking. Um and I think uh you know I drive everywhere I go. I don't mind paying for parking, but um I don't know if I'm the only one that feels that way. Um and I think uh I think that sounds like a substantial like thing that we're about to do that we should just be talking to folks about. Um I don't like that we didn't put money in the emergency um repair fund. Um you know, we haven't dipped into the fund, but that's because you only use it when there's an emergency repair need and you can't predict those. And um it feels just like um it just feels like this is a budget that very easily was able to trim $2 million and at the same time not be responsive to all the needs in the community. And I appreciate some of the um amendments that just got passed. Um, I also can appreciate that we have to do more work to do with developing unarmed responders and we have some money set aside that I hope we we can have more conversations about. I think well I don't need to go further than that. Um, but I think I don't want to vote for this budget, but I'm going to kind of let it play out a little bit more

because it just doesn't feel like a good budget to support. all the person for Britzio.

Yeah, I would I would echo um pretty much everything that David uh just said. Um I think the good news is it's we're in much better shape in terms of this budget than last year's budget, but I don't think we're in better shape really fiscally. I don't think the fiscal health of the city is in is in better shape. Um, and just so people know, uh, this budget, and I hope I have these numbers right, um, the the tax levy increase for this budget is 4.11%, which compared to last year was 8%. Um, and this translates to, I think, about a 2.75% tax increase about, right? Um, which, you know, last year we were looking at an average increase of like 13%. So, so yes, I think this is uh we did better. I think the process um still needs a lot of work. I agree that the public um didn't have the opportunity to really engage um with the final numbers. Um I think we had a hearing, you know, just the timing of the hearings um with when people could actually look at the data was uh was not good. Um, I appreciate though that we did um hold the reigns on new capital projects and I really appreciate the mayor's uh attentiveness to ensure that short-term borrowing um is something that we need to um not be doing. I agree on these on the the uh parking fees. I'm really concerned about those that we didn't get input about that and that was just a sort of easy way to try to um to fill the gaps, fill the holes. On the other hand, a lot of fees um that we did raise hadn't been raised in a very very very long time.

Some of them 20 years. So, I don't feel um badly about that. But I guess I guess what I would say is I think that ultimately we need to make much uh deeper cuts. Um I don't think this is a time for us to be putting new positions in. I think it's a time to be critically looking at vacancies. Um because I just don't think that we are on a sustainable track. Um it's it's just unaffordable to be here and until we really re things in. Um this is going to continue to be a problem for so many people in this community. Whether you're a renter, a homeowner, a a landlord, um a retiree, it affects all of us. And I guess the last thing I would say is we partially have uh you know really big bowl hole in our budget because we are not getting our fair share from the state of New York um either in our appropriation and also in the state's definition of taxexempt property. And I would just like to sort of say to everyone in this community of all political stripes and persuasions, let's work together and um try to make those changes because those are those are really big ones. It's going to take a ground swell to move things in Albany and we need to really put our heads together and unite about that. We we all have the same objectives. So, thank you, Mr. Letterman. Um, I'll certainly be voting for the budget. I was disappointed when I learned it was in base 10 and not base 8. I thought we're getting a big discount. Thanks, Patrick. Um, but no, uh, I'm glad I think, you know, I think there a lot of challenges with this budget process. Certainly, I don't need to tell anybody that. Um, I am pleased that we are getting the

short-term borrowing situation under control. I think that will help the city in the long term. Um, and I think I'm glad we're continuing some of these programming to help uh folks with sort of law enforcement assisted diversion and other things to help um our unhoused uh community. Um, but uh yeah, I think there is sort of I'm not a fan of the term fiscal responsibility, but I think a more of a sense in this budget of proactively planning multiple years out to address our um sort of fiscal needs. So, I'm pleased to vote for this budget. Um, yeah, Miss Kumar.

Uh, yeah. I just want to say that I um share a lot of the concerns um in particular the ones brought up by my colleague um from the first ward. Um I am very disappointed about um the unarmed responders and I really really hope um and look forward to uh a robust um reintegrating of of these goals um into our our city policies. I also um want to reflect what um my older person uh Letterman um has said. Sorry, my colleague older person Letterman mentioned. Um I I agree. I will be voting for this. Um I do think um all things considered, uh we we do need to push this forward um before the deadline. Um and in particular, I just wanted to speak positively about the parking fees. Um I do think that they're in line with our goals as a city with our goals um that many of us representatives have come to council and spoken about promoting sustainability, our climate goals, um increasing local business access and turnover downtown. Other uh cities like Burlington and Arbor who have implemented a slightly higher parking fees have seen improved legal compliance of uh parking uh mandates and also uh improved and increased downtown commerce. Um additionally, I think it just reflects the true cost of infrastructure. it keeps up with market demand. I think it's in line with um you know a lot of the economic studies that we've seen uh about this topic and it improves equity and transportation spending, something that uh we've been speaking about a lot uh lately. Um and overall I am very I do think that this in particular is a very positive u move for the city. Um and I look forward to seeing different ways in which we can increase equity in transportation. But I do think that this is in line with our goals. I understand that maybe it happened suddenly because of the shortfall, but um I I don't feel like it is something that came out of nowhere that is extremely against um what I've been hearing that we've been sent here uh the ideas to represent. So overall um I will be voting for this. I think there's uh some to like uh in this budget um but either way that um we we don't really have much of a choice considering um the the tight year that

we're in. Mr. when

uh well said on parking um I it's it's not too early to think about you know we're not even done the 26 budget yet. I don't think it's too early to think about the 2027 budget and I have a different perspective on things. I am not looking uh for more cuts. I'm hoping that 27 28 um my last two years on council the the years the budgets that I will affect in my last two years on council will be reinvestment years. um we are putting or at least one of my personal priorities [gasps] is is housing and we ask a lot of our planners and we have a defunded planning position that I would you know like to to fill out and all the DPW the public works things that Kayla mentioned. So um the parks manager that I hope we find room to to fund. So, you know, I've said this before, it's true even today that I personally hear more requests for services than I do uh complaints about tax bills. So, I'm looking forward to a reinvestment year.

President Sharp, I'm voting yes for the budget. Um I think it was hard to sort through the decision-making process. I'm glad we could bring the amendments forward that we did tonight. And um as this is my last year on the budget process, I wish everyone much success in the coming years. Mr. Ke,

um I'll try to keep my my soap box uh short today. Um um I just I wanted to also mention some of the really important and good things that came out of this budget. Um, one of which, uh, the mayor talked about, I think maybe in our first meeting on the budget, which was the significant increase in development, which helped offset some of the significant, uh, increases in inflation for services and and goods uh, that the city experienced. And I I have put this out there before, but if anybody would like to take a tour around College Town and see the tens of millions of dollars of investment and building that's happening right now and theoretically will be will be finished in large part by the next time people are discussing a budget in the city of Ithaca. Um I think these are these are really big things that are happening and and um will help offset some of the costs of of rising prices um over the next year. I also wanted to just briefly speak on um all the person wins points um because I I think I fully agree with them. I'm really excited to see the city make investments in the coming year and think critically about how we're making those investments. I really hope that uh we get a fully flashed out um unarmed responder plan um and we're able to invest in that heavily. Um because I think that it's not that the people of Ithaca don't can't and don't want more tax increases. It's just that they feel like from what I've heard, they want to be able to see the impact of those tax increases. And one of the things I'm hoping we stop this year um is rampant tax increases without perceived benefit. Um so I'm excited for the coming years. Um I'm excited to see what we're going to do alto together and I'm excited to work with uh five new colleagues, two of which I believe are here tonight. So thanks for being here.

I will just say uh of all the points I think the one I want to echo the most is all the person saying Perez. Um, we have a fiduciary responsibility to the city and a requirement under New York state law to pass a balanced budget. Um, I applaud the work of everyone who has contributed to uh ensuring that we get to a balanced budget. Uh, and I am uh like Mr. Wyn committed to ensuring that we have the appropriate resources uh as our our city continues to grow over the coming years. With that, we'll go ahead and turn to a vote. Aler person Moss. No. All the person win. Hi. All the person Hay Sharp. Yes. All the person St. Perez. Yay. All the person Shapiro. Yes. All the person Keel. Yes. All the person Kumar. Yes. All the person Letterman.

Yes. All the person Fabitzio. Yes. And the mayor votes yes. That carries 9 to1. Our next vote is on. Of course I just closed it. Uh the resolution. Yeah. Can someone uh summarize it? Well, the uh we're moving a resolution to authorize the tax rate at 12.24. $24 per thousand of assessed value. Okay. Approximately $1224 12 $124 per uh per assess value. Seconded by all the person Kumar uh all the person Matoss yes all the person win. Yes. All the person H sharp.

Yes. All the person uh San Perez. Yay. All the person Shapiro. All the person Keel. Yes. All the person Kumar. Yes. Person Letterman. Yes. All the person Fabitzio. Yes. And the mayor votes yes. That carries unanimously.

Uh I moved and all the person Kumar seconded. And just before I let council collect their wits and realize that we're done and they could speak for longer, can I have I'm sorry. Oh, we have to waste water separately. That's right. May I have someone Mr. Letterman. Uh, I move the recommended budget from the joint special committee on the Ithaca area wastewater treatment plant. Second by all the person Kumar. Any discussion on this? All the person Matoss. Yes. W. Hi. H Sharp. St. Perez. Yay. Shapiro. Yes. Heel. Yes. Gumar. Yes. Letterman. Yes. Ritzio. Yes.

Tintel mosa. Yes. That carries unanimously. Now may I have a motion to adjurnn? Moved by older person Keel, second by older person Kumar. All those in favor of adjourning. Ready.