City Council - Regular Meeting

good evening good evening ladies and gentlemen I hope everybody's having a wonderful Tuesday and had a great day off yesterday was a federal holiday many of us like to call it indigenous people day others refer to it as Columbus Day so October the 13th 2026 it's just a little bit after the hour two two minutes after the hour so this is the city of Newburgh City Council meeting we're gonna have a brief moment of silence and there was a tragedy that took place New York City where uh ice agents um according to reports shot into a car in marble hill section of new york city uh and my understanding

Thank you very much. I Next on our agenda under communications, item number four, we need an approval for the minutes from the city council meeting September 28th, 2026. So moved. First motion is set up by Councilman Shakur. Do we have a second? Second. Seconded by Councilmember Monteverde. Roll call on the motion, please.

monteverde shakur yes stewart yes zoria yes mayor harvey yes so carried thank you very much item number five under communications we have the city manager's update and we have mr jason morris presenting the city manager's update as the city manager thank you mayor thank you we'll start with the recreation department

Thank you very much, Mr. Morris. Excellent job. Next, we move to presentations, and we have two items under presentations. Item number six, we have the city manager's proposed budget for the 2027 fiscal year.

Let's give Mr. Morris another hand because as interim city manager, that was excellent. and I want to say before we go to the next item on the presentation to hear about those awards to hear about a zero stress score I just want to make it clear for the point of clarification when the state comptroller does his report every year the worst score is a hundred the best score is zero it doesn't get any better for that than that I think it's four or five years it was four years in a row zero stress score so all the seventh year i'm sorry seven years in a row consecutively zero stress core according

Okay, so anyone else regarding the public hearing local law authorizing a property tax levy in excess of the limit established by general municipal law section 3c and I want to remind everybody that this is protocol we don't intend to go over to 2% we never have but this is protocol in the event between now and the third week of November when we vote on the city manager's proposed budget, if there were a need to, we would have that flexibility.

Thank you for that. Thank you. Anyone else for the public hearing? one wants twice so we will close uh... item number six i'm sorry i don't know the seven of the presentation the public hearing regarding the local law authorizing a proxy property tax levy in excess of the limit established in the general municipal law section three c we're going to close that portion all that particular um... item and public hearing all right next we're going to the most favorite section of our agenda which are comments from the public regarding agenda and or non-agenda items which may be general matters of th

All right, thank you. Thank you. Hi, Maria.

So we're going to give her another, because that was for the gentleman. His time expired, so we're going to give her a three minute as well.

Give it to the clerk. Yeah, give it to the clerk. Give it to the clerk.

Turn the mic down. Point it, yeah, point it down. There you go.

Name and tell us if you live in the city or not.

Please go on to that parking survey. Please go on to that parking survey as well. Online, okay? Yeah, we have a parking survey for you. for those comments and things.

Just for a point of clarification, is the water service line lead? so there is a program and we just got new funding to replace lead service water lines for free so that funding just came in So you got to fill out an application. I don't care who said no. I know we just got funded. So you got to fill out an application. They got to go check the water line, make an appointment with the water department. But I know for a fact The funding is not available yet. Oh, it's not available yet. It's not available yet.

So there will be some funding, but it's not available yet.

spot on just before the next week uh... did the gentleman submit some documentation for the council okay can we share okay has his address in contact okay thank you

You did a great job. Great job. Excellent. So... Well. Did you speak at the already OK all right so there's other people that want to speak. If you want to speak in Spanish there are some of us to understand Spanish though just want to put that out there but that trace.

Thank you. All right. If there are no more comments. um before we before we hear from each council member and we ask everybody to please stay so you can hear from your elected representatives i'm going to make a request to the city manager that in our next work session when we go into executive session within the work session that the interim rec director and a representative from the rec department meet with the council show us the data, show us the licensing agreements so we can hear both sides of the argument from the people who work for the city. And so I'm gonna make that recommendation t

Good evening everyone, buenas tardes. I'll do my best to go back and forth for both English and Spanish speakers. As a daughter of immigrants, I am also a proud Mexican American, first generation. I completely understand the importance of soccer in our culture and the importance that it plays on the youth, specifically here in the city of Newburgh. And the first thing I'm going to say is that I 100% support making sure that the youth keeps their soccer program here in the city of Newburgh. Lo primero que voy a decir es que yo los apoyo. Voy a trabajar con el concejal para poder apoyarlos para

Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Martinez. Next we hear from Councilman McLemore. Can you hear me, sir? Yes. Okay. You got three minutes.

Thank You councilman Macklemore next we hear from councilmember Mata Verde

Thank you. And thank you everybody for coming out tonight to speak about what's going on with the current soccer situation. So I believe that this is just a matter of miscommunication. I know that there have been some great improvements over at the Delano, I always have a hard time with that name, Delano Activity Center. I know that Wayne Brandenburg has been doing a fantastic job getting those fields up and running, the stadium as well, but again, I'm sure it's just a matter of someone's not communicating correctly, and when I look at this document, um i don't see a contract agreement it woul

Deja vu, 2004. Me and Timmy Hayes, we brought the community down here because they were shutting the basketball courts down. They were shutting that key down. And we said, once you shut those programs down, all hell's gonna break loose. And if you look at the police statistics after 2004, after they shut that program, that's key down. The kids didn't have nothing to do. positive, so I understand. I understand we're going through that again. And this is like a whole community. We survived off of basketball, off of soccer. This is what they do now, and this is what they need. And we just need to

Thank you for coming out. I absolutely hear all of the concerns. It's great to hear from the youth that are being affected by this situation. So I want to say thank you to the young man, Mr. Jack, for doing a great job at the night. It's always good to empower you and your voice, so continue to speak up and congratulations to that. So hearing about this situation, I am someone who really am focused on the facts. I know that can get kind of lost in a lot of the weeds. So when I look at this agreement and I see a check, and I see a check with no actual agreement attached to it, that is what rais

Next we'll hear from Councilman Zoria. Thank you everyone for coming out. I'm always inspired to see young people show up to council meetings and hear their voice. I understand the frustration and would love to find out where the communication breakdown happened. I don't think it's fair for parents counting on this program to have a locked storage shed, but also want to make sure that everyone knows nobody's trying to shut down this program mean we're investing two million dollars in the recreation department i want to thank marcos for his years of service for participating in the vision for t

Thank you, Councilman Zoria. So I want to thank all the parents that came out, spoke up, and spoke out. I too want to thank Marcos Cordero for your service and your hard work. You do deserve accolades and we really appreciate what you've brought to our young people. I want to thank the young people as well. My colleagues did. I want to thank you all. for coming here having the courage to speak up because we don't know what's going on unless you speak up we don't know what are the internal issues going on as council members because the city manager manages the city we have department leaders th

Do I have a motion for resolution number 231-2026? So moved. First motion is accepted by Councilman Shakur. Do we have a second? Second. Seconded by Councilmember Monteverde. Roll call on the motion, please.

Do I have a motion for resolution number 232-2026? So moved. First motion is said by Councilman Shakur. Do we have a second? Second. Seconded by Councilman Zoria. Roll call on the motion, please.

Do we have a motion for resolution number 233-2026? first motion is that the council member monteverde do you have a second second discussion seconded by councilman shakur discussion granted sir so what was that they were talking about tonight about the cameras were they talking about these cameras so this is an agreement with cdr electronics to to uh acquire more install cameras install cameras or to install the cameras um is this specific to the rec department yes it is specific to the red department okay any other questions uh yes i'm maybe we should table this and understand what we're doi

What were they talking about they were talking about with the pictures they showed us and everything.

So when we went over the work session. We're going to see the electronics is going to install all cameras cameras and that department.

We need to talk about it again because the community came out and felt that these cameras were about it now. Public out there.

So let's hear from this legal city attorney. Is there a violation?

and I will add that because people made comments that certain individuals were being mistreated in the recreation department and I want to say for the record because I met with the city manager I met with the a couple council members and I also met with the interim rec director if employees, whether they are in the recreation department or any other department in the city of Newburgh's employment ranks, there is a grievance process in accordance with city law and city code, in accordance with CSTA agreements, in accordance with bargaining agreements and non-bargaining employees. There is a gri

I just wanted to have that discussion because I knew that, but I wanted to you're right public to understand what we're doing rightfully so and why we're doing and what they just spoke on and then we just both true with no explanation i just wanted to explanation yes sir thank you councilman shukur for that any other comments if not uh roll call on the motion please council members martinez aye mclemore

let you know how you guys are disrupting what we gotta do and if we continue to disrupt the business of the city I'm gonna ask are arm public safety officers it to remove you got so please respectfully let us take it let us take care the business thank you without disruption this is my last morning And I'm going to ask you guys to leave, please. All right, let us do our job.

Do we have a motion for resolution number 234-2026? So moved. First motion is said by Councilman Shakur. Do we have a second? Ooh, seconded by council member Stewart. Roll call on the motion, please.

Do we have a motion for resolution number 235-2026? So moved. First motion is said by Councilman Shakur. Do we have a second? Second. Seconded by Councilmember Monteverde. Roll call on the motion.

So moved. First motion is said by Councilman Shakur. Do we have a second?

Do we have a motion for resolution number 237-2026? So moved. First motion is said by Councilman Shakur. Do we have a second? Second. Seconded by Councilmember Monteverde. Roll call on the motion.

Do we have a motion for resolution number 238-2026? So moved. First motion accepted by Councilman Shakur. Do we have a second? Second. Seconded by Councilmember Zoria. Roll call on the motion, please.

Thank you very much, Mr. Morris and the City Council. So next, we are moving to... Old business. um old business if there are any old business items that we need to address at the next uh work session anyone have any old business councilman shakur no no um well old business desk i'm getting ready to raise the flag february 1st again so i just want to put that on the calendar for february for black history month okay yep anyone else council member stewart and then monteverde

just wanted to check Jason mr. Morris are we waiting to do that have the legislative priority list should we wait last we checked there were votes outstanding I'll check again tomorrow okay so if it was complete I will email the list to the council so I'll wait okay anyone else mother ready

um so i'm not sure i know that the bid went out but if we can just get a slight update like are we getting proposals back um that would be great on the the bids a small business okay yep uh councilman

I'm not sure if this is old business or new business, but to avoid situations like we have today, I think anybody who's engaging with our city assets and places should have maybe not a standardized agreement, but at least an agreement so that we avoid...

if there are people that are working with our city and are using our resources and don't have an agreement then they should have one and they can only have one where the local laws allow them to have them okay if if there are people that are using city property, an example today, and they have a permit and it's not an agreement, then someone in the city must know. I'm not gonna debate whether they should, what local law. I'm saying if there's anybody else in the city who may have no agreement to avoid this in the future, let's figure it out. I'm not saying the process is flawed. We might have

We should look at all not-for-profit organizations and entities that are engaged in city, partnered with city government, using city property, that there are agreements written up and signed, and if they're not, then we need to execute those. Council Member Martinez.

yes no I just wanted to also add comments to that to councilman Zaria and mayor Harvey to their point I think that Michelle mentioned that there have been things put in place prior to leadership um that is in place now and so i don't want it to sound like we are like you know attacking um our city manager or wayne um i know they're doing a fantastic job this is more so like we have these gaps that haven't been fixed before and we should be focusing instead of waiting like councilman zuria mentioned instead of waiting for something to happen like what happened tonight we should just be reviewin

So I'd like to comment on that, Michelle. I think that we need to have, whether you want to call it a policy, an update, a change to the user fees because we had a young man come up here requesting that we give him a building but we can't do that unless we have some sort of an agreement because he is a non-profit correct right so let's use that as an example if we're going to do this and trust me i support youth programming, but God forbid something should happen to one of our youths on our property. We're liable. They need to make sure that they have their insurance, which I know that they ha

We want both. And this is what it is. So... contract user fees are already they have already been implemented in our city code all right and then there should be licensing agreements that are signed and executed by the executive team when these uh not-for-profit that are outside entities are engaged with our facilities councilman shakur yes so in that same conversation people park that's a public park right

Correct, but we get permits out to people for $75 in the short and they come here and do show can charge our residents. On public land, they charge our residents on public. So we need to have these conversations because that's public man. So we had people come here and pay $75 and charging our residents to a show. So we have to have these audits. So I know there are Policies already in place, but what is the policy we need to be specific about these policies? Of course now we got our kids here who have to pay to do our name, but we got people who come in here and use the permit and for $75 in

our community right because when we look at when we look at festivals and we look at special events in our on our properties on our in our parks there are expenditures and costs that come with it so the person that's taken out a seventy five dollar permit and uh... the city manager and some of the council members talk about looking at those fees and increase in them uh... but there are expenditures like dj calls lighting calls there's a stage uh... that has to be uh... constructed the people sign off and i'm not so it may have come to the right side of the house which is not to do with that pu

okay um i think this is a good opportunity because this is a part of one of the legislative priorities that we spoke about and hopefully the fact that we're having this conversation can show us where that goes on our priority list but this is a perfect time to do an audit of all of the agreements and uh that we have with partners in the city in term in this respect i think we have a list of who are all of the organizations that we're working with we can then identify if all of the proper documentation is in place all of the proper um permitting is a phase in place the insurance is in place the

excellent um so also with um old business i have an old business item just need to get an update on the charter review uh and the next steps on a charter review um for uh the next work session and then um it was something else along that same line uh that we needed an update on um we did we talked about the priority the legislative priority anyway to come back to me all right so we'll go to new business if there any new business item that the council would like for the city manager and executive team to consider yes perhaps some new business community came to me they wanted to do something for

We feel needs to be on the corner where the schools that not on barrack homes. It's on that corner I think they talked to us about that or whatever if we could change that we can get that poll changeover and the third part of my business is I Don't know why but over the weekend over the last week. I got like 20 calls people asked me The cop that killed Malcolm Burr, is he still working and what is our policy? Is this officer still working?

What is our policy? One, there was an internal investigation done. Secondly, all employees, whether they're officers or firefighters, it doesn't matter what type of employee they are, they all have due process under the law. So that means that they have their presumption of innocence unless proven guilty. So that internal...

But murder, he shouldn't be working in our community. Hold on.

The internal investigation was done. And it was unfounded that there was anything done wrong or incorrect with that circumstance.

And then- Is there a trial? Is there going to be a trial? Well, there's no trial.

There was an internal investigation and we are still waiting on the Attorney General's findings before anything happens.

In the meantime, this officer is still working with our children in our community.

That's what I'm saying. If one of our kids kill a cop, they will not be on the streets the next day.

Councilman Shakur? That's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm asking. Because I got the phone call that our community wants to know.

What I'm saying to the community, and our city attorney has already stated it, we had this discussion in an executive session. There was an internal investigation. There was no misconduct found in that internal investigation. There was an external outside that's ongoing, an outside investigation going on, and the State Attorney General is investigating. So until those things have concluded, there was no, according to the internal investigation, there was no misconduct by any of the officers. And we're still waiting to see what the external investigation comes out with and then the state attorn

Thank you. There were definitely a lot of comments made tonight, so a couple of them that I wasn't able to address. I wanted to also thank Tracy for working with the council to put on that tenants meeting. I think that this is the first of many more that are gonna come and I think that what tenants need to know aside from having legal resources is just being able to organize and having the right to organize within their own building um varix is not the only the only place where um I receive a lot of complaints from tenants um we've received complaints from tenants all across the city but speci

Thank you, Councilman Macklemore. Next we hear from Councilmember Monteverde.

Thank you, and thank you to those who stuck it out to the bitter end. So I want to just remind folks that, you know, early voting is going to be starting, I believe, on October 24th, correct? So it is extremely important that we make sure that we get our neighbors out, our friends out, our families out, because This is what we're talking about, right? We're talking about youth programming. For example, tonight, you know, this concerns our vote matters and it concerns, you know, good healthcare. It concerns good jobs, good housing. being able to afford to put food on the table. So please, pleas

Thank you. Not much to say. I always appreciate people coming out to share and voice their concerns. I want everybody Please pay attention to this budget season. If you have a friend or a neighbor or whoever you know that lives in this city, pay attention to the money. We can talk about a whole lot of things, but if the money is not right, none of those things are possible and none of those things happen or you really have to prioritize them. pay attention to the money we are going to we just finished this first round of budget the budget session now we have the information the first proposed

Thank you, everyone that came out. Speaking of money and votes, October 21st, there's a poster board session at the library, or the, The upstairs community room, the Stewart Air National Guard Base polluted our water. We're spending millions of dollars a year that are millions of dollars every year subsidized by the state of New York and they're trying to push off the clean up for 25 years. People from the National Guard will be there and they should answer to the community. We need people to show up and let them know that we care and we do not want them to push off the potential cleanup of Wa

Thank you Council Member Zoria for those remarks I want to thank everybody that came out especially those who stood with us to the bitter end that really means a lot to us so that you can hear from us and know exactly what we are doing Council Member Stewart said it right keep your eyes on the money I read today that the city of Saratoga New York is looking to do a 37 increase in taxes for the 2027 fiscal year i looked at albany albany had a multi-million dollar shortfall with um their budget because of past um financial mishaps in the city of Albany and the city of Albany is our state capital