Common Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening everybody. I'd like to call to order the regular council meeting for February 24th, 2026. Our first item is the insurance. Always council members to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Mayor, make sure your mic is full. Oh, you can't. Is that better?

Yes. Okay. Is there anybody um from the public that would like to address the common council?

Hello. Good. Good evening, madame mayor and members of the council. I'm Cheryl Dings. I live at 14 Avenue right here in the city. During the night of February 15th, fire was accidentally started in the building in which I lived. The smoke alarms went off about 11:45. One of my neighbors said that there really was a fire this time and to get out of the building. I got down the stairs and walked out to the front of the building. And to my utter shock and surprise, there are about four or five or more fire trucks out there. a lot of first responders, ambulances, and falls police department. Every one of the men from this from these departments acted with total calm and professionalism. One of the tenants had a hard time getting down. He's an older gentleman. He had a hard time coming down the stairs. And I don't know what floor he lives on, but he was having a hard time. And once he got down there, of course, we were evacuated out of the building and he had a hard time standing because we were all just kind of standing up. One of, I believe it was a police department went back into our building and brought an easy chair out for this man to sit there and I was very impressed by the empathy shown to this gentleman. I just wanted to say that I've always felt very secure and safe in my apartment, but my feelings of security have tripped because of the gentlemen and maybe ladies if that's the case. Be proud of this group of false fire department and the first responders, the ambulances and the false police department. I am ever so grateful to everyone who showed up in the middle of that very cold night and

that I live in a city where I feel safe. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time and I'll be sure to pass them along to the police and fire department and the board of public safet. Um we're going to be talking about the reval process and so I'll let you take it from here.

All right. Good evening everybody. Um, Robert Kazar with Taylor Group and I was working with a lot of you in the past here. Um, I'm working with uh the assessor's office on updating the assessment records for all the properties in the city. Um, we're nearing the very end of that our evaluation period which now going forward we're going to be mailing change of assessment notices to all all property owners and city assessments will be changed. Um after that we will hold what we've done in the past informal meetings which will offer the opportunity property or meeting with myself or one of the staff um to discuss how we came up with the value what the value is and and hear their concerns um prior to the tech rule being filed on May 1st. So, I just wanted to come and talk with you and let you know that that where we are in the processor status um and that the letter should be going should be hitting the post office next Monday or next week and the property owners will be receiving the notices. In the notice there is instructions for property owners to um call call our phone numbers if they want to schedule appointment. It's specific to call that number. We have a service that will be scheduling the appointments. Um if they call my office refer to [groaning] that number to call to schedule the appointment. Um if they have questions about the the process, they can call my office um or email uh and the email address is in the in the information. Um that's it. Any questions? Good question. So this letter that's going out, one of the things that seems to be a misunderstanding on a lot of people is you get a letter in the mail say your properties now says $50,000 more than it is. The very first thing you think of is you say there goes my taxes.

There anything in that notice that tells people that this doesn't necessarily mean a large increase in it. It does say that. Um

but there's always that perception, right? And what people What property owners need to understand, what we tell them in our for in our meetings is that [snorts] if only your property went up $50,000 in value, nobody else changed, right? Then absolutely, you're going to have a big change in your taxable liability. However, we everybody's property value is changing. Okay? So, it's all going up. And it's also important to note that right now we're at 90% equalization rate which means that the assessed value of the properties um represent 90% of what their value is as of a year ago. So when we when we raise all the values right your property your property value could go up $50,000 your taxes stay the same. It might even go down. It depends on what the percent of increases it is in relationship [clears throat] to the percent of increase of taxable value of the entire city. So if the entire city goes up 15% and you go up 10% it might seem like a lot of money but your actual tax liability is going down.

Somehow you put that in two sentences. Robert, do you remember what our equalization rate was when we did the first rebound that we had done in 17 years a few years ago? Or Sue, do you remember? 75. Okay. So, just as a point of comparison, when you don't do these regularly and you let it go for a long time, there's a lot more obviously change that is going to occur than when we're doing them on a regular basis, right? We we did not update. We did not update last year. Correct. And we are at 88 or 90 93.5

93.5. The New York State Office of Ral Property Tax Services um did analysis and that equalization rate would be going down a lot more this year if we did not do an update. But because we're going to be doing update, we're going to be going from 93 up to 100%. So, we're at 90.

Okay, we're at it going down. If we did not do anything, it would have been going down significantly and that that is a reflection of the market conditions that are happening within the city hall. what people are buying houses for in relationship with their sons. So, we're looking at So, are we looking at the tax increase? I got to get this straight. Depends on on individual property.

Okay. So, say Okay. So, your property goes up $50,000. So, your So, your neighbor's house the city around it is the same. So that $50,000 on that person's home is got to go only that person. No. If if if we if that individual says it went up 50,000 and nobody else has changed, then it absolutely would. But what I'm saying is that it might go up the entire street might go up 50,000. Okay.

Okay. And if if every assessment doubled, they're not, but if every assessment doubled, the tax rate will be cut in half and everybody will get the same amount of taxes. [clears throat] So while the the taxable value is going to be going up, the tax rates for next year will be going down for school and and the city. So, it's hard to really equate what's what's going to happen, but because we're increasing the taxable value of the city, the budgets for the most part are going to stay close to the same uh unless something happens, which means the tax rates will be will be dropped. So, so we're not um changing the tax levy, we're redistributing it according to uh accur accurate values, updated values. So, um if you don't do that, you could have somebody whose home increased by a lot and someone whose home didn't increase paying uh maybe disproportionate taxes where you have one homeowner subsidizing someone else's taxes.

Does that make sense? So, so the city isn't collecting more taxes by doing this. We're just redist redistri and then the taxes are actually set at budget time when we look at our expenses and set the tax. Does anyone else have questions?

I have a question. So, I think on tomorrow, Wednesday, there is of course get these questions. You're you're correct. I went blind before. That was the last thing I wanted to say. Tomorrow, tomorrow evening at 6:00, we will be having public information meeting on the second floor here where homeowners can come and I'll have a brief presentation what we're doing, why we're doing it, and then answer any questions that they may have. Thank you. Actually, is it 6:30 or 6? I thought it was

six. Six. Anyone else have any questions? Okay. Thank you for being here and thank you for coming tomorrow to talk to our One last thing. I haven't been here since this has all been done. This was beautiful. This is a great job. Thank you. Okay, at this time we will go to committee reports. Committee reports council large.

Yes. um our team uh and um at our first meeting we are just going over what we want to um just get an idea of what we're going to go over and that I met with the mayor and u seeing what um you know what she's looking for us to do and we're looking just to um continue some of the projects that we have and um we will be meeting um the third the third Wednesday of each month at 5:30

and and now that we've hired our planning and zoning will have her vital part of our Thank you. Okay. Um Councilman,

uh the audit finance committee met yesterday. Um, big shout out, thank you to Carrie Lambert for kind of going through the whole process about how an invoice is paid with the city. It was so insightful and so helpful. And um, Council Councilman Lapam and I kind of went through and did a did a little mini audit of a lot of the purchase orders and a lot of the bills and make, you know, just make sure the proper documentation was, you know, made sure signatures people signed off and who needed to do what and it seemed pretty good. So I think Councilman Lam and I will give our blessing for the uh the warrant this time. And um we talked just briefly on fund balance like trying to get together a fund balance policy and I think we're going to try to get any department or department head who issues some sort of fee, you know, to charge to residents and whatnot. Maybe we can revise the fee schedules and see what they look like. I think we'll probably start take a look at building codes first and then kind of work our way down. And I think EMS fees and other other fees that the city charges. So

that's that's it. Okay. Thank you for your work on that. I really appreciate it. I think it was um so helpful to have Carrie at those meetings. Oh, absolutely.

Walking everybody through it. So thank you to her. Thank you. Um so um where are we looking when are we looking to get a upto-ate budget of new violence? Yeah, we're we now that we have our in control well after tonight we'll have our provisional controller in place and she will be uh starting to produce those financial highlights to you again which unfortunately we did not have coming to the council for the last year and a half and so that will be um the time where we can start really reconciling those that will be soon.

Yes. Okay. Committee report. Council member,

thank you. Um, so the Labor and Personnel Committee held their inaugural meeting tonight, Tuesday, February 24th at 5:00 p.m. And we took up our first meeting to conduct interviews for a city court judge. Um, we had five excellent candidates. Great to know that besides our deputy attorneys are great attorneys in the city of West. the uh so um we now not to narrow that down and and select a candidate because the window in which this has to be done um is short. So um we had a good meeting. Um I think we narrowed it down to a couple people and and we'll probably be discussing this again tomorrow making some sort of a decision. Thank you and thank you to committee members who gave quite a lot of time tonight to that. Um next we have committee reports. Council

Rice policy committees been active on a few fronts. We currently have four policies in development. Uh two of these deal with employees use your vehicles and equipment as well as their own personal vehicles. uh on the use policy specifically for a review from our attorney and from the community me uh committee members before we move forward with the recommendation. I also want to take a moment to thank the department that's responding to my survey on that policy. very valuable in shaping the approach as well as input from New York conference commanders and also review of the CDA we have with CSCA firefighters we're also developing policy on unattended personal property on city property and one governing cro permits or I should say that we are looking to revise or review the current policy on encroachment purpose and the use of public right away. Uh the committee is also reviewing an advisory committee on our parking enforcement and city attorney is conducting background research on park policy and government matters on city property as we continue to work. We're also working through some operational details by nature. This committee requires careful review and deliberation from all members before anything moves forward and we're finding how we Thank you very much. This is a committee we haven't had before and as you can see it's very needed to review policies in some cases that may have been in place for a very long time and need to be updated or create policies more than one of many. So I really appreciate your work. Um next we have Councilman L. Uh the technology committee uh will be

meeting on Thursday uh March 5th at 5:00 p.m. Um and that's it. Okay. And council

um the ina lake committee met on February 17th at 5:00 p.m. Um uh one of the first things uh we talked about was the what sustainability I've been working on with Dan Donu. Um we talked about the Dan talked about the solar installations of Civic Center, the Post electric cars and the landfill project on road. Um we talked about community issues. Um some uh sent to us by email from Eric from Shactory about problematic kids at the SH factory. Um, as well as concerns over residential dumpsters on the curb, past the pick time, pick up time, excessive vibration, noise from the trucks travel on Main Street and concerns over smells from local industrial businesses. Um, and we talked about a request from the mayor to see if any anyone of this committee would be able to go to the Warren County Office of Solid Waste and Compliance Monthly meetings that meets on second Tuesday at 2:00. council woman at large mayor express interest um and availability and the next meeting will be on March 16th uh Monday at 5:00 pm and we're going to bring in Scott of the War County Office of Solid Waste.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being willing to do that for us. I appreciate it. Okay, next we will go to the consent agenda. So let's see I am going to pull uh 5.11 uh more work needs to be done before we consider that. So that will go on a later agenda. Is there anything that anyone else would like to pull for discussion?

Yes. I'll be okay with that. Um, is it even though technically this is in relation to Dan's committee, is it possible for me to um talk about the things I found out about the warrant list? Um, two, three, four for watchers um um would you like to pull the warrant for discussion and then have that discussion? Sure. Sure. Okay. So, that is item which 52. So, you'd like to pull that discussion. Go ahead.

Oh, great. Uh, I sent emails to various department heads for four of the vouchers. Voucher 1931 173 uh was the $1,000 that went to Lisa Lamman and Amy Collins and the Recreation Commission uh are getting a new sign made for the Hamilton Grove that would look similar or um to the Gertie Lane preparation signal. Um that's your 1 193055. Um I learned that from Jared Smith that that 1550 is the yearly license fee for body cameras from Kan Technologies. Um 193076 um is the $3,000 um that I learned is the yearly installment for two of the 2023 Ford police vehicles and voucher 193127 um at $21,000 bill. That's the yearly lease payment for the street sweeper from DW thanks to Lambert.

Okay, great. Did you have any concerns about anything or just wanted to share? Um, I just wanted to share my findings and hopefully the public would also love to know like why like what is that $1,000 and stuff? As well as anybody that want that's excited to learn about developments and how that we're hopefully going to get a new sign. So, we do that all together. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. So, um, anything else anyone wants to pull? All right. Would anyone like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda? Sorry. All in favor?

Any opposed? Okay, motion carries. Um, let's see. There we have one item um that is being introduced tonight under new business. I think you received a an email from the clerk's office regarding this earlier. Um does anybody uh I'll read the resolution and then um I'll see if anybody wants to discuss it further. So the resolution says resolved that the common council hereby approves encroachment permits 3 20226 through 72026 for slip fiber 330 state highway 11B Nickelville New York 12965 based on the approval layouts and subject to the city engineers standard requirements. And there are um a few permits listed below. And then it says, "All permits included do not allow for any ground work. Only overhead installations and any city trees are impeding this work. Approval from DPW and the tree commission are required prior to all maintenance. Does anyone have any discussion that they'd like to have on this?"

I just mayor, if I could if they do need to come before the tree commission, will the tree commission commence earlier than what the regular meetings are? I just kind of see this thing going to be string around the city, the whole city. How much from March 2nd through June 2nd? So there's time.

They they did reach out um prior to the previous tree commission meeting that we had and um I believe they were advised of the date of that meeting and then the next meeting. And I I think they might be planning to come to the next meeting. If they're stringing something on a tree, they don't need permission. It's really if they're planning to significantly alter, you know, something like that. Um, and the tree commission knows that it's in their contract that they will need to review that. I did speak with them today and they stated that if there were any trees, they would have no issue just continuing along

and then and then going to the treatment mission to say, "Hey, we may need to do something." Okay. Would anyone like to make a motion to approve Emily? wonderful um explanation of uh the other areas 1 2 3 8 9 13 that weren't listed here had already been approved I think it was 2024 2025 um and already completed. So the only areas on that map that's provided is 16 and 17.

Yes, they've already done work in um areas on the first board and now they're looking to expand throughout the rest of the city. So there will be another option to residents which I think is a good thing. So okay anyone any other thing further motion you'll make the motion. Second all in favor. Any opposed? Okay motion carries. Thank you. Does anyone have any business?

Yeah. I just wanted to thank you, mayor. Um, 56 Wall Street. I um still getting a few complaints from some of the neighbors and whatnot that the garbage is now piling up in the road and causing a major issue with um the plows being down and whatnot. So, um I knew there was some email chatter back and forth, but I just like I have someone one of the neighbors coming in to meet with me tomorrow. Planning to listen to their concerns. where we go from there. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you business.

Thank you, Mayor. Um as a continuation of the work that we're doing on the code violations and encroachments and all the other things that go along the alleyway over here on Rich Street. U the mayor pulled together some of the stakeholders, people who have encroachment permits already on that alleyway. Um we met with them. It was a very very um um good meeting. Um I think that they're glad to see that that city hall is open to talk to them about the conditions that are there. I think that they're very willing to help us make it a safer environment, a cleaner environment. Um after the meeting, some of the fire inspector, fire chief, building inspector, myself, and the people um from the businesses were there to walk through the alleyway. A lot of questions came up. Um but I think when all is said and done u hopefully we'll come up with some sort of a model. So if you have encroachments that are granted for um refuge containers which I think there's going to be a lot of them in the downtown area and located in businesses that don't have back doors so people have a place to store behind it. Um this might be a good start for that so we don't have problems around the city. So good.

Thank you. Thank you for bringing it. um to the forefront and I really appreciate Emily's work and Taylor's and all of our city staff who were there. We were quite crowded in the neighbor's conference room, but it was good. Um old business never sure what's old business and what's new business when it comes to this. It's all business.

I just want to take a moment to recognize and thank the snow hardworking snowball operators at the for their efforts during these storms. They're out there in difficult conditions to prevent us to be safe and I think they deserve our appreciation and also another situation I guess with a bottle that was reported on Facebook that DW got to immediately. So just kudos to the hardworking staff of Thank you. Um, all business, council left,

I I'd like to uh just highlight what um Councilman Rice has been doing uh on the social media of trying to direct people instead of complaining in comments sections of uh social media or comment sections of newspaper articles or whatever that we have a website and there is a a uh an ability on the website to uh report concern and that way it'll get you somebody who's actually in the uh city working for the city instead of relying upon people like um Councilman Rice to uh set them straight. So kudos to Councilman Rice.

Yeah, that's a good reminder that we have the reported concern feature and the notify me feature so people can sign up to get information and also they can go on and report concerns. Thank you. Um new business or old business council.

Hi. Um um I went to this really cool um event on Sunday at 12:30 right um right down the road at St. Mary's Academy. Um they just had a grand unveiling of their third floor spaces for their arts academy at St. Aries. It includes dance studios, recording studios, which are which is really cool. You should check it out as well as music spaces. Um, and if you want more information to have whether sign up for kids classes or adult classes, go to the artsacademy.com.

Thank you. Okay, so now we go to new business. Okay. Um, the East End Action Committee will be meeting on Thursday, March 5th at 5:00 at 8 a.m. That's right. Thank you. And I wanted to correct earlier. I told you I was meeting with that person. Tomorrow's actually Friday. Okay. Yes. Friday. No worries. Yeah. All right. and our new business, Councilman Landry.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, first of all, I'd like to welcome to 21 Bridge Street, a new but not unknown restaurant, Scratch Kitchen. Um, Denver's been around for a while in this community. She's always run very nice high-end restaurants. I'm glad to see she's finally on her own, so that she doesn't have a restaurant owner all of a sudden shows her where the street is. Um, and I think she'll be a great addition to our downtown law firm. So, we welcome her to Street in downtown D Falls. Um, one of the things that we do have going is fire and ice on Friday 5 day cran and for first time since I've been on this council didn't rate.

So I hope we have a very very successful one. The last had a constituent that called me about this today. Evidently we can't take online payments at the moment. Yeah, we've been putting out notices there's been an issue that they're trying to remedy with the vendor and as soon as we're on top we're working on as soon as it's resolved we'll let people know they can still pay by credit card if they come in

they just can't pay That's good to know. Okay, new business. Councilman report.

Okay. All right, I have five things to know. There's not much public audience because there's people watching online, but there's five cool things happening around the city in the next couple days. Um, ARCC is having a ribbon cutting for a new business right on Washington Avenue called the Use Less Store. Um, which really cool if you want to try and be environmentally uh friendly. It's Thursday, February 26th at 1 PM. Um on Saturday, it's jam-packed with events. There's the Indie Book Expo at the Shirt Factory. Um on Saturday from 11:00 to 5:00 p.m. Um also on Saturday, um Crest Church United Methodist is having their immigration discussion that a resident um two weeks ago um told us about. Um that's from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. community theaters having their opening weekend for their ride the Cyclones um um production a 2009 musical set in amusement park and on March 2nd Monday 7 to 8:30 the fear canal alliance um and Dick Dick Niss a login historian and retired forester from paper is going to have a history of login in the aderondex in a community room at the crater library. Those are those.

Thank you. At this time, is there anyone from the public who would like to address us? Anyone on the list? Yes. But it's not should I should give this to you later. Okay. Okay. All right. Then um I would like to um ask for a motion to go into executive session according to um officers. Taylor, you can help me. Public officers law 105 something 105D and 105F to discuss personal personnel matters leading to um employment or termination and current litigation.

Motion second. Okay. All okay. So we are going to session. We will go upstairs to the conference room.

Um we are not coming back. We will not be taking any action. Um we will have all right we are in executive session. I'm not going to fix this.