Common Council - Special Meeting

All right, we will Yeah. All right. Really quick public service announcement. bathrooms to my left. Emergency, go down the stairs. 30 minutes for public speaking. I forgot to put the signup sheet, but there is one person here, so I think I could handle this. Um, we do have rules of decorum for our meetings. Um, so we ask that respect be shown to all. Um, and I will now call this special common council meeting to order at 6:11 p.m. on March 18th, 20126. If you are able, please stand for the pledge of allegiance and remain standing for a moment of silence to the flag United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right, I'm a onewoman show today, so I'm going to take roll call. Alder woman, Alderwoman Sarah Pathy, here. Alderman Michael Tierney here. Alderwoman Marissa Marlli here. Alderman Ben Folk

here. Alderwoman Terrell Meckkins is excused or is not here actually. Um, Alderman Bob Dennis, Alderman Mike Ham is excused, Alderwoman Ruth Katz here, and Alderwoman Michelle Hirs is excused. That is a quorum of the common council. We are now entering into the public speaking portion of the meeting. We have 30 minutes for this purpose. Speakers will have three minutes. Speakers, direct your comments to the chair as council members cannot engage in debate during this time since I didn't put up a sign out sheet. Um, I'm just going to ask Leah, would you like to speak? You don't have to. I'm putting you on the spot. Okay. Oh, hi. The floor is yours. Should I? Yeah, I will. Leo Wesleman Wardine. Hi everybody. I just wanted to take a second to again thank all of you so much for the work that you do, the listening that you do to the public. Um, and obviously it's not about money. It's about caring about your constituents and the people in the city of Kingston. So, thanks. Um I am completely in favor of three, four or 5% increase on or implementing an occupancy tax. Um of course uh most of the people who are going to speak out about this are going

to be people who own the places that um will have these taxes added on. Um, the last time I spoke, the average cost of one of the 102 um, short-term occupancy rentals, the average cost was $2.75 a night. And if a 3% occupancy tax were put on that, it would be $8.75. If you're coming up here and most people are coming from the city um where their average income AMI is like $80,000 more a year than us up here um they're not even going to look at that occupancy tax. And I think a lot of the thinking around this is about fear. Um I say we jump in all all records all all the places around us and even in Olster County have shown that with the 4% tax I think it was 4% 2% that Olster County imposed occupancy tax um we saw a huge increase anyway after that was implemented of people coming up lots of income coming in. So, um, and that's true of many places in surrounding areas, Duchess County and other areas, even up in the Catskills. So, please, please consider this. Um, and let's see how it goes short term. Thanks. Thank you. Since nobody signed up on Zoom and nobody else is in the room, I will close public speaking portion of the evening. We now enter into our communications. We only have one for

this evening. I will read it and then open it up to the floor. Resolution of the common counsel. Resolution 46 of 2026. resolution of the common council of the city of Kingston, New York, adopting a memorializing resolution asking our state legislators and our governor to allow Kingston to implement an occupancy lodging tax up to 3% pending comments from a public hearing. I think we had taken that off, but doesn't matter on a question. Alderman Michael Tierney.

Thank you, President Shot. This is the first step in a multi-step process to eventually levy an occupancy tax. The first step in the process is to simply request that Assembly Member Sha and uh Senator Hinchi introduce a home rule request in the state legislature to allow us to uh levy an occupancy tax of up to 3%. Uh so that has to pass in the state legislature which there is no guarantee. It needs to be signed by the governor in which there is no guarantee. And even when they introduce that bill, we need to come here again and endorse the same memorializing resolution with those bill numbers. And even if that is signed into law, we do not have to levy an occupancy tax. This is merely creating a door for us to eventually walk walk to walk through or not. Um but I think right now in our financial climate um and in the revenue that we could generate from an occupancy tax that I think we all agree we only want to levy a 1% occupancy tax uh to measure the impacts that this has on business. Um, I think it's financially irresponsible to not move forward. Um, to not create this door and to um shut out a future council from from having this as an avenue to uh either generate revenue or create programming that we can't uh afford right now, which is what I would like to see it to do. We budgeted last year for this to go into a general fund, but I do not support this going into a general fund. I believe that any occupancy tax we levy should be for specific programming. Personally, I would like to see a right to council program, but when we measure those revenues we collect, we could have programs that benefit tourism, benefit

the hospitality industry, all of that can happen when we vote on this tonight. Um, but all of that gets shut down if we do not advance this. So, I will be in favor. I encourage everybody else to be in favor and and I look forward to uh seeing this uh come to fruition. Thank you. Anyone else? Oldwoman Ruth Katz.

Thank you, President Shot. Um, I just wanted to add that um, we heard uh, the concerns of the short-term rental owners and we really appreciated a lot of a lot of us, you know, definitely appreciate um, what their concerns are and um, I will be voting in favor of this and just wanted to u stress that the reason why we um, shifted our thinking from up to 5% occupancy tax to up to 3% % was because we heard those concerns and we'll be, you know, taking that into consideration as we go forward in this um long process. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Alderwoman Sarah Pasti. And uh we now have Alderwoman Terrell Mechan here for just in time for the vote.

Just in Yes. Uh thank you, President Sha. I also want to thank um Alderman Michael Tierney for his support of this and for bringing it to the floor. And I also intend to support this because I think this is again it's part of a step-by-step process. But if we don't take this process, not only does it prevent us or any future council from levying attacks, but I think it, you know, I think it allows for an opportunity for us to decide in the future if we want to do uh if we want to levy attacks and if so, how much. So um I will be supporting this. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? I'm going to read it again so Terl knows what we're voting for. She knows but so she hears it. So this is the resolution of the common council of the city of Kingston, New York, adopting a memorializing resolution asking our state legislators and our governor to allow Kingston to implement an occupancy lodging tax up to 3% pending comments from a public hearing. Anyone else? Seeing no more questions, I will call for the vote. All in favor? I I

opposed resolution is adopted seven to zero, right? Yeah, seven to zero. Uh that actually concludes our meeting. But I do have one announcement for you all since three of you are new. I'm going to give you a quick lesson on using the microphone. So once I once we adjourn, if we could hang tight for a minute, the public doesn't need me to need to hear this. But I for now I will take a motion to adjurnn. Motion by Michael Tierney, second by um Sarah Pasti. Thank you. All in favor? We hereby stand adjourned until our next regularly scheduled meeting which is uh April 6th.