City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Come on up, Rich, Deputy Mayor, please. And the Council President and I would love for the Council to join us. And tonight's a special evening. It's a sad evening also. As we all know, a few weeks ago, we had a horrific fire, Jeff Ford. If you could join us also, that would be great. Thank you. And so a few weeks ago in Lansenburg, we all witnessed a horrific fire that took two residents from the city of Troy. I'm late and I apologize. The woman and her family who lived upstairs, they don't want to be public or anything. Five Star donated some money to the family to try to help them out. And the neighbor was asking about the services for the two gentlemen there. that passed, and we have not seen those services yet. But before we start, we'd like to take a moment of silence for the two gentlemen that we lost that afternoon. Thank you. Council President Steele and myself and Chief Cellucci just wanted to first say a couple words. I must tell you, our Deputy Mayor, he was on site. I was at a wake for Carmba's Cell. I flew over when I heard the call. and to witness what was in action, whether it be our residents, whether it be our young students from Lansenburg, our firefighters, everyone. went to the call of duty, both residents, all of our students, our firefighters, and we saw that trace drawing that day. Like I said, we lost two people, but we could have lost many more if it wasn't for the heroic actions of our students, of our residents, of our firefighters, and everyone involved. So we're here to recognize your heroic actions, to recognize that you put others before yourself, whether it be the kids knocking on the door, call 911, trying to bang the door down, not knowing what was beyond that door. whether it be the residents, the ones who were working construction and saw it a block and a half away and ran toward the fire instead of running away, or kids nowadays, people, we know they have those cell phones and they forget. They sometimes take the photo. You didn't. You know, you put your cell phone down and you ran toward that fire. You ran toward danger without knowing. And from the bottom of our hearts, we just want to say thank you. We want to recognize your courage. um we're so impressed and you know the first thing Chief Cellucci said we've we've met with many of you and the first thing he said is I'm so impressed and he's been a firefighter for over 34 years I believe he started when he was 10. um put a little levity but we are here to say thank you and we are here to say this is Troy strong and this is what community is about and in days of divisiveness whether it be the federal government you name it it's not happening when the need arises here in Troy we come together we unify and that's what trey is all about so i want to thank the council president for doing this with the administration i want to thank all of you and we're here to recognize you all individually thank you

It's not easy following the mayor, I have to say. She is quite a speaker. I do echo what you said, though, from the bottom of my heart. What you folks did, young and older, truly amazing. It is what makes us all proud to be Trojans. When we see the level of bravery that you exhibited that day, people didn't care about themselves. They cared about others. And that's what it's all about, is caring about each other and taking care of each other and doing the right thing. And you have shown that. You've made us all proud. But I hope you're proud of yourselves because what you did that day was exceptional. These pieces of paper can't begin to show how much we appreciate and how much we honor your efforts.

He doesn't need two mics, geez.

Don't tempt me. Thank you all for coming. Just kind of to repeat what the Mayor and the Council President said, it takes a community to come together and accomplish something like this. Yes, there were two deaths, and as a fire department, we would never encourage uh civilians to you know enter into a burning building but the truth is is that you guys you know the kids got up on the porch and and and they started banging on the door and and calling 911 and the other residents made entry and got a resident out and the truth of the matter is without those actions there could have been a third death there so um you know as i said as a fire department would never encourage you to to do that but it's impressive what everyone did come together. And I'm always, I'm always proud of our firefighters. They, they, they do the job every day. And this was a, this was, this was one of the toughest calls for us. We had a lot going on right in the beginning. They all responded appropriately and, you know, they, they got the people out and they got them off to the hospital to the best, the best care they could. And unfortunately it didn't turn out like we would hope, but everyone could be proud of the, of the actions of the Troy fire department also. Thank you.

So without further ado, we certainly respect your time. So we don't want to keep you here that long, but we would like to call some of you who are true true heroes um up to the podium and uh i see that beautiful dog in the back amanda beautiful um so real uh first is jarmel romero jarmel are you here okay uh rashad dorsey rashad awesome Rashad on behalf of the people of Torrey, Council President, Deputy Mayor, Chief Salucci, the City Council, the UFA, we can't thank you enough for your courage. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. That's a little better.

Oh, Rashad, we apologize. Do you mind just a quick photo with everyone? We'll get everyone at the end. However, right here. Perfect.

Great. Here's Leslie. Thank you again, Rashad. Thank you for your courage. Thank you.

Evelyn Ramos Ortiz. And a side fact here, Evelyn is, Bianca, where are you, Bianca?

Yeah.

Thank you so much for your courage. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Hello. There you go. Thank you. It's so nice to meet you. What's your name? Aiden.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Rashad was here earlier with Bianca. Did they leave? Okay. Okay. Are they? Okay. Loretta Brown and Loretta, if folks are aware, she was on Facebook. Recognize she works for Van Rensselaer Manor. she's one of the caregivers there she couldn't be here because she's working but um we thank loretta from the bottom of our hearts thank you loretta vincent sago vincent thank you vincent Vincent and I met and Vincent, true, true hero. Vincent, real quick, tell folks what you did.

So we was, well, good evening, everybody. We was basically leaving work and when we pulled up at the stop sign, it was basically, and I looked to the side, it was basically the whole thing was on fire. the first guy that came up when I tried to see what's going on it was keep saying somebody's in the house so I ran out I hop over the fence he was already inside can't come out so we had to do it together as a teamwork and the other girl name that she mentioned she was uh you know it was all of us trying to get it the only way that we could have make it out without getting hurt was break the fence down so we did it together and sorry we couldn't get the rest of the guys that was in there but You know, it is what it is. Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Vincent. Stay right here. Thank you. Thank you, Vincent. And I believe with Vincent was Joe Gina, correct? Joe, come on up, please. Vincent, please stay. Thank you. It's okay. Thank you. Joe Gina, folks. And Joe, thank you so much. I met Joe and Vincent and true heroes here, guys, and really put others before yourself. Thank you, Joe. Did you want to add anything?

No, I'm just saying if I see it again, we're going to do it again. That's all to it.

You hear that, Salucci?

All right. Thank you, Vincent and Joe. Thank you again. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Barbara. Thank you.

thank you next uh these students truly remarkable we'd like you all to come up with your family please uh i continue to be amazed of these young kids and al from five star donated a thousand dollars to the kids i'm not sure who who got the extra uh dollar they did three uh 333 to each so i'm not sure who split the last dollar but saying that i said what are you going to do with the monies they said put in the bank all three of them please come up cj kevin and amari and your families please sorry This is Kevin, Sife, Amari.

Yeah, Sife. Amari.

Now these kids, true heroes. I've gotten to know them over the last week and a half. I feel we've seen each other three, four times. True, true heroes. I asked them, you know, what were you thinking when you banged on that door? And they tried to not just bang, they tried to knock that door down. A lot of kids nowadays wouldn't have done what CJ, Kevin, and Omari did. And I'll let CJ be the spokesperson, or Kevin, it's up to you. But just talk about that afternoon, if you don't mind facing the public. Thank you.

so we're just walking by um we're just coming back from park and we saw a catch on fire on the porch so we ended up running up banging on the door and trying to get people out honestly i'm just happy at least somebody heard me

We love these three kids and, you know, once again, putting others before yourself at such a young age is remarkable, but also we wanna thank your parents, Amanda, and all of you for instilling that into your children. You could say it a thousand times. Some kids listen, some kids don't. These kids listen to their parents and you are a product of them. vice versa. So thank you to the parents for really instilling that into their children. Thank you.

Thank you again.

Thank you. True heroes. Okay, now we're going to not do one by one because I do out of respect for time for the public safety, but we are going to read each name and ask all of you who are here to come up. Battalion Chief Michael Bailey. And then please stay up here. Thank you. Where'd you get that tan, Mike? Captain Matthew Down. Okay. Captain Sean Luby. And you can still clap for these guys, folks. Captain Scott Morrisey. And do know whilst Captain Morrissey's coming up, Seamus and I stopped at every firehouse, spent some quality time. The chief, not only did we thank them personally, but the chief handed out really incredible challenge coins. And we can't thank our firefighters enough. Captain David Wheeler. Lieutenant Jordan Baldwin. Thank you, Lieutenant. Thank you. Lieutenant Daniel Bornhurst, Jr. Thank you, Lieutenant. Thank you, Lieutenant. Thank you. lieutenant tyler bolson thank you Now, this person, we saw her in action. The coordination just on site of what Hannah did was truly remarkable. And sometimes, you know, you see the firefighters, you know, with the ashes and the soot. And sometimes you forget how key that coordination is. Firefighter Hannah Askren. Thank you. And all the firefighters. Thank you.

Come here.

All the firefighters when we were talking to them at the firehouses said, Hannah was incredible. And that was at every firehouse that responded. Thank you again, Anna. Thank you. Firefighter Avery Pascucci. Avery's grandfather, Nick Piscucci. Well known. Thank you. Firefighter, Zachary Rents. Thank you, Zachary. Firefighter, Cody Carpenter. Firefighter, Cody Lane. I mix these Codys up all the time. Thank you, Cody. Thank you. Firefighter, Fred Gokey. Fred, we love you. Firefighter, Daniel Sullivan. Thank you, Daniel. Firefighter, Brett Sullivan. Thank you so much, Brett. Thank you. Firefighter, Rob Zeider. We love Rob. Thank you, Rob. Firefighter, or maybe not. Now I'm kidding. We have some coming over here too. Firefighter, Brian Reardon. Thank you, Brian. Firefighter, Patrick Bryan. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you. Firefighter, Kevin Douglas. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you. Firefighter, Chris Hughes. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you. Firefighter, Alden Metola. Firefighter, Daniel Harvey. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. Firefighter, Dawson Galluzzo. and firefighter Elias Anderson. Thank you, Elias. Thank you, Elias. Now, if we could ask all of our heroes also from earlier, please come up. We're gonna get a full shot of everyone, okay? We can do this, I know it. So we're gonna have to get some people, yeah. Come on up, Kev, CJ. all of us awesome nice let's do this let's do it come on and nobody's hiding nobody's hiding right here beautiful maybe um we could get a chair if you okay cool awesome oh please bring oh bring her bring her come on yeah she wants dad she wants dad Ladies and gentlemen, true heroes right here. Let's give them all a round. Thank you.

Okay, everybody, you're going to look right at me first. We're going to go on three. Ready? One, two, three. Okay, keep looking straight forward. One. And one. People.

Ladies and gentlemen, one more shout out for these incredible folks, Trojans. We love you. Try strong. Thank you. Thank you.

The thing that I have to give back to you, this is something that I never use. Very nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

yeah. A lot of that. from the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Before I turn the gavel over to chair mckee for the public safety committee meeting i feel compelled to comment um on today's what transpired today um i was awakened by a reporter asking me what do you think about the vandalism And I said, I don't know what vandalism you're talking about. And he explained it to me. And I want to make it clear that there is no place in a decent civilized society for what has transpired on this building and the building next. These are private businesses that should not be vandalized, should not be defaced. And whoever is responsible I hope will be brought to justice swiftly and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent. This is not the way we run a government. It's not the way we want to run a government. And I don't think any of us here do. I want to encourage us tonight to display that civility that I know we all cherish and to not. react to speakers tonight please bear with us please remain calm and quiet and respectful and i would ask the speakers to do the same i would ask those in the hall to do the same we are um as was said earlier um we are we're only as good as the best of us we need we need to show our goodness so I would ask that you do that tonight and um I turned the mic and the gavel over to Council member McKee

Thank you. So I'm going to call the Public Safety Committee meeting to order. Make sure you get the money close to you. Okay. Okay. Take the roll. Council Member McKee is here. Council Member Struber? Present. Council Member Favreau? Present. Council Member DiLorenzo?

Present.

Council Member Spain McLaren. Present. Council Member Campbell Cohen.

Present.

Council President Steele.

Present.

Good evening and welcome to the Public Safety Committee meeting. Before we begin, I want to echo President Steele's remarks about the recent vandalism at City Hall involving the flock cameras. We strongly and unequivocally condemn the destruction of property. This is not how policy disputes are resolved in a democracy, and there is no place for this or any kind of violence in our community. I also want to address the 60-day pause on the ALPR legislation that had been scheduled for a public hearing on June 4th. At the request of the Mayor, Council President Steele and I met Tuesday with the Police Department, the District Attorney, the Mayor and members of her administration to discuss the proposed legislation. At that meeting, the mayor presented us with a new ALPR policy from the Troy PD. We are happy to see this policy, but want to be clear, it does not replace legislation. For several months, we have been requesting information from the Troy police about how these cameras are being used. For this meeting, we submitted 21 specific questions and asked for responses by Tuesday evening. At the Tuesday afternoon meeting, it became clear those answers would not be provided. We are still waiting for responses to all 21 questions. In terms of the 48-hour deletion requirement, we agreed to a 60-day pause to give the police department time to analyze their data. Specifically, they will look at cases where a crime occurred but was not reported right away and determine, after the initial 48-hour window, how many days later were database queries made and did those queries return any matches. So with that, I'd like to invite our first guest this evening and welcome you, DA Mary Pat Donnelly. Please proceed.

Try again?

Very good.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to speak. You know, this is a topic that I feel very strongly about, and I appreciate that we're at the point now where we're acknowledging the discourse that needs to occur. To be clear, for those who don't know, I'm an end user of this information. So my comments will be limited to the value that it has as it pertains to prosecution once it has been collected essentially by the police department. I appreciate the opportunity to demonstrate the utility of this information, as I know many have questioned, irrespective of privacy concerns, which are, of course, a big part of the conversation, why the cameras are needed in the first place. And this is just my opinion as an attorney. I want to say I do not support unfettered privacy infringement as a guise for public safety. But it is my opinion, based upon my experience, that a person sacrifices a certain amount of privacy driving down a public roadway and that the compelling need for public safety strikes that balance that we seek under the constitution. So I do feel that the use of license plate readers in the way that they have been used in my experience is not an infringement and does not infringe on someone's reasonable expectation of privacy. Now, whether Flock is the appropriate entity to provide those cameras and that information is not a topic I will speak on. I've learned from each of you as we've started to talk about this. I'm talking about the use of this technology in general. I would like to emphasize what we've already heard that earlier this week, Mayor Mantello, President Steele, Chief Barker and I and other members got together. And I think one of the good things that came out of that conversation is we all agree the information collected by FLOC must be protected and limited to use for law enforcement purposes. Those new regulations that were put in place by Troy PD, I see as a demonstration of their commitment to that goal. So LPR capture evidence is used so frequently that at this juncture, it's really impossible to provide clear data, which I know is what you would like to see for you to analyze. So before this week, that was just not something that we kept a spreadsheet on. Speaking to my ADAs, reviewing the cases that I review, everybody is in agreement. We use FLOC basically all the time. As a result of our recent meeting in agreement with the mayor and council president, my office will now work with Troy PD effective immediately to collect exactly that. Data to demonstrate how often the LPRs are used and the question that you really want to know, how often is the capture used within that 48-hour period or longer? I'm confident that the data is going to demonstrate we need more than 48 hours, but we'll go with that. Because we're only doing this for a 60-day period, I don't know that I'll be able to come back to you with successful prosecutions that have resulted during that small period of time. But just know that we're committed to working with Troy PD, do whatever we need to do to make that data make sense to you so you can understand how important it is. I'm going to give you a couple of cases just where we have used this data so people can understand why it's so important to us. I have a kidnapping case from late 2021. A Troy PD officer was responding to a mental health call at a Stewart's on the corner of Vandenberg and Campbell when a woman began running toward his police car. She was screaming, bleeding from her arm and had no shirt on. She was very upset, advised the officer that she was afraid for her life. Investigation revealed that she'd been picked up at a location in Albany by an acquaintance and was told she was being brought to a club. At some point during the car ride, she realized they were heading in the wrong direction, heading toward Rensselaer County. When she began to ask questions, a juvenile popped up from the back seat with a gun, put it to her head, and told her she was going to die. After traveling through East Greenbush, North Greenbush, and into Troy, she noticed that police car at Stewart's and knew that was her opportunity. She jumped from the moving vehicle, naked from the waist up, and um ran to the police essentially they put her in the police car and this resulted in a successful prosecution she was able to give the make and model of the car we were able to use the lprs on the bridge leading out of troy to capture that plate and figure out who that person was um so that's one example then we have a rape case from the summer of 2024 where a 15 year old was raped in a car in the city of troy she reported the rape the following morning then she went to the hospital for a medical exam she identified the suspect and it took about three days for the police to connect with him to conduct an interview he of course had a different story of where he was at that time circumstances of the situation and what we were able to do there is track his car around the city to corroborate her story. So in that case, it was used as really critical corroboration, and that did result in a conviction and a state prison sentence. A third case, I'll just go over quickly, was a murder from the spring of 2024 where a body was undiscovered for about a day and a half to two days. So the body was found inside the home by a roommate, reported to the police after about two days, questioning began and it wasn't until significantly later that we were able to start honing in on who was involved, where they traveled to. We had to use Albany PD, Schenectady, various LPRs to figure out what had happened and to establish a timeline. So in that case, it was critical. And as you can see, the 48 hour timeline there would have been a real problem if we did not have that information. I've chosen these examples just to demonstrate the gravity of the cases that are used, but they are used in many, many cases from felonies right on down to misdemeanors. Statewide, Department of Criminal Justice Services continue to invest in our crime analysis centers, which focus on data sharing amongst law enforcement agencies. The CAC Network statewide documented 1,397 success stories in 2025. This is in their annual report. And they report their words that LPR was a contributing tool and a significant share of those outcomes. So this year, DCJS has pledged another $75 million in law enforcement technology funding. And again, a large portion going towards those LPRs. Access to LPR captures is critical in solving and preventing crime. Juries want pictures, they want videos, they want digital proof that we're prosecuting the right person. Empirical data such as this does prevent wrongful convictions. I do look forward to working with all of you to address the articulated concerns while prioritizing public safety. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Do we have time for a few minutes? You keeping time? Okay. I just wanted to just be clear. I know you made in the press release, you made some statements about this law conflicting with the discovery laws. And I just wanted to be clear about that because we don't want to do that, right? So under section five, where there are exceptions to the 48-hour retention limit. It says under number one, there's an exception where required under applicable state law governing the preservation of evidence, provided that such data shall be deleted as practicable once its preservation is no longer required. Does that

cover that i don't think that it does when something exists i have to have had it so i have concerns that it would be a problem for discovery and that was the heart of my comment was that we had worked so hard to try to promote transparency and to promote a method so that whatever exists is turned over to have to go back and say that it has now been deleted by law, essentially, I think could be a problem for us. And that is something that I'm working with the DA's association to try to confirm for you because I know that was one of the issues.

We could be much more explicit. I think we can come up with language that would cover it and hopefully satisfy you. And we can discuss that. I don't have any other questions. Anybody else? Thank you. Thank you. DA Donnelly, I appreciate your coming here. Now we'd like to call the Troy Police Department. I think Chief DeWolf, Chief Barker. We may need a few more chairs.

To be clear, this is the police department.

Okay, well, I hope we have the chairs.

And you can certainly comment, Mayor, right after during the public comment period.

I'm planning to.

Okay. Well, hopefully we have the chairs.

Seamus Tobin.

welcome chief nice to see you again hello good evening everybody good to see you all too

I should mention that we were having three different speakers tonight, and we wanted to keep a limit on the time so that we're not here till midnight. And so we were giving each speaker about 10 minutes. If you need to go over, that's fine too. Okay. But we'd love to hear your specific concerns about this proposed legislation. We'd appreciate that.

So my main concern was... retention period and the sharing um so without the without having the time to uh figure out that you're going to need the use of the lpr um limiting it to 48 hours was going to make it very difficult because many times cases aren't even up and running for a few days sometimes sometimes even a couple weeks um so that was the that was the main concern with uh the retention period uh the sharing if we're not able to share with other jurisdictions, especially in our area, then it kind of makes it not all that helpful. You know what I mean? Because many times a criminal or a suspect or a missing person or whatever is going from one jurisdiction to another. And that's how we're able to use that device and find out where they are. You know what I mean? So we can either build our case or we can help that person that's missing.

Okay. Is that a broad area? Can you give us a sense to, you know, 25 mile radius or?

Well, we use it more. We obviously use it more within the capital region, the greater capital region. Most of the time. I mean, there's those times like right now we're investigating a case and that person has fled that general area. So we're going to have to rely on on on other partners to help us, you know, I mean, to help us maybe track that person if they're able to, because it's out of our jurisdiction. It's out of our area. Um, so, so that's where, that's where it becomes, uh, an issue and where that's why in the policy, the newest policy, I had said that the national, uh, search would, would definitely be off all the time. Unless there's extenuating circumstances. And then I would let the mayor and the council know like, Hey, this is what's going on. We're trying to find this fleeing suspect of a homicide or kidnapping or something like that. We need to turn out for this specific amount of time because we have some leads that maybe the person's going in this general area, and then we would immediately turn it off, but you would be in the loop the whole time. That's why I put that in there. The statewide search, we no longer actually have that activated either. We have only sharing agreements with a number of jurisdictions within the state. Um, and I thought that the annual reporting was, was, uh, transparent and helpful and it would actually help, you know, the, the citizens learn more about it too. You know what I mean? By, by doing that, uh, because I mean, the bottom line is that, um, we we do this because because we care about this community you know what I mean and we want justice for victims and we we want people that are missing to to be found and helped um and that and that's why we do this you know I mean it's not I'm not like digging my heels in over this I'm just it's just it's upsetting that there's such a great tool that helps us solve crimes more solve crimes and prevent crimes and it's a crime solver really crime solving tool and finding missing endangered people. You know, that's why it's important to me. That's why it's worth having this discussion, you know.

And we're going to continue to allow you to have it.

I know, but so that it's actually more useful, though. I mean, I think that's great, you know what I mean, that you're not completely against it, which I'm thankful for that. But it has to be, the parameters have to be so that it's useful, right? You know, I mean, because if it's so limited, then it's not really going to help us that much. You know, I mean, so but that's why that's I appreciate that you're giving us the 60 days. We're going to talk more about it and we're going to come up with, you know, we're going to try and capture as much data as we can to show, you know, the spare time between sometimes when a case is is opened.

And I'm sorry, Chief, please put those down and keep them down. Thank you.

uh so uh so i'm grateful for that and um i think that the the conversations and discussions are good i mean we we want to be open about it all we're really like i said we're really just looking to to to do the best job we can for the citizens of the city you know what i mean and to because because it's real life it's not it's not some uh some something that's going on like hey this is a good cause whatever this is real life these are people that get victimized you know what i mean and we're trying to help them and this tool helps us help them so

No, and we want to provide you with the tool, but we also have to take into consideration the privacy rights. Citizens are very much concerned about it, especially given what's going on.

I certainly don't want their privacy out there either, or mine either. I drive by them all the time, too. you know yeah yeah you know it's going to be you know it's a tough balance yeah sensitive balance so that's what we're trying to strike we want to give you those tools but we also need to protect um the constitution i can say that i know for sure that i have not been negatively impacted by it myself that i know of uh and i and i don't know that i don't know anybody who has either personally or no one has gotten a hold of us and said hey i've been negatively impacted by this can you look into this so

I think overall, there's a vast, enormous infrastructure in place to track movements throughout the country. And people are very much concerned about having their movements tracked. And we're very worried about the infrastructure, the surveillance infrastructure that's in place. and we have an authoritarian at the helm at the national level, and we have seen our rights being assaulted. They're talking about sending military troops to voting polls this November, and we are concerned about the loss of our rights. So I think there's this heightened awareness At this time, and the other issue is people are very wary of Ai. It's developing very quickly, very rapidly, and even the masters of the universe out in Silicon Valley do not know that the risks involved with Ai development. So I think all that comes together and people fear when they see cameras. And, you know, we know that our movements are being tracked. I see I know it's every day for me going up to the Y and in and out of Troy. And so I think, you know, that's what we're trying to do. Make sure that people feel comfortable with those cameras. But also, obviously, we want to give you all the tools we can to solve crimes. We are all concerned about public safety.

I just wanted to add to the sharing piece because I think it's important to bring up as part of the discussion. The importance of having pre-existing sharing relationships was The history of it was born out of 9-11 after we were told that all law enforcement operated in silos. But if we experience an incident in Troy and the suspect flees or the evidence flees, we don't know necessarily where we're looking for it. So to say just to have a local database and if you want something from Waterville Elite, ask Waterville Elite, or you want something from Albany, go to Albany and serve them with a warrant. We're not sure where the evidence we're looking for is. And so to have those pre-existing relationships, at least locally, allows us And even the most recent cases to query that database and see, oh, all right, it's in this township. Now we know where to go to solicit further. So I think that's the importance of having at least some established sharing relationships with local jurisdictions, because we don't know where we're going until we find the evidence or have corroboration.

Do you also have them with Massachusetts and Vermont?

Everything now is only in-state. It's granular, one-to-one in-state. We've turned off the nationwide sharing. Obviously, we've talked ad nauseum about that. We've turned off the welcome invitation of statewide sharing, and now it's just one-to-one with specific New York State agencies. Agencies within New York State.

I just wanted to ask a question. You know, we had asked for the 21 questions, answers, and we are very interested in seeing the audit logs. Is there any reason why we can't get them? They are public records. I know I've heard from a lot of the public that they've requested them through FOIL request and they've been denied.

Yeah, well, I mean, some of that data is in public record.

Did you say is or is not?

Yeah, there are a number of exemptions that apply to different fields, different types of searches.

Oh, it can be redacted, though.

if it were to redact it would eliminate almost all useful information in my opinion right now maybe you would just get end up with a number of searches and whether it was network and organization and the date search was made and what the crime was correct i'm sorry the crime no i i don't think you can do that because uh go ahead uh did you want me to finish my answer first

I'm sorry, I thought you were winding down. I apologize.

Okay, I mean, sometimes searches are conducted by detectives, where they're, if the crime were revealed, it would alert the suspect, it could alert the suspect to the type of investigation that is being conducted, whereas the suspect or whether that I think I'm in the event, right?

Search.

my opinion right now is it's largely an investigative tool uh and it's it it is uh intra-agency records generally it is used to determine uh you know whether or not uh uh a whether or not there is a lead or not and sometimes there's no lead i would also ask you to consider too i think mary pat alluded to this sometimes The searches eliminate suspects. Sometimes they exonerate people who are at first being looked at as the potential criminal. And with regard to the discovery portions of the local law, those could, as a former defense attorney, I would argue to a judge that there was a spoliation of evidence here. that if they had kept the logs for a reasonable length of time, my client could be exonerated. And, you know, that's a certain possibility, too. I just want you to know that.

Right. Got it.

I'm sorry, council person.

Thank you. Have you seen the redacted audit logs that Albany County has released on their system?

I have not.

So I have that in front of me, and it is public, that Albany makes public, and it includes the name of the officer, the organization who made the search, the number of networks it searched, so it will also show if it was nationwide, local, etc., the time frame of the search, the reason that was entered and the search time. So when they actually typed it into the computer, but it has redacted the license plate.

so is that not something that troy could also do if you would like to send me that whatever it is you are looking at i would be happy to look at it i have had some discussions uh with the command staff as to the redactability of these uh searches but i will say again we're very concerned that it could re reveal manner and means methods of investigations uh even identifying the user the specific officer investigating could have the could have the result of inadvertently

tipping off someone that i mean certain officers investigate certain kinds of cases going with those lines would there be a concern providing the council with redacted records for an audit maybe not making them fully public but having oversight still from council so so there are some concerns about that too okay i'm not

i certainly haven't ruled out you are the city council you're elected to govern the city uh but um i think that we might have a we probably should have a discussion about safeguards about you know guarding confidential information keeping it so that no one is inadvertently harmed and no it no proper investigation is jeopardized unnecessarily thank you thank you anybody else

Council Member Favreau.

Yes. So thank you for turning off the statewide search. I didn't wasn't aware of that. Thank you for listening. And from what I'm hearing, you have the capital region set up so you can query those other municipalities. Do they all use flock? Is that why it's so easy to use? yeah they're all part of the part of that flock network right what happens if there is no more flock and i'm not saying no more alprs but if we choose a different provider when the proposal goes out what happens yeah can you speak to that dave so depending on the vendor that we would end up with after the rfp they may have

other customers in the area, so we wouldn't be turned off to them. If other people switch, the state uses a variety of options, but one of them is another vendor. Perhaps other people would eventually come on, or it would be that earlier sharing situation that I mentioned is we would potentially have to wait to have some indication, oh, this suspect vehicle, a total sample or example here is this suspect vehicle, we have reason to believe it went to WaterVolete. Let's call WaterVolete and try to access their information. would be some reduced effectiveness because we would need to know that we wouldn't just call everyone and say hey check for this but it's just one of the balances of the effectiveness of law enforcement so it would just be after that'd be the obstacle we'd overcome at that time okay thank you sure also remember earlier you referenced it's down to one-to-one agreements between uh police departments uh can i just get confirmation that when you say that what you mean is

cameras with the it's an agreement to share data collected from cameras within specifically our jurisdiction and data collected from cameras. within specifically their jurisdiction. So for instance, if someone had, I don't know what other police departments are doing, but say Watervliet has this massive agreement with a bunch of different municipalities, by entering into a one-to-one with them, we're not also accessing all of that, right?

Yes, you're tracking. It's just us, Watervliet is one of them. Us and Watervliet, even if Watervliet had national search turned on, they wouldn't then by proxy get to our data.

gotcha and um I don't expect you to have the figure in the dome right now but do you have like a ballpark sense of how many of those one-to-one agreements exist at the moment 125 okay throughout the state right okay great thank you I mean don't forget there's like eight police departments just in Rensselaer County so it's uh it's really not that big of a number

council member thanks um going off of that is is that 125 based on your experience with where you know following the the the crimes following the jurisdictions that you know are most likely to coincide with crime and Troy yeah they were well yeah they had

there was some coincidence with with why they were chosen um and and the ones that that we have queried the most okay so okay thanks you're welcome chair um chief you mentioned um your concerns with the retention and sharing are there any other concerns that you would want to raise to the council as we consider this law the uh well the penalty phase too the reason why

you know the uh the policy i i prefer the policy was then it you know the there is penalties if you if you violate the policy you know what i mean investigation is conducted and then discipline is doled out um but with the uh damages yeah with that penalty i was in uh that penalty phase i don't know i just thought it could have been worded better i guess um and then yeah the other one was uh that you want to limit it to felony investigations or felony warrants and there's many many many bad misdemeanors uh you know sex abuse and and uh reckless endangerment and assaults and things like that that should you know that are pretty they're pretty high misdemeanors you know i mean that we want the ability to to track those people you know what i mean if they become a suspect and you know use it to help solve those crimes

Is domestic violence also considered a high misdemeanor?

I couldn't hear you.

Is it domestic violence?

Correct. Yeah, there's many domestic violence offenses, strangulation, assault.

Felony, right? No, misdemeanor.

Any other?

Those were the main ones. I'm glad he reminded me of that.

The felony versus misdemeanor, that really would be not a good idea. You know what I mean? Because you're going to leave a lot of people out there that are victims of crimes that, you know, should have that at their disposal as well.

All right.

yeah there was a provision in there too which I think I think the DA had mentioned too that it like favors the defense counsel and and it doesn't say anything about the prosecution all right well there's yeah I think she was talking about the exceptions to the 48-hour rule and we we just went over that with her and we'll make it more explicit yeah is that what you're yeah yeah

all right well thank you very much i really appreciate the council really appreciates your coming in and discussing this with us like i said we want to strike a balance between giving you the tools you need to do your job you do a great job and We want to give you everything you need to do that. We know that you are protecting us, and we appreciate it very much. We also have to protect privacy rights.

I understand.

Thank you very much, too.

Thanks for having us and for listening. Appreciate it.

Thank you. two chairs right behind yes two more chairs just two yeah okay i would ask that the signage be removed please like to welcome Daniel Schwartz from the New York Civil Liberties Union. Welcome, Daniel.

Thank you very much. Can you hear me okay? Or should I hold it closer? Test, test. Is this better?

Yes, thank you. All right, thank you.

My name is Daniel Schwartz and I'm testifying on behalf of the New York Civil Liberties Union. We thank the council members for holding this hearing and for the opportunity to provide testimony today. Automatic License Plate Readers, or ALPRs, capture the movements of millions of innocent New Yorkers every day, building detailed movement records revealing where we go to work, who we meet, which healthcare providers we visit, which places of worship we frequent, and which protests we attend. Under current law, there are virtually no limits on how long this data can be kept, who can access it, or with whom it can be shared. Such warrantless surveillance undermines our constitutional protections, in particular our rights to freedom of association, speech, religion, and privacy under the First and Fourth Amendments. This is not hypothetical. ALPRs have been used to track abortion seekers, target immigrants, monitor protesters, and enable the stalking of domestic violence survivors. Proposed Local Law 3 would create common sense guardrails to protect privacy and mitigate abuse by limiting when ALPRs can be used, dramatically reducing data retention periods, and prohibiting sharing ALPR data without explicit judicial oversight. The proposed legislation would limit ALPR use to narrowly defined legitimate law enforcement purposes, felony investigations, locating stolen vehicles, and finding missing people. This is not radical. It is common sense. The core problem with ALPRs is that they do not surveil suspects. They surveil everyone. Every car that passes a camera is locked, regardless of whether its driver has any connection to any crime. Without use restrictions, that indiscriminate surveillance infrastructure can be turned on anyone, at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all. We have seen what mission creep looks like. Powerful investigative tools get deployed for minor traffic infractions, civil matters, and increasingly to monitor people exercising their lawful rights. Local law 3 would ensure that when this technology is used, it is used for serious public safety purposes and nothing more. Local law 3 would require that ALPR data be deleted within 48 hours unless it is used as evidence in an investigation or pursuant to a warrant. This matters enormously because the longer location records are kept, the more ways they can be misused. Historical ALPR records have been used to investigate abortion seekers traveling across state lines, to identify participants at protests, and to reveal people's associations and movements. Retaining ALPR data for days or weeks also enables predictive use, identifying where people will drive in the future based on their past travel patterns. ICE and other federal agencies have used aggregated plate data to identify where to find and detain immigrants. The argument that we should keep data just in case it becomes useful is precisely the logic of mass surveillance and incongruent with democratic society. Data minimization is a fundamental principle of privacy protection, and it is the right approach here. For reference, New Hampshire state law mandates deletion of non-HIT data within three minutes. A 48-hour limit is already a significant accommodation. It should not be weakened further. Local Law 3 would require judicial authorization before ALPR data can be shared, and it would close the commercial backdoor by requiring a warrant to access this information from data brokers. Vendors like Flock specialize in enabling the most extreme forms of data sharing, removing any semblance of local control. They have built a nationwide network that allows police departments across the country to query each other's data. The platform's user interface is designed to encourage expansive data sharing through various modalities that obscure the vast access users grant outside entities, maximizing data flow rather than protecting privacy and oversight. In Syracuse, for example, when police inadvertently opted into data sharing, officers from across the country searched Syracuse drivers' information 4.4 million times between June 2024 and July 2025, of which 2,097 were labeled as immigration-related. Here in Troy, we still lack transparency, basic information, and answers. Most importantly, flux organization and network audit, which is readily downloadable on the platform. Here's what we know, though. In addition to the national lookup tool, which was widely publicized in local news, the department also granted other separate forms of direct access and sharing, which enabled entities across the country to have access to all of Troy's ALPR data. A warrant requirement ensures that we close the floodgates and that any sharing is subject to independent judicial review. Without this guardrail, LPR systems built with local tax dollars become instruments of federal overreach and out-of-state prosecution. Finally, Local Law 3 would require mandatory audit logs of every query, including who, when, and why, as well as annual public reporting on camera locations, statistics, and privacy policies. And critically, it would provide a private right of action for individuals harmed by unlawful ALPR use. Let's be clear. A private right of action is not a financial burden on good faith law enforcement. It is a deterrent for bad actors. Police departments and FLOG have violated state ALPR laws repeatedly in California, Illinois, Washington, and Virginia. The threat of civil liability, including attorney's fees, is one of the most effective tools we have to ensure compliance. Before I close, I must address yesterday's policy announcement. We welcome any acknowledgement that guardrails are needed, but this policy falls critically short on every aspect Local Law 3 addresses. On sharing, the policy offers no coherent structure for who can access ALPR data, when, and under what circumstances, allowing for intrastate searches, out-of-state agency access, and even national searches. The prescribed third-party requests do not limit scope and scale. The permission for utilizing the national lookup tool dismisses the reality that when activated for a single search, it makes the entirety of Troy's LPR database indexed and searchable by every flock customer across the country. On retention, the 30-day period is written as a recommendation, not a requirement, with no deletion obligation whatsoever. Keeping movement records for this long enables the precise tracking of people's travel behaviors, predicting their likely movements in the future. And I'm sure many of you will have seen yesterday's news outlining the FBI's plans to purchase nationwide ALPR data. This is exactly the kind of federal overreach a short retention period as proposed by Local Law 3 will protect against. On oversight, the audit mechanism described, randomly selecting 10 searches, is not a serious accountability measure. It is statistically arbitrary, methodologically undefined, and wholly inadequate to detect patterns of misuse across a system processing millions of queries. And on transparency, the department has been operating the system for years, yet the policy announcement calls for a 60-day extension to gather more data before acting. The public doesn't need another delay. It needs the Troy PD FLOG organization audit, which contains detailed records of searches performed by the department's own operators, and the network audit, which logs all searches conducted by other external agencies, both of which are readily available by the tool and should already be public. A voluntary internal policy, unverifiable and unenforceable, is not a reason to slow this legislation. It is a reason to pass it. The NYCLU thanks the Committee and the Council for the opportunity to provide testimony today. We strongly support Local Law 3 to create ALPR guardrails and urge for its swift passage. Nobody wants to live in a world where pervasive surveillance tracks where you go, who you meet, and how you exercise your rights. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Daniel. Thank you, Daniel. I am so confused about these access to these audit logs. Janet Callahan- Is it just a matter of pushing a button and they are downloaded from flock or can you can you explain that to us.

yeah um. That is what.

Janet Callahan- i'm sorry and I have read where some of these you know you would have to redact some of this information is that done locally or is that done in in by flock.

I personally have never had access to Phlox OS and their various software interfaces, but from my understanding, it is readily downloadable, both the organization audit and the network audit, and it comes pre-redacted. So it does not disclose the license plates that are being searched unless they were entered as the reason for the search or in some other custom field. Even if then it is a very organized spreadsheet, if some additional personally identifying information or sensitive data pertaining to an investigation would be included, it is very easy to delete such a column, but still disclose the number of queries, the purposes, the types of crimes that were queried, as well as with the network audit, how many queries have happened throughout the lifetime of the product. and which agencies have searched. And this is how we know, for example, that Syracuse was searched over 4 million times, including 2,000 immigration-related searches. I think earlier, the Albany audit was mentioned. I think in New York state alone, there are numerous publicly available audits of that sort. And by way of Troy PD's searching through both the national lookup tool and the direct sharing agreements with out-of-state entities, we have already around 1,000 of queries that the Troy PD submitted to other police departments that showcase, for example, that there are nationwide, or at least until they turn it off now, that there were nationwide agreements outside of the national lookup tool. And they happen from Arkansas all the way to Texas and Washington.

Thank you. In terms of uses, the proposed law allows for serious crimes, felonies, and you just heard the Chief speak about these serious misdemeanors, domestic abuse, sexual assault. Is there any way that we can include those? I think you said by a court order, is that correct? Sorry, I didn't hear your last... To include those crimes, to allow them to investigate those crimes with ALPRs, how can we include that without violating privacy rights?

Yeah, I think this is where you are getting at with your 21 questions that you submitted to the police department to really see what types of crimes were solved and where are ALPRs really useful? And I think that is the question you're trying to solve here. What is that right balance and how can you prevent mission creep where mass surveillance system is being deployed for very minor infractions and finding that right delineation and working with the police department here, but really making sure that this should not be a tool that gets used for every minor infraction um just because it's out there and um I think that this is where these three pillars work hand in hand between user limitation retention limits and sharing limits to prevent abuse thank you um anybody else yeah uh Council member Campbell Cohen

In your opening remarks, you compared the 48-hour retention period to the Massachusetts law. New Hampshire. New Hampshire, excuse me. Could you elaborate on that a little bit more, just what is happening in New Hampshire and how that's affecting law enforcement over there?

new hampshire had a complete ban on license plate readers until 10 years ago and then they amended their law removed the ban and permitted law enforcement use for alprs but made it clear that it can't be used for historic movement record searches so no retention of alpr data if they're not matching someone on a search list on a tightly regulated database. So it is real-time hits with someone that law enforcement is actively searching for, not building movement dossiers on the entirety of drivers in the state. Great. Thank you.

Anybody else? Okay, Daniel, thank you very much. I appreciate your hat. Thank you. I think that's the end of this committee. And now we can call for public comments on the Public Safety Committee.

Karen Hollweg, Not sure we're going to need that table and wait for the.

Karen Hollweg, yeah the next committee.

Anyone who has any comments about the discussion we just had regarding local law, proposed local law number three. Thank you. Please state your name.

Hi, I'm Audrey McGinley, resident of 4th Street, a current student of SUNY Oneonta. I had just come back because over the summer I'm going to be spending my time as an AI researcher at Bingham University. I have been studying machine learning since I was 14 years old in high school, just to give you the gravity of information that I know about this technology. Hearing about the news of the flock of cameras, I had to come ask a few questions to the council. How can you ensure that this will be used more often for good in cases like the DA presented and not present an issue of abuse of respect of privacy, like the man who just spoke from the NY Civil Liberty Unions just presented? How does this get to the root of the systemic issues that cause people to resort to crime? What were the alternatives to AI cameras you researched? Was policing in the city really dire to warrant this response? What data supports this as the answer that will address the root causes of poverty? How does this actually prevent the circumstances that lead someone to commit a crime? How can we trust the governance we are at the helm of a criminal? Are you prepared for people to have another reason to live somewhere else when they find out they're being constantly surveilled by AI? Track where they come and go as if they were driving a state-licensed vehicle. How would you feel if people whose names you did not know were filming you everywhere you go when you left your home? Would you feel safe? I moved here, two years ago, because I thought this was a safe place, and now I have serious doubts whether I should build a life here after I graduate there's no decent civilized society that needs to be watched all the time, like a helicopter parent would have a child.

If.

All right. Good morning. Good night. How are you? My name is Rambo. I'm a longtime member, a resident of this city and flock cameras I have with me here, which is every one of these people's rights, which is Article six, paragraph two of the United States Constitution, which says the supremacy clause. This Constitution and laws and pursuance thereof and the treaties made of which shall be made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land. The judges in every state shall be bound. Thereby, anything in conflict or repugnancy is notwithstanding. No void of law. And with that, you have. Your Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, so under the Supremacy Clause, that protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures, which is going on every single time you go buy a flock camera. There's no reason that these people need to be taking our information on a daily basis. That's wrong. And collecting it without our will or consent and without doing anything wrong on an every single day basis, just going to the store, going grocery shopping, you go buy nine cameras, that's a little bit over excessive and insane. Now, we had a shooting about three days ago up by the Heights, and apparently I saw a comment and a lady said she saw a group of 30 kids walking up Spring Ave. So you're gonna tell me that if I'm a police officer in a organization like that, and I wanna keep talking about these cameras like they're such a good thing, but you're gonna tell me when I buy these super expensive high-tech cameras, which it's amazing to me that cameras are so cheap, but then these ones are so expensive. So where's the technology that shows us when there's 30 kids at one time walking up a street. There is a flock camera at the bottom of that hill. Why did that not pick up and alert our police department so they can go find a group of 30 individuals and stop them before shootings happen? I remember there was a time when there was random bullets flying in that neighborhood and it hit a child. so that could have prevented and saved the child's life if these cameras were more efficient and we got better operating systems than what we have now so that's just a little bit of what i got to say um the the flock cameras you know it's just it's it's re it's a ridiculous concept there's absolutely no reason water of elite we just had a uh shooting with a ar Okay, they never caught them. So how are these flock cameras actually helping and saving us? I see a lot of people dodging comments when the real questions are asked. I see the same thing I see from the politicians that are up there at Hollywood, whatever, Washington. It's the same thing where you dodge comments. We need real people on this committee. Troy, New York is the home of Uncle Sam, and it should be an honor for you guys to stand here in our city, which is a very fundamental place for the entire United States. And I think we should be making a statement to the rest of the world here and the rest of America that America is by the people, for the people, where we represent everybody of this nation. We should be the first ones to protect the fourth amendment of the united states of america and the constitution and everybody's rights to not be monitored and mass surveilled everywhere they go they're putting license plate readers on the school buses so that means as i leave this city and i'm scanned by already two license plate readers now i'm driving by buses on the highway for whatever reason they're all out on there in the morning on everybody's morning commute to work and then they're getting scanned repeatedly everywhere they go and then picked up on license plate readers in another city. So if you look at the facts right there, that means you're being documented from the moment you leave your house, at the time you're driving on a highway outside of the house, and then when you get to work because most of your workplaces are in a public parking lot or a private parking lot that still has these automatic license plate readers everywhere. So we're trying to figure out why the government wants to mass surveil people. And more importantly, why people could even possibly want to convince someone. If anybody ever tells you that mass surveillance is a good thing, those people are the problem. And don't any one of you ever forget that. Don't let these people change your minds. God is with us and he will be with us forever. I promise you they will be exposed in the light in the end.

Thank you.

That's all I have to say. God bless America. Trump's the best president ever. Much love.

Hello. Sorry. Hello. My name is Emma Delapia. I live on Euclid Ave. I'm in Councilman Favreau's district. And I was taking notes while the DA was talking, Mary Donnelly, and she had mentioned that there were, she had mentioned three cases, I believe, where these flock cameras were useful. One six years ago, and two two years ago. And they were awful crimes, but in the first case, the woman went to the cops herself for assistance. The camera did not assist that woman. And there was a cop in the same parking lot as the suspects so they were a witness and also they should have a dash cam though I know that that's been contentious in Troy in the past that the police have resisted being filmed in their cars while being willing to film us all of the time but I guess what got me is during those years, the flock cameras have been in use and have solved three crimes. They have captured every single person who has gone by them. They have filmed us. They've built an entire database on us not to solve crimes ostensibly because they've only solved three. And I'm pretty sure our crime rate is higher than that. I love Troy, but we're not the perfect city. I mean, we're not Utopia. So it doesn't seem like they're very useful.

I think the district attorney was just giving a few examples.

But this also tracks with something in the earlier March meeting where they could only bring up, what was it, a handful of examples? Was it four or five then? It seems like these are very limited in use. But thank you.

Sorry.

Sorry. Oh, no worries. Keep talking. I also found it interesting that there were 1,000 queries made from the Troy Police Department about us, and that we are also sharing our data. And I believe in March they mentioned that they didn't have the national sharing on, but now they're saying that they've just turned it off, which I kind of find suspect. I may be misremembering that. I don't have perfect notes on that. Also, one of the policemen up here brought up that this surveillance sharing was made because of 9-11, because of what happened then. I guess we've somehow felt that it was a failing of local police departments. I was 11 years old when 9-11 happened. I believe our parents at the time reacted very poorly. We've traded a lot of our privacy rights for restrictions on our freedom that translate into no additional security but security theater. And I don't think that's a good thing, but I also don't think 9-11 is an example of a failure of local police department sharing data, and I don't believe this is the correct response to take away from an attack on our nation. Being attacked by foreign actors is not something we could reasonably expect Detroit police to stop, and I don't think flock cameras would even help if that was used. These cameras are bad and they should be removed from our city. There is no advantage to them, really. They solve a very limited number of crimes or help solve a very limited number of crimes. We don't have any control against that, whether those crimes would have been solved without flock cameras. They might have been completely superfluous. Thank you for this law. I support the legislation. I hope you pass it. Please remove these flock cameras from our streets. Thank you.

Thank you. If you are joining us remotely on Zoom and would like to speak, press the raise hand button so we can activate your mic.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Deirdre, and I live in South Central Troy, and I am speaking up in support of the effort of local law number three. I genuinely believe that the only way to have sustained long-term resolution to this issue is to pass meaningful legislation that restricts ALPR use in our city. I applaud the effort of this first draft. 48-hour retention is a helpful start, though as mentioned before, in New Hampshire, it's three minutes, and they've been doing just fine with that for 10 years. That said, this law could go further, including unregistered or uninsured vehicles under permitted use seems like a disproportionate small infraction to be targeting with ALPRs. It seems like the effect of that would be to disproportionately surveil poor communities. It also doesn't really make sense to me why we would be using ALPRs for parking enforcement. And we in fact have a new resolution to address this issue of unfair parking enforcement in the city of Troy. No need to open the door to ALPRs there. I would also ask the city council consider more direction on how audits are reviewed and by whom. Because this technology involves public surveillance, and because the public has until this year never been involved or informed in the decision to implement this mass surveillance technology, I specifically would like to ask the council to consider adding a review board that includes community members, a review board that includes subpoena power. And I'm requesting this last bit because we have still not seen any kind of audit from TPD's flock data, as also mentioned before. Specifically, who has access to Troy's ALPR data through Flock? And this is information that is simple to access through Flock's platform. And I know this because there are sales videos on YouTube posted by Flock Safety that share how easy it is for a police department to audit their own data using Flock's platform. community has been asking for this information for months and the city council has been asking for this information for months and tpd has still not provided any i'd like to think that there's a spirit of collaboration here as it was mentioned about the policy or that we could work together but it seems like it feels like tpd is ignoring the request or it doesn't feel like they have to comply and it's making it seem like they're hiding something It's clear that we should have the power to compel them to share this information, especially because we know that it exists and that they can access it. It is our data, the communities, not just the police. I could go on, but I'll leave it there. Transparency and community involvement in decision making has to be built in going forward. And no matter what, the flock cameras have to go. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Brianna Harrington. I'm in the fourth district and I just want to mention briefly what's more rude, having signs that have rights or being in the hallway and not engaging with people. Okay. From the Washington Post article, Deputy Police Chief Stephen Wolf stated, the cameras are used in almost every investigation our detective bureau pursues. From a March 23rd Times Union article, Deputy Police Chief Stephen Barker stated, the searches have helped identify transient crime ranging from firearm sales to scams targeting older adults. Notably, the network helped police locate a Troy man wanted in a 2022 shooting. From the State of Emergency press conference on April 1st, Mayor Montello stated, These cameras have helped solve serious crimes including homicides, stabbings, armed robberies, and narcotic cases. From a March 17th Times Union article, Mayor Montello stated, We're going to bring in the data and the concrete statistics in terms of those cases and educate them more on the issue because I think not just the public, but the council is not fully aware of the impact on public safety that Flock has. It's two months later and neither the mayor or Troy PD have presented us with any data. No concrete statistics have come out to stop citizens or city council in their tracks, making a second guess if flock should stay in our community. And that's because no data exists. In the six years that flock cameras have been in our city, doing God knows what, and the phrase doing God knows what is truly an accurate depiction of the situation because due to the lack of data, we can't rightfully say otherwise. Our police department claims that they have no data to share with city council on how they have used Flock in any of their criminal investigations. After two months of the Troy PD and the mayor rattling off all these claims to local and national news outlets alike and to citizens who are hopeful for transparency from their leaders, they have to finally admit when these crucial pieces of information must be presented to city council to figure out a new ALPR legislation that they don't have anything. They have no data on a tool that sole reason for existence is to collect data. Either they're lying or incompetent, and I don't know which one is worse. Enter the updated flock policy enhancements announcement. This very sudden decision to give citizens the impression that the mayor cares about them also has the consolation prize of preventing the ALPR legislation to be voted on for 60 days. These 60 days will allow Troy PD to actually start collecting flock data. Gee, thanks. And to actually have proof that flock has a direct hand in solving things like elder crimes and all the other stuff that they've claimed. City council allowings this 60 day hold is not ideal. It's allowing the mayor and the PD to stall progress. It's giving the PD grace that has not been earned. And it's still not getting these data mining nightmares out of our city. These flock cameras are still rolling, left to their own devices. And don't even try to deny that Troy PD or Mayor Montello because you don't have the data to back anything up. You know less about the tech you're handling and its true capabilities that other police departments across the country have rejected and denounced than my 12 year old. This 60-day collection of flock data better be the most thorough, meticulous, painstaking data collection that anyone has seen in their entire lives. A masterclass in data recording that institutions far and wide will adopt as the gold standard that will impact generations to come, eventually earning an EGOT status and having David Attenborough narrate the critically acclaimed documentary, for Christ's sakes. It can't be fruitless. We do not have the time. In the next 60 days, Troy citizens will be paying very close attention to every little detail that comes out of this policy enhancements period. while simultaneously educating the community about flock and other data mining technology, connecting with other flock conscious groups across the country to build an even stronger allyship and seeing that this asinine and unlawful state of emergency is finally put six feet under and all who are responsible for it truly see some consequences. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I'd like to remind everyone that it's four minutes. It's a four-minute limit on comments. Thank you.

I'm going to read all that, okay? I can read real fast. No, okay. Hi, my name is Greg Lyons. I live in the downtown area off 2nd Street there. Second time here. How's it going? So I want to say first, thank you for Local 3. right I think it's much needed and it needs to pass and the next part I'm gonna say it's not I'm not ungrateful or I don't appreciate what you're doing because I do that's I mean that's why I have all this hair spent this time I'm very grateful for what you're doing and I appreciate it but I want to express my disappointment in the 60-day delay for the law all right 60 days. Do you know what happened 60 days ago? 64 days, actually. That's when all these concerns for Flock were brought up. The administration has had 60 days already. And what have they done? So Flock sent us a stooge, right? And he couldn't answer anything.

Can I take this off?

All right. It's better this way. So they sent us a stooge and he couldn't answer anything. And then we had the mayor illegally declare an emergency to skirt the law, right? And then we have the police department categorically deny FOIL requests of flock. And they've done that in these last 60 days. And now we're gonna give them another 60 days? So that's just my disappointment there because I think they've had plenty of time. Then now it's 120 days. that it's been, that our rights keep getting violated. So to that end, I would just like to, I have two things that I'd like to give council members here. One is just the history of my FOIA requests, the back and forth and then the denial. And then also the advice from the Committee of Open Government, which in a word, you could say they were dumbfounded how the administration categorically denied the FOIA request. They could not explain it. And the second one here is kind of I was hoping more to talk about is Local Law 3 and just some amendments and proposals where the Local Law 3 can have more teeth to it when it comes to protecting our rights from major corporations. right like flock and probably the competitor like multi-billion dollar corporations and also from misuse from law enforcement right we cannot have the police police themselves and we should not trust corporations by default and that should be in the law thank you how do i hand these

Should I wait for those to be? No. Okay. Hi, my name is Alison Wist. I'm a resident of Troy on Second Street, and I'm a PhD researcher at RPI. And I am very glad that the City Council is taking this seriously. So thank you for that. I know it's probably not an easy job. These cameras are consistently sold to us as license plate readers, and the stories of crime that were shared earlier certainly show the usefulness of a license plate reader with restrictions, limitations, and serious oversight as is proposed. But just a license plate reader is not necessarily an accurate characterization of flock cameras anymore. For instance, these cameras can zoom in on people's faces, people walking down the sidewalk. And it has become sufficiently obvious through various security audits and breaches of flock cameras in other municipalities, specifically Dunwoody, Georgia. that the technology is highly vulnerable, allowing bad actors to potentially spy on Troy residents and our friends and family. Furthermore, the company itself says it has plans to use the footage to train AI and also to possibly integrate AI more and more. I am advocating that we do not trade some of our deepest American values and our rights just for the premise of security. We all want crimes to be solved, especially women. I am more likely to be a victim of assault than necessarily, statistically anyways. than the other 50% of the population. And I have unfortunately been a victim of assault in Troy. With that said, I do not support mass surveillance writ large under the guise of my own safety. We need to take seriously the risks of this company flock and this technology and the ways it's already been used. In one instance, a flock employee was able to log in and watch young girls in a gymnastics class. In another, a police officer used it to stalk his ex-girlfriend. And our dictatorial presidential regime might use it to persecute those he considers political enemies. The thousands of searches of Syracuse drivers mentioned earlier to be used by ICE is also another concerning example. The 48-hour limit would help alleviate the use of this footage inappropriately, but at its core, I just am worried about using taxpayer money for a technology whose proprietor, the company, cannot still not reliably demonstrate the safety and security of their product to people being able to pull the footage, basically. Are we sure that our footage can't be accessed by ICE? These are the questions I have. Are we going to guarantee that there are not ongoing security issues and potential access to live video streams of Troy residents and that there would be community buy-in before any use of artificial intelligence or our footage for training artificial intelligence? What are the other options other vendors? Surveillance technology with security vulnerabilities may do more harm than good. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon members of the City Council. My name is Brian Paz-Hernandez. I live in District 5 in our wonderful city. I'm a co-facilitator of the grassroots group Troy Residents Against Flood Cameras. I'm a proud high school teacher. Our group has held public meetings and a teach-in on this important issue. I'm here tonight to speak in favor of the proposed Local Law 3. A month ago, the group that I'm involved with hosted a teach-in on ALPR data, and people were truly astonished by the number of issues related to it and how horribly it's been abused in other cities. The more that I think Troy residents learn about ALPR cameras, the more concerning they become, and that's why this legislation is badly needed. Thank you Council Member McKee for sponsoring this local law. It's a step in the right direction and I welcome its passage. I believe it addresses the fact that even if the FLOG contract were to be eliminated, there are other ALPR vendors that could have business with the city and they must be regulated. So this is definitely a long-term plan. The proposed law has numerous measures that are welcomed. I see this as an attempt at a compromise, which is great. At the same time, Mayor Montello and the police will never be happy until there's a flawed camera in every street corner and that there is a massive surveillance day in our city. And she has already come out against this legislation. So it's clear that they're not really willing to come to the table and hash out a solution that truly protects Troy residents. There are a number of things that the proposal does not address, and I would really love if it could. First, we, the residents of Troy, deserve clarity about whether this proposed law would actually make the current flock contract unlawful. If flood technology cannot comply with the new regulations in the proposed law, I would appreciate you for Ms. McKee or the council's counsel to make that clear with the public. Assuming this passes and the flood contract is still active and these 26 horrible, creepy, terrible cameras remain up, Then we need more from the city council because we know that this mayor isn't going to cancel the flaw contract on her own. It was made clear by the residents that came out on March 19th that we want the flaw contract canceled and that we want the flaw cameras to be taken down. We don't just want reforms. We want the cameras shut down. Over 100 residents came out to express that, and over 40 of them have the courage to speak during public comment. So I took a look at the city's contract with Flock, and it said that canceling the contract will result in the city paying for fees related to removing the cameras, limited to $500 per camera, meaning the city would not pay any more than $13,000 for canceling the contract. That's a great price for the preservation of our privacy. That's a great price for the preservation of our civil liberties and the protection of undocumented immigrants. So I still really want you guys to consider a full cancellation. The local law has room for improvement. Please consider adding an amendment to mandate City Council approval for all future ALPR vendors. We know that the Flawed Contract was unilaterally started by the Troy Police, an organization not known for their transparency. And we must ensure that that never happens again by codifying into law that ALPR vendors Contracts must be instituted by the city council, which is, you know, theoretically the people's representative. So on March 19th, a lot of residents also asked questions about network security and hacking risks, and the flock representative was unable to answer those questions. This legislation does not address that. The legislation could be strengthened by adding a cybersecurity section requiring all ALPR vendors used by the city to comply with minimum security standards designed to protect against hacking, unauthorized access, and data breaches. Flawed cameras have been hacked in other parts of the country, and they have shown themselves to be an unreliable, unsecure company. Please do not let this legislation leave this massive problem unaddressed. also let's talk about alpr data sharing outside the city so i understand that under this proposal you would not have any sharing with federal agencies however according to 404 media ice an organization that routinely violates people's constitutional rights has been known to access alpr data through backdoor channels backdoor channels ice agents reach out to individual cops and get their hands on flock data without a warrant can you wrap it up sure, and so I really want want you guys to address this backdoor channel access issue, because even with the language in your. The in the local all three it will not address that I also as it was said before parking violations on a serious threats to public safety and should not be part of this legislation and closing, thank you for. To the sponsors of this legislation it's clear that you've listened to the majority of Troy residents and I hope you consider the changes and formally cancel the contract, thank you.

Hi, everybody. My name is Callisto. I live downtown on Fulton Street, and I'm here to speak in support of local law number three and to speak explicitly against the continuation of any contract with Flock. I do want to respond earlier to what the DA said and echo the sentiments made about vandalism not being the way you conduct yourself in a democracy. And I also want to highlight the way that our mayor has acted in regards to this entire flock debacle by abusing our executive powers. That's also not the way you should conduct yourself in a democracy either. So it'd be nice if we had accountability in both cases. The DA also said that there is a balance to be struck between privacy and safety in regards to ALPRs. I think there are two conversations to be had here, whether to have ALPRs at all and whether to have Flock as our ALPR vendor. To focus only on the second conversation about Flock, I think this vendor has shown themselves to be systematically untrustworthy and willing to lie about their data collection, storage, and access practices. I think in general, people want public safety and they also want to know that their local government is taking responsibilities to not overstep their rights to privacy to ensure that safety. Ideally, the city would run their own LPR network with proper access control mechanisms in place like warrants to ensure protection from abuse and collaborate with other partners in the capital region. What the people of Troy do not want is strangers at Flock tapping into their camera feeds to watch them at pools and yoga classes, as Flock employees have done with their unrestricted access to client systems in other cities. Fundamentally, Flock is unaccountable. You can pass legislation and create policies any way you see fit, but frankly, there's no reason to believe that Flock will comply with any of them based on their track record of deception and outright falsehoods. I know Flock, thank you. I know Flock makes it sound like their product is a perfect fit. Cut us a check, we'll install our cameras, run the network, and it integrates easily with your neighbors. Theirs is the easiest option, but maintaining our privacy and striking that balance between respect for privacy and safety is hard. We entrust you, our representatives, to undertake those hard tasks and to protect our rights, no matter how easy an alternative may seem. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Frances Sweet. I'm in District 6. Sorry, I don't really have my words prepared ahead of time. I spent the entire afternoon power washing and arranging to paint over graffiti because that is what community does. I wanted to talk about the local law and some concerns that I have with that. I'm especially concerned about the vague definition of a hot list. In other state laws like Kentucky, it is explicitly listed which hot lists are allowed to be used. I think that if Troy Police Department could provide a list of the ones they are currently using, and that could be added into the law, that I think would help with a lot of my concern about the vagueness of that. But even so, there are hot lists that are just explicitly racist, and I think that that should be taken under concern too. as well as the placement of where the flock cameras are. There are other cities that have essentially encircled poor and black and brown neighborhoods. And I want to ensure that that is not happening in Troy. and there are still a couple of cameras that have not been mapped on the DFLOC website. I think it would be really great if that were part of the information that TPD was handing over. As for the audits, there are other states that require them quarterly. States, not cities. That's a lot of data that they're managing, and yet our Troy Police Department can't provide any so far. and as has been stated before that information does exist at the very least they have had they have 30 days of data according to the contract and the agreements so if they have 30 days why do they need another 60 days to gather data they're constant they're claiming that this these cameras are being used constantly and yet they can't give any numbers on them actually being used all we hear are anecdotes i want numbers thank you thank you francis

Hi, my name is Dara Silverman. I live on Second Street in South Troy. I don't have very long comments. I am a regular Facebook troll. That's like really what I'm there to do specifically locally. And so one of the things I asked the PBA when they made their post requesting that everyone who supports Flock show up to this meeting, I asked, is TPD willing to release any data to back up the feelings people have about these cameras? And I got a personal message from the PBA, which was so sweet of them. And I'd just like to read that into the public record. We do not track it when it was used on a case and if it helped break a case or catch someone. Maybe that's something the chief would want to do in the future, but we just don't do it right now. We also don't track if city cameras were used to solve a crime or citizen cameras were used to solve a crime, but we know when something has been useful in solving a case. thank you very much thank you

Hey, good evening, everyone. My name is Fox. I'm a resident of Troy's second district, and I'm here tonight, like many others, to have some have some comments on local law number three, which, you know, in my opinion, does fall short. I think it's a great platform to stem from. um firstly you know this this isn't an issue just about flock but about mass surveillance technologies as a whole we need to do more than restrict collection storage and sharing of data we need to remove cameras that already that are already up in our city and we need to ensure that other cameras don't take their place especially because alternatives like axon are worse alternatives to an already bad technology that hurts people. Mass surveillance technologies hurt communities. We're seeing these technologies used as core pieces to infringe on people's rights and privacy, to deport individuals and families, to stalk people seeking life-saving medical care, and in general, used to police marginalized folks in communities who are just trying to live their lives. I'm going to end by repeating what I said back in March. surveillance is not safety we need support we do not need surveillance have a good night thank you is there anyone else who would like to make some comments

Hi, good evening members of the City Council, President Stu Steele. My name is Echo Goff and I'm a resident of the 5th District. My council person is Jonah Favreau. I'm a long time proud Troy resident and a local small business owner. I'm here today to speak about some public safety concerns of mine concerning flock. Firstly, I'm in full support of Article 78 filing proceedings against the mayor. I'm happy to see that unlawful action does have consequence. secondly i am in strong support of passing local law number three i am asking that we pass this law and remove the flock cameras in regards to the recent policy put in place by the mayor on alprs I appreciate that there's a bit of an effort, but it feels like fairly flimsy legislation. Actually, I should correct that that's not legislation, that it's policy. The language is vague and repackages much of what was already guidelines for the police department. It still allows for 30-day holding of footage. It clearly states that footage can be used for interstate requests. There's no accountability or laws enforcing that this policy will actually be held true. It's not enough, and we want the meaningful legislation that Local Law 3 does. We want Flock gone, and the policy does neither of those things. The policy talks about transparency, but how can we believe that that would be the case when they're refusing to publish an actual audit? We know from Albany that this is quite possible without compromising open cases. And we heard from Deirdre earlier today that Flock advertises how easy it is to pull an audit for publishing. And we have our FOIA requests ignored again and again. This does not establish that we will trust their unbacked policy. Now in regards to public safety, Flock cameras put public safety in dangerous jeopardy. It has been said that these cameras have been a useful tool for police. I would say that they are an equally useful tool for anyone wanting to commit a crime. They are remarkably easy to hack and can be done so with a jailbroken chat GPT still. Ben Jordan who has done a lot of reporting on this said, you don't need to be an expert to gain access to this. One Troy resident said that they believe that their stalker used flock cameras to find out where they were and stalk and harass them. This is not a possibility. This is happening and has happened. And if these have been used to aid in stalking, it can be used to aid in assault, kidnapping, and robbery. And if any of these happen, using these cameras as a tool, it will be on record that the police department and local government knew that it was possible and approved them anyway. One documented case of misuse of these cameras was found. It says that Phlox Contrast states that no authorized users, including Phlox employees, have access to this footage. But in Dunwoody, Georgia, Bob Carty and Randy Gluck, two Phlox employees, logged in and accessed a camera in the gymnastics room of the MJCC in Dunwoody, cataloged by an audit by the Dunwoody Police Department. The gymnastics room is primarily used for young girls rehearsing. This is an example that flock can say one thing and do another. And I don't think we are completely against ALPR, but we obviously have a certain amount of hesitancy and we do not want anything with AI being used. This is very new technology. This is something that has a lot of holes, has a lot of mistakes, has a lot of network imperfections. So why are we using it on such important things such as law enforcement when it has been completely untested. An ALPR can absolutely be unhelpful device. We're not saying we don't want an ALPR. We don't want flock. We don't want AI. We absolutely need local law three passed. And I'm in extremely strong favor of this. And we are saying in a united chorus that we won't flock out. We have not had a single resident speak in favor of these cameras. We, the citizens of Troy, do not want mass surveillance. Pass local law number three and get the flock out of Troy. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Echo. Is there anyone else?

I just wanted to say one more thing in regards to the FOIL requests that were mentioned earlier. I did FOIL the police department slash city to see the policy that was announced two days ago. I received an answer this morning that my FOIL request had been fulfilled and that the document would be in my portal. And I went to the portal and there was no document. So I just wanted to put that out there that whether or not that was intentional i'm not sure but now i have to write a letter to the city or to the city council or the council whatever to retrieve that document that's the only way that option that i have to appeal that so wanted to put that out there on the record thank you thank you

Sorry, Deirdre came back and it reminded me of something. We have had multiple people over the past few City Council meetings complain that they've been locked out, that they've had to go through sliding dirty to get to the elevators, and that sometimes the elevators very much don't work or they need an employee to scan a pass for them I don't think this complies with open uh government and I think that it should be looked into thanks thank you Francis if there's no one else motion to adjourn motion to adjourn motion second second um

all in favor aye opposed thank you council member mckee um our next committee meeting is the science and technology committee uh under the leadership of council member struber um we'll go right into that please thank you

calling to order the science and technology committee meeting uh i was waiting until you were done talking about clock talk about another issue um it's but it's not the science committee

The committee meetings happen before the actual finance meeting. So each committee meeting has its own public comment. And then after the finance committee, there's public comment.

Was your comment related to public safety?

Yes.

Okay. We'll have you speak and then.

oh and a couple of other people from my neighborhood who also wanted to speak okay I was just waiting until you were done with clock okay okay on public savings okay all right uh good evening my name is Drea Lanz I live on Fifth Avenue just a block away from here I'm here to talk about safety in my neighborhood, the area of 5th and Old 6th between Federal and Hutton, which is a quickly deteriorating residential neighborhood. There is an increasing incidence of illegal activity in the neighborhood centered around Columbus Square at the corner of 5th and Jacob and around the abandoned Mavens Development on Old 6th near Jacob. there's drug dealing prostitution fights gun activity vandalism theft harassment and assault there's often urinating and defecating in abandoned doorways and doorways where residents live people in the neighborhood are uneasy at best often frightened to the point where some avoid going out onto the street and others move away. People do not want their kids growing up in a neighborhood where this is the norm. Every morning when the weather allows and long into the night, drug dealers and pimps are at Columbus Square, which is perfectly situated as a place to lounge and loiter, waiting for clients to drive by. Drivers stop and conduct their business. When their transactions have completed, the clients often go to Earl Street, which is the alley between 5th and Old 6th, and set up a party near the low wall in the Maven's parking lot, openly drinking, drugging, and pimping. Many times people go down the alley into empty yards or to stoops in the neighborhood. to take advantage of their purchases. The Maven's Garage structure at 125 Earl Street is posted, and the doors are supposed to be locked, but we frequently see people going in and out of the building, again, after making deals at Columbus Square. Yes, we do call the police, including giving license numbers of the cars, but by the time the police arrive, the clients have long gone. The neighborhood wants to see the Columbus Monument gone, not because we dislike Columbus, but because it's headquarters for this illegal activity. So since the process to get rid of this crime inducing structure is long and not in favor by the city administration, we are asking that the places where the illegal activity is conducted be made inaccessible. surround the Columbus Memorial and the abandoned Mavens Development buildings with a tall chain link fence with razor wire at the top to make it impossible for people to easily access the places to conduct illegal activity. I know this will not solve the problem of homelessness, of substance abuse, of poverty, but at least it will make the neighborhood less welcoming to those who are deteriorating the fabric of the community and help make the neighborhood safer. Thank you. There are a few others from the neighborhood who will also speak.

Thank you, Joanne.

Hello and thank you committee and council members and neighbors for hearing our concerns tonight. My name is Alessandra Dela Cruz and I'm the owner of 2182 Fifth Avenue. Fifth Ave and Old Six Ave from Jacob to Federal explicitly the corner of Fifth Avenue and Jacob where the Old Six Market Deli to Fifth Ave on Jacob Columbus Square slash the empty Marvin's development site and the alleys behind and the Fifth Avenue block have become nothing short of the Wild West meets a horror film set on Skid Row, but it's our actual reality. All hours of the day and night, people are doing and dealing drugs, we have this on video, attacking one another, also on video, screaming things like, I have the best crack in Troy on this corner, defecating, urinating on public and private property, breaking into our cars, prostitution, harassment, burglary, domestic violence, and generally causing extreme domestic disturbances to the point where those who live on the block uh are afraid of going into and out of our own homes and in fact are moving out recently there was a man assaulting another with a crowbar during daylight hours as someone who volunteers with this exact community in troy helping with food clothing and potential housing resources i absolutely can empathize and acknowledge that there is a larger drug mental illness and homelessness epidemic at hand which is really sad and i'm not exactly sure what the solution is to help fix more of the systemic issues at large we do call the police often who i've come to learn only have eight patrolling officers on duty for all of troy to brunswick on each shift they're often only able to try to send someone if there's an incident but by the time they get there if they even come which has only been twice in my experience the incident is over and starts happening all over again few weeks ago a woman was sitting in my vestibule screaming that someone was going to kill her and people no matter how many times i've asked nicely for them to leave my stoop continue to use the stoop and our neighboring stoop on fifth ave to get high scream at one another urinate etc people have made this block in the public areas around them including the church parking lot their formal living rooms formal living rooms bathrooms bedrooms and drug dens the corner of fifth ave and jacob is also a bus stop where children are waiting for the bus at the same time or shortly after people are engaging in all this illegal activity removing the public space at columbus square putting on a high chain link fence illuminating these dark alleys and corners and possibly putting back the police camera that was there at the marvin's development site in 2025 hopefully could possibly help the situation but we really need stronger efforts from the city of troy because this part of town has become unrecognizable and dangerous to say the least Thank you. I also have a statement from my neighbor that's shorter at 2180 Fifth Avenue from Cody Gallardi. I've witnessed fistfights and have been attacked by a dog inside the corner store, the Old Deli on 6th Ave. The owner, upon realizing what her dog had done, began beating the dog. I have this on camera. My bite required hospitalization and involvement of the county health department. I have had my bicycle stolen from my very secluded backyard. My car has been burglarized several times on Fifth Avenue, which I have on camera. My home renovation contractor has been threatened with a knife in the street outside of my house. I also have this on camera. I have been panhandled by people knocking on my door. I witness drug deals taking place at the intersection of Fifth and Jacob every few nights. This area is not safe. I have these things on camera because I bought cameras because the area is not safe. I would like something to be done about it. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

hello my name is michael um i live in a house overlooking the park on the second floor and i see this drug activity and prostitution going on all day um i take care of an adult with cognitive issues and every other time he goes outside to sit down and just enjoy the weather people are coming up to him asking him if he wants to buy or sell drugs and or if he's selling drugs um it impacts his life money to just be outside and be left alone um so any any uh uh any consideration you would make about doing something about that Columbus Circle would be really appreciated thank you

okay that that concludes the public safety committee meeting uh we thank you all for your comments and now we'll move on to science and technology council member struber thank you calling to order the science and technology committee meeting at 7 19 p.m uh calling roll council member struber is present council member di lorenzo present council member spain mclaren present Council Member Mickey.

Present.

Council Member Favreau. Present. Council Member Campbell-Cohen.

Present.

Council President Steele. Present.

I'm not sure if you're up with chairs. Are you up with chairs?

The first thing on the agenda tonight is a check-in for the BESS systems. And once Anasha is done with chairs, I believe our first speaker is actually online. I hope Kaylee, if you are still here, please raise your hand and Anasha can let you speak. Okay.

awesome hello can you hear me sorry i'm just connecting yes awesome i'll i'll go camera on but i apologize i am recovering so i can be there in person i'm recovering from some surgery and i'm supposed to be taking it easy but i just wanted to be here and make some comments so um but yeah i'm just excited to hear tonight you know what what updates the administration has for the best check-in um in the interim i just wanted to share um a couple of things so first and foremost i i sent this over to council member uh streber earlier this morning um there's an environmental study that was recently completed by a third party labella consultant um following the warwick battery energy storage fire um they analyze the soil air and water post fire and you know the good news is as has been seen with other you know studies following best fires that the investigation concluded there were no adverse impacts to the environment resulting from the fires in warwick so just you know if if that information can be shared and if anyone's curious just sharing that that study i think it's it's nice to actually see the data see work is going into this you know there there's studies to back to back up when we we say that there's no adverse impacts in those situations um i also just wanted to share um you know and for anyone that doesn't know because i'm kind of speaking to everyone uh you know i'm kaylee from soul source uh we're a battery storage developer i probably should have started with that And we are still very interested in doing a project in Troy. And I just wanted to again clarify, I've gotten this question a couple of times from some people that our choice in project location stems solely from a standpoint of project viability, not project economics. So the reason why we choose a certain location or propose a certain location for a project has quite frankly nothing to do with how much money the project's making or can make. And it has everything to do with can you actually even build a project or not in this city? And if so, it really needs to be here. So I just want to emphasize that again, because I know I talked about that last time, but just kind of restate that point. And then lastly, I'll keep it short, make sure I'm under four minutes. There's three main points I just want to leave everyone with in terms of battery energy storage systems in general. First, of course, is the likelihood of a fire is extremely low. That's just number one. Number two, regardless of that point, you know, not only are we required to, you know, but willing to go above and beyond repair and mitigate for any type of emergency event, you know, we want to work with the City of Troy to, you know, create a system that creates a positive impact and has a very robust plan in place in the event of an emergency, right? Even though that chance is low, we are willing and we want to do everything possible to make everyone comfortable and have a really good solid plan in place if something were to occur. And then lastly, the truth is, you know, any emergency event in any type of development, whether it's a home, a commercial building, or in our case, like utility infrastructure, you know, it's impossible to 100% mitigate risks. And, you know, I just hope that, you know, fears of a worst case scenario do not prevent the opportunity for positive change like in this scenario so that's that's all for me i just uh and you know i'll stick around for for this whole session if anyone has any you know specific questions i'm happy to jump back in and answer in any way that i can thank you for the thank you does anybody on council have questions for kaylee right now thank you so much i'm glad you could be here even during recovery we appreciate it thank you thank you appreciate the virtual ability to do so thank you

welcome to the administration um please take it away sure um first of all thank you uh we'd like to give an update um best I want to thank uh the two folks that are at the table and um the code for stepping up to the plate and really delving into figuring out the next steps. If you recall at the last meeting, we gave you an update on some of the meetings that we've had internally. Carlo, has actually visited or spoken to a number of municipalities, really looked statewide. The chief has also spoken to Department of Homeland Security. So we're making good headway here. And Kaylee, we appreciate your input, but obviously there'll be a process for any vendor to go through to put up the battery energy storage system. So saying that, I'd like Carlo to kind of delve in what you have in front of you is a proposed permitting process. What we'll do when we get to the point where we really feel it's time to present it to the council, you know, obviously give us input during the interim until you know we meet again our goal would be to have something before the council by the end of the summer early fall and it would encompass some modifications to our code and also a permitting process So that would be a full-fledged process. And I'll let Carlo kind of delve into what you have in front of you. Once again, I really want to thank Code, Joe Mazz, General Services, Seamus, Rich, the fire department for really, really exploring this issue for folks out there. There has been not just one fire, but Five fires statewide. These vests certainly do, you know, offer some energy alternative and reduce that carbon footprint. But they also in very urban and dense areas, similar Green Island. it was all four developments actually put a moratorium on best full-fledged moratorium we have a six-month there where we are studying the issue because we do believe that there are a couple sites in Troy but for all reasons stated at a prior committee meeting our concerns in very populated areas here in the city of torrey uh we don't think would be wise so i'll hand over to carlo but then uh like i said we'll come uh toward the end of the summer with a full-fledged package and we'll talk to you council members struber before coming forward with that obviously so uh carlo thank you

Good afternoon. Yeah, so last meeting we kind of dove into what a planning agenda, what a planning packet would look like. This one I thought bringing together what the permitting process would be once it was received approvals. The packet you have in front of you is, I met with the building department and myself, and we came together with some bullet points of the type of documents after the site plan review was approved. Your first bullet point is the application and all the information that an application would serve. If you want me to go through it all, I will, or I could just go through the bullet points. And then number two would obviously the construction drawing, all the technical documents from their construction drawings stamped by a licensed professional down to their stamp surveys, to everything from meeting the fire code, to the NFPA code, to the uniform code and all the UL listing requirements that are required. Then number three is all the contractors, all the contractors information, all their insurances, That's kind of boring stuff. Then the electrical contract requirements. Right now, these requirements are for any job, whether it's residential, commercial. We have in our clerk's office, you have an electric license for Troy Electricians. And then you guys also issue a B permit for out of Troy licensed electricians. And that brings me into bullet point number five was looking at the class B license. So if you're licensed in Troy, obviously you pay no permit for a license. You just pay your licensing fee. You do electric work. You don't pay for a permit. But if you're not licensed in Troy, with that Class B, I was looking at where it would fit as far as the prices. Like right now, if you did work in residential, it's $100. Or $200 if you did work in commercial, it's $500. For solar, it's $300. This one here, I was going to propose when we did the ordinance, a $750 price. just because there's going to be a lot more inspections most of this is electrical um and so that's number five and then number six is you know our our normal additional review which is obviously um meeting internally you know on planning stuff with the fire department the city engineer public utilities just getting all the departments all the agencies involved in any comments during the review process um it's pretty standard to what we do in the office for any project but i wanted to let you guys know what it would look like once they come in after planning board approval thank you i i will leave it up for questions most of this stuff is

Yeah, for the general building permit application section, is that different than any other building permit you have right now? Or is this just the basics of what is required of any building permit?

Yeah, any building permit. We have special applications like we have like a pull packet, a fence packet, and a barricade permit application, but this would fall under general construction. It's when you come in and you want to get planning board approval, you want to, you know, go rehab a house, you want to build a new house, you want to build a five-story building, you know, we have one application and there's check marks. We would just add best to it.

Okay. And under the insurance requirements, it is boring, but it's still important. I assume that the insurance that is acceptable to the city will be defined by the end.

It is in our ordinance already. So it says you will not be able to get a work permit without a liability. There's a certain amount of money and all that stuff. It's yes. Yeah. Adding the city of Troy, additionally insured workers comp with the city of Troy on it. Um, they're already in there now. So I would just, when it comes to this, uh, I would just go back to that general. I would just, when it says contractors insurance, it would just say, see this section. It would go to that section. Okay. Thank you. Yep.

Anybody else have questions?

And the only one that's still unsolved in this is how we would do to, and that part I wouldn't even know, is the decommissioning fees and the bonds and all that stuff that I would leave up to Rick.

And has anybody with the city thus far done any of the state trainings through NYSERDA or otherwise for your particular department?

We're looking into that right this year. Unfortunately, right now we are going through a code update and the state is still uncertain on things. If you've noticed, they've written the codes that they were only going to allow new construction to have electrical. And that's been put on hold by a court order. So some of the code updates have changed. So we're all required to get the code update by the end of the year. But there's going to be multiple shots of doing that. So we're doing that. Plus, I'm trying to find a company to come in and do training for this as well.

So NYSERDA will do free training, and I'm happy to link you up with them.

I got to get my guys' hours, so send them.

Council is actually going to be doing training with NYSERDA in July, I believe we agreed on. They have trainings for every different part of a municipality from council to code to fire. So happy to link you up with them.

Yeah, please send me the email. I definitely would sign them.

I mean, regarding the fire department and training, there's not really a ton of training there for us that we don't already have. I mean, the Detroit Fire Department is more than equipped to handle lithium ion battery fires and such. We go through New York State OFPC. And really, the training would be more or less site specific, right, regarding fire suppression systems for that specific site and alarm systems and battery energy management systems. And that's something we do anyways with with with any structure, these large apartment buildings going up, we do tours going over the fire protection systems and such like that. So it's not really there's not a lot out there for us in regards to that, because there's really there's really not a lot of information on the firefighting aspect of it. You know, it's it's pretty. Basic in our terms.

So just to make sure I'm hearing you correctly. the fire department feels prepared for it already or would you be interested in additional training if it's available?

Well, I would never turn down training if there's something that we don't already have, obviously. I mean, that would not be wise. But I think it's more geared towards site specifics, like the management systems, reading the alarm systems, knowing what's, you know, we're not going to enter a structure. We're going to be able to read the alarm panel and tell you what's, you know, possibly what's going wrong. But we're never entering a structure. a battery energy structure that that's not happening we're going to protect the the surrounding area and hopefully you know maintain that and don't spread it but we're we're going to wait for the people that are trained you know the the the people that are trained in that to do that and that's something we do anyways you know we don't if we have a manhole fire we don't go in the manhole that's national grids come and we just you know we check surrounding buildings and stuff like that and that would be the same premise here

Okay, thank you. And one last thing that we did talk about, Councilmember, is the part with the decommissioning and financial security. We haven't pinned that down because, God forbid, if there is an incident, a fire has to watch the site, you know, for a couple days, we'd have to obviously get that paid for by that particular company and or vendor. And so the financial security part of it, we will be working on to obviously make that more specific.

So not just the decommission, but also you would be looking to have whichever company has the system pay for the fire expertise needed over a fire.

And a lot of these, they're extended operations, okay? It could be four hours, it could be four days. So if it's a four day operation, we're gonna maintain control of that site, just like we do in any fire situation like that. And that's gonna be, you know, whether it's, four or six personnel there for 24 hours with apparatus. There's been five fires in New York with, you know, millions of gallons of water being applied per incident. So flowing water, it's going to affect the fire department, the police department, public utilities, public works, codes. So we're going to have to maintain that. You could also get into, you know, air monitoring too, depending on where smoke is going. If, you know, if we're down in the down by the river and smoke's going up the hill towards, you know, if we're in South Troy, if it's going up Man Ave, Lincoln, all them, people will request to get air monitoring done. And that's something we can do, but it's going to take personnel.

And does the city charge any other utility for this right now, like for the electrical substations?

We don't as we don't have extended operations.

So if there's a fire at an electrical substation in Troy right now,

We we don't because it's not because we're not we're not going to be there. They're going to they're going to shut the power to that down in a relatively quick, quick time frame. We're you know, we may be there three hours, four hours, but I'm talking we're talking possibly four days. You know what I mean? Obviously, we wouldn't the power national grid or whoever could shut that power down relatively quickly. But these can linger for days.

So is it the thought that within the proposal, there will be a cap to what, like if it is handled in under four hours, which sounds like a pretty standard fire operation, that there's not any kind of payment needed, but if it goes above what is standard, that is when we're looking at additional payments?

And we haven't really pinned that down yet. That's something we're going to discuss. That's...

Okay.

I just want to... Yeah. We haven't pinned it down. Okay.

to give you an idea all right any other questions chair thank you um I think this one's for Carlo uh it's about the permitting process you guys just gave to us tonight um does this have a minimum megawatt facility size that the permitting process relates to or does it just relate to any

It relates to just the same as if you were building a single family home or you were building a Taj Mahal. We would request the same documents. Obviously, the drawings will be much bigger if you were building a Taj Mahal to a single family home, but the process will be the same. It's just the fee cost will be different because it's going to be based off construction costs.

Okay.

Labor and material.

So follow up to that. If somebody is trying to install a consumer-grade battery energy storage system on the side of their garage. Is that going to fall under this?

Yes, they do that. People that purchase backup systems, they get permits for those. Generators and stuff like that, yeah, we issue permits.

And is there a process for?

It's the same process minus the planning board and screening and stuff like that. It would just be because those have under the noise ordinance, there's very low maintenance to them. And obviously they have to keep up the property maintenance around their yard. So that is, you know, it's pretty straightforward. We review the plans and then we issue the permit and then we do the inspections. Thank you. Same insurances, same everything, electrical B permit, all that.

Chair, just to clarify, so if someone wants to get one of those smaller units put in their garage for like a electric car or something, they also need to pay that proposed $750 fee?

No, right now they pay, if it's in a residential, it's $200 fee.

Okay, okay.

Yes.

Okay.

This is only going to be for the energy storage facilities where they're bringing in the containers, and that's basically exactly what this is for best. The other ones are generators or the car chargers. They just go through our regular permitting process.

Got it. Okay. Yep. All right.

Anybody else with questions.

um counselor thank you um carlo you said you inquired of other municipalities in preparation yeah right now uh next week or a week after i just have to check my schedule we're uh we're having a phone conference with uh warwick because that's where they actually had i believe two or three separate instances and uh that's gonna we're gonna learn the most from them other municipalities it was mainly just to see what they wanted with their planning board and stuff like that but a lot of places have not done any of these yet they just got their ordinances ready um but as far as the biggest conversation we'll have is in the fire department will be there is with Warwick we got an email from them and uh Jimmy set up a date I just have to find out it's either next week or the week after have you talked with the city of Schenectady that is the only city I have not spoken with yet I would recommend that you do that okay anybody else

Sure.

So I took a look at the New York State best guidebook, which is a statewide kind of guideline for best facilities. And I was looking at the recommended setbacks. So they are very different than what's proposed from what you guys gave us a couple of months ago. And I was just hoping for some clarity on why There's a 500-foot setback as opposed to what the state recommends.

i'll let carlo jump in with the technical but um when the state issues templates like that they kind of look at it very broad they don't look at the landscape of the community the housing stock you name it how dense it is um so they that's more of kind of a guideline to go by and i'll pass off to carlo regarding

the actual setback proposal that that we have looked at yeah i mean i'll echo what she said but also on a technical side i was looking at a lot of these that are up and running in other states and a lot of these where we'll call them best farms they're in rural areas they're set back pretty far into the woods they have screening by not just gates but there's screening by trees and everything else i'm looking at it more as a fact that troy there's is a very dense area um almost fully developed um i was looking at neighborhoods of uh like for instance uh next to where our solar farm is up by emerald greens in the back off of winter street there when you come in to the old dump site i was looking at places like that um i know those houses would benefit from a bigger setback but you know that that's a question that we can discuss when we bring this uh know into fruition and put this on uh in the books but that was just one that i thought of but that was just me personally i know if i live next to one that was where when i was gauging um Plus, I was just looking for the traffic because there's going to be traffic. There'll be noise. There'll be a fire department access road. And with screening and stuff like that, I was thinking that that was a perfect setback. But like I said, we can talk about it.

Yeah. That was one of the things I noticed looking at the guidebook is a lot of what was recommended here was in agreement with the guidebook, especially things like the noise decibel.

limits and the fence height and the vegetation you know all sorts of things like that um but this was like one of the things that stuck out to me and um just wanted to get some clarity on that yeah I mean it to be honest being in this uh department over 20 years of doing this and being every planning board meeting and listen to citizens concerns and stuff like that that is going to be the one where the citizens actually show up to the meeting and that's going to be their main concern right is going to be are they going to see these are they just going to be staring at containers is there going to be enough screening are they going to hear the noise if a fire happens is the smoke going to affect them is the fire department going to put them out of their house for four days so that 500 feet was all of that into consideration because if this goes on for four or five days a family like in that old dump site you're taking half a Sherman Ave and half a Donegal and telling them that they have to relocate until the fire department says that the desk or the, uh, which we'll call it the air quality is good enough for them to move back into their house. So that's where I was coming up with that. Okay. Excellent. Thank you.

Following with that. Uh, do you have data comparing the noise of the average BSS system to the noise that comes from the standard, like electrical substations that are throughout our city?

To be honest with you, listen, I could probably draw you to Empire State Building, but if you ask me anything about noise ordinances, that is not up my realm. I am taking the guideline and just following along with that. That part I have no clue.

OK.

The noise ordinances, nothing I could, you know.

I started looking them up, and from the data that's out there, the amount of noise put off from the size unit that is being proposed for Troy in several locations, is about the same as an electrical substation at 50 feet so that's also i think where council member di lorenzo is coming from with the setbacks because we have a lot of different electrical substations already in the city for public utility that have the same kinds of noise coming from them that

yeah yeah the setback was it just wasn't the noise it was everything it was sure bringing a container in the construction of the area um but mainly it's going to be is the effect it's going to have on residents if there was ever a fire is ultimately where the higher standard came up okay and then a follow-up would you be open to a potential

tiered system as we are all writing this code so that there might be different requirements for say a personal battery and then a second tier with a smaller set of battery energy storage systems versus a utility grade battery energy farm, like you mentioned, because in my head, each of those actually has very different requirements. And was that something you all would be open to?

Yeah. I mean, that's what do you guys think? I mean, I, yeah, sure. I'm open to take. Yeah. I mean, we can look at it. If you can just give me more details of what, like the size and stuff. Once again, battery storage is not in my forte. They didn't teach that. And they didn't really get us this in college. You know what I mean? So I'm learning a lot about battery storage and solar and electric vehicles. Didn't learn any of it in college.

Same.

I'm getting, I'm getting old quick.

Yeah.

Anybody else have questions? Is there anything else you'd like to leave us with?

Thank you for having us.

Thank you so much for the update. We appreciate it. Thank you. We have one more. There's one more part of science and tech. Sorry. So the last piece of the agenda for science and tech is for ADA Title II rule on web content accessibility. If the correct people from the administration could come up for that.

yes it was it was it was on the agenda is nobody here about the website mayor is uh no one here

No, it was on the agenda. The agenda was sent out.

I don't know what staff deals with the website, which I included in my note for the agenda.

I have no idea what you mean by that.

So I'm going to say something very briefly about this because it was on the agenda. ADA Title II rule on web content accessibility just had the deadline for compliance extended by one year to April of 2027. And in running Troy's website through a few accessibility checkers, just the free version online, It shows that our website has a score of 29 out of 100 right now. So hopefully we will be able to speak to the plan of getting the website accessible before the deadline and what that looks like. I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

Motion. Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

We are adjourned. Do we need a break or do we go right into finance? I'm sorry? Break? Okay. We're going to take a five-minute break at this point before we go into finance. Thank you. Folks, we're going to get underway. If you would please take your seats. This evening we have three ordinances and four resolutions on our agenda. The agendas should be in the back of the room if you need to take a look at them. But at this point in time, the evening, we have a public forum exclusively on agenda items. And I would remind you that it's four minutes for the committee meeting. Does anyone wish to speak on an agenda item, sir?

Good evening. Stephen Maples, South Troy. I'm speaking on the measure for towing regarding the towing policy. And I basically just want to say a few quick remarks. The one violation tow policy that we currently have is just unfair on its face. The cost and the disruption is disproportionate to the infraction. It's not just the $50 ticket, which is bad enough, but also the additional $200 or so. And then on top of all of that, the massive disruption of having to track down, pay, retrieve the towed car. For something as simple as not moving quite in time for the street cleaning, For working people of Troy, this out-of-proportion penalty isn't just an inconvenience, it's a true hardship that could lead to missing work and possibly even losing their job. It's also wildly out of the norm. Nearly every city and town in New York operates without such a punitive system and operate just fine. The proposed change still provides plenty of deterrence. There is still a $50 fine. There's still the $50 fine for deterrence, which will likely motivate the vast majority of drivers to comply. Nobody loves spending $50 on parking infractions. It's just not something that people enjoy. For those that continue to accrue the violations, towing is still an option after the three violations. Towing is repeat, not off the table, as some have incorrectly characterized. The policy is simply a common sense approach. It allows for first violation towing when it is truly warranted, such as blocking access, interfering with permitted events, snow emergencies, and the annual spring cleaning. So there are reasonable accommodations for when we truly, genuinely need to tow folks that are actively in the way, causing a public nuisance. Finally, the proposed change actually has the potential to improve street sweeping operations. The towing process, meaning some amount of the courteous yet disruptive honking to alert residents to allow them the chance to move their vehicles, time to write the parking violation, and the full process of preparing for and physically towing the vehicle takes quite a bit of time compared to merely maneuvering around the unmoved vehicle. When you aggregate that time savings across the entire daily route, that's a substantial amount of time saved over towing every unmoved vehicle, which means there are more total curb adjacent lane miles can be covered per shift. This would mean more effective, more clean streets, better performance. um so to sum up this is a common sense legislation that can improve street sweeping operations and cleanliness while taking a balanced approach and reasonable approach to enforcement of parking regulations the working families of troy can look forward to a fairer and cleaner city and for that reason i urge you to support this legislation thank you thank you stephen

hello um i'm mickey dobbin uh resident south troy um i'm speaking on the same thing as the previous speaker you pretty much nailed it um everything i was gonna say um to support that and other than that i'm just saying you know the the single strike issue now is just stupid um it makes no sense and it just um it's as he says just beyond the norm of what a normal city and I don't see why what is proposed does not make the most sense. If it comes down to cleaning, which I am not entirely sure as living as resident, I've seen cleaning every single week anyway, if that's actually what is going on. But even so, if a car is there one week and needs to be worked around, it's not going to be there the next week and then that area can be cleaned. So I appreciate the submittance of this resolution and I urge the committee to support it, the council to support it. And thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mickey.

Hello, good evening. My name is Taryn Hallweaver. I'm a resident of South Troy. I live on Third Street and I want to speak about the Ordinance Mending Chapter 273. First, just to share a quick personal story. When my spouse and I were thinking about moving to Troy two summers ago, we visited and we're staying with some close friends who are from the area. We had a wonderful weekend And on our way out of town, we're about to leave the city. We stopped by their house to drop off a thank you gift. And it was a Friday and we saw the sign, but we were like, we're just running in. We're going to be back in the car in two minutes. Absolute worst case scenario. We'll get a parking ticket, which, you know, that was a little bit of a roll of the dice. We went. inside the house, dropped off a thank you, came back out and our car had been towed. And we were fairly astounded because we had never incurred any sort of violation whatsoever. It was one of our first times in Troy. And then we ultimately moved here. We love it here. And we've come to experience every Friday during summer months, the just absolute cacophony that happens where neighbors are honking and we're calling and texting each other and screwing around. And it's because of the incredible hardship that getting towed causes for most people. Like my neighbor has four kids. She works night shifts. Occasionally she'll come back very tired in the morning and park on the wrong side of the street. let's say, right when towing resumes at the beginning of the summer. And it's going to really mess up her day if she gets towed. So while I actually appreciate the solidarity and the sort of spirit of everyone helping each other out, I think the effort could be directed towards other things. And it's really out of a lot of fear that that happens every Friday. It's also just wildly out of step, as others have noted, with other cities. I've never lived in a place besides Troy where you get towed on the first violation. And as noted, the amended law lists nine different categories for which you can still be towed. And some of them are really wide ranging, like blocking public or private property or parking illegally. So there are still about a million and one instances in which you could still get towed. So I think it's completely common sense, brings Troy into line with other municipalities and will just be a major quality of life improvement and ease a lot of financial fear and hardship. for a lot of our neighborhoods thank you thank you

Hello, my name is Greg Lyons here. I live on Second Street downtown. So I'm going to say the towing, it's awesome. You know, I'm all for it. I mean, not being towed, obviously, right? The whole towing amendment, the one strike thing. It wasn't like I've been here about eight years. It wasn't always the case. But then a certain time, it just become this one strike rule, which has been a pain in the butt for some friends coming out of town. You park in the wrong thing. Now your car is gone, right? Or when I lived on 5th Street, like people were saying before, people were honking, trying to get everybody to move their cars because they're just going to be towed. Now that's like $200, a whole day of work, half a day of work gone, depending on what you're doing. It's just, it's insane. So, and also now that I'm on 2nd Street, there's all the backing up, boop, boop, boop, from 4 to 6 a.m. in the morning with all the towing, right? I don't like waking up at 4 to 6 a.m., so I would appreciate support for the amendment. Thank you.

Thank you, Greg.

Hello, I'm Audie from 4th Street. I just wanted to say I was just thinking about the points that previous people have mentioned. And another thing that I want to talk about is people who may have accessibility and mobility issues and how I just feel like if there was more transparency, you know, more than one strike, I feel like that might be more fair for people who, you know, if they're given notice. You know, they may not be able to respond as quickly as somebody who may be able bodied. And if this, you know, impacts their further movement in the world, I feel like that could be compounded. And so for the sake of people, you know, who have accessibility needs, I feel like this is a, you know, really important issue for the constituents of Troy, especially people who may be retired and, you know, may rely on mobility aids and access to cars.

Thank you. Seeing no other speakers, I would ask the Corporation Council to please come forward.

Thank you, Council President. I have a matter regarding pending litigation that I need to discuss with the full Council. I would ask that someone make a motion to go into executive session.

so moved is there a second second we have a motion made and seconded to go into executive session regarding litigation matter uh all in favor aye opposed we are in executive session I'm gonna do it in the administrative conference room Executive session all in favor aye opposed we have resumed. We're moving on to our agenda of the Finance Committee. Ordinance 14. Ordinance amending the 2026 General Fund Budget. Council President Steele, at the request of the administration, is there a motion?

Motion.

Council Member McLaren. Seconded by Council Member DiLorenzo. Discussion on the ordinance.

Council President. Council Member McLaren. I had a question about the actual grant. We had gotten a letter that was sent to the whole administration and council from someone offering their services. um an arborist who's offering his services for free um to help when it came to selecting trees um wondering if that has been considered if he's been i know he hasn't been contacted but i'm just wondering if that was considered uh unfortunately i would think that was something would be carried out by the department that's overseeing the grant i haven't personally heard anything to that extent so i don't have an answer for you sorry okay

what what what department is that is that i believe that's planning oh okay we're talking the dec grant right yeah yeah okay thank you you're welcome will will you be contacting the department or sure

Mayor and Commissioner, I'm certain that you probably got the letter from the gentleman who was offering his services as an arborist, pro bono. Just wondering if that has been considered and if planning has been made aware of that.

We'll give him a buzz. I did ask for his resume. I'm not sure if I got it or not. We did get a couple other offers based on people listening. We will take a look at no cost to us. So we'll keep you posted. But I believe I asked for his resume. I just got to check to see if he did.

I just think it's a great idea, no matter who it is, if it's someone who's a certified arborist to get involved.

And just so folks know, Greg Tudor is also on the verge of becoming a full-fledged. So he needs a couple other classes. So we have authorized like in the fall and spring. So hopefully he'll go back to school and get that full-fledged also, which would be great. He'll be on staff and be able to assist. Yeah.

Great.

Thank you.

Yep.

Any other questions? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Ordinance 14 is adopted, 7-0. Ordinance 15, ordinance amending the 2026 sewer and capital fund budget. Council President Steele at the request of the administration. Is there a motion? Motion. Council Member Campbell-Cohen? Second. Seconded by Council Member McKee. Discussion on the ordinance.

Council President Council Member Campbell Cohen could folks from the Department of public utilities, please join us just to answer a couple questions about what this is for. Hey, folks.

Hello. DPU is assembled here.

I sent over questions a little bit earlier in the week and just wanted to run through them basically exactly as drafted. Okay. So the first question that I had for you was, basically if you could explain for folks at home at a very high level just what is the asset management plan and then what was it that was noticed in 2015 that gave rise to a dec notice of violation

Okay, so in 2013, there was a consent order for the City of Troy, the City of Rensselaer and the Rensselaer County Sewer District. The New York State DEC in the consent order required that there was a operation inspection and maintenance plan, as well as an asset management plan that was developed with the help of an engineering firm, CDM Smith, and then sent to DEC for their approval. There were several back and forths of this and it was approved in 2015. So inside of that document, there's general practices for how things should be maintained. There was an aggressive schedule put in there at the time for construction work, lining work, sewer camera inspection work. Not all of those items have taken place just due to like the vast size of the ask in the project. They wanted the entire sewer system to be camera inspected and rated. It's close to 120 miles of pipe, and it's not just like throwing the camera through the pipe. There's cleaning of pipes and other issues. So that's the That was the asset management plan in itself. So in the notice of violation, they're like, hey, we noticed you've gotten through a bunch of these items. There's a few more that need to take place. But in order to finish some of those items, we need to set up a fund to put money in on an annual basis to try to tackle a bunch of these items.

Okay, I think that kind of leads into the next question, which is this is for I understand the why we're transferring money. Yeah. So what specifically are the funds being used for?

Yeah, so basically, it'd be cameraing the sewer pipe inspections, cleaning, replacements, lining, route control, just a general summary of the whole system to see what it needs.

Okay, and my final question was, obviously, the impetus behind this right now is regulatory, but in terms of our practical day-to-day, how is this showing up in the city and sort of where?

So you'll definitely, you know, we have issues now with like sewer depressions and pipes that are, you know, having some structural issues. Those will be repaired. You know, I know we had that issue over on Orchard Ave the other day, things like that. You know, so safety wise, there'll be like improvement as far as, you know, we won't have like these sewer collapses and other issues. We'll be able to be more proactive through like the camera inspections. And we can take that information and get into a report that'll also help us, you know, with grant applications, and then the water quality improvement grant. So it's nice to be able to have something to back us up when we apply for those. But other than that, you'll see with the root treatment and cleaning of sewer pipes, our amount of calls for sewer backups, plugged mains, those kinds of issues, that'll all go down.

I think the important thing to note, too, is this is not just a one-year project. This will be ongoing because it's such a large system.

And are there parts of the city where this is more present than others, just by virtue of the development age or the age of the pipes? Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, we don't have as many issues nearly up in like some of the newer sections of Troy as far as like, you know, your, your main drives like some of the sewer on like Pauling Avenue or down as you head into like the downtown area. Those pipes need a little more help.

Okay, yeah, you're talking about blood planes. Yeah, actually, that's basically the line. Okay, that's it for me. Thank you, chair.

Council member favor.

I'm just curious, you mentioned like 120 miles worth of pipe, like a percentage of how much is already done.

Yeah, I don't want to put an exact number on it. But I know we've gotten through for as far as like the camera inspection, we're probably about 25% of it. Anyone else?

Thank you both.

You're welcome.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Ordinance 15, adopted 7-0. Ordinance 19, ordinance amending Chapter 273 of the Troy City Code, Councilmember Campbell-Cohen. Is there a motion?

Motion.

Councilmember Struber? Second.

Second.

Councilmember McLaren? Discussion on the ordinance. Council President Council member Campbell Cohen.

So this ordinance was drafted after a lot of conversations with constituents and also residents in districts for districts too, but really driven by my constituents. And as some of the speakers noted, The main thing that this does is it ends one strike towing in the places where it most frequently occurs, which is for weekly street cleaning. And that's sort of 4 to 6 a.m. window downtown. It raises that up to three tickets. So right now, if you have a ticket, you can be towed. And often there isn't a lot of time for corrective action. What this would do is just raise it up to three tickets accrued on a vehicle before that towing occurs, except in a pretty long list that could potentially grow after a meeting with the administration in the next couple of weeks. and so you know the I think the speakers hit the nail on the head this is a disproportionate um response to a parking violation um for a first-time parking violation and you don't see it and really any other municipality that I've looked at um or lived in um and just really hard for for constituents to sort of reconcile the scale of the scale of the response to to the violation at hand you know the joke that i've been saying is that you know that things are probably a little bit upside down if many thousands of your constituents would be very relieved to step outside and see a parking ticket effects to their windshield um and so um yeah not trying to get in the way of city operations and if there's a carve out that I didn't think of when I was drafting this I'm and it makes sense I'm happy to add it but um I think this solves a pretty long-standing problem that's been getting worse in recent years and also cuts down on the city's expenses for overtime thank you thank you any other questions all in favor aye opposed ordinance 19 is adopted 7-0 resolutions

resolution 55 resolution authorizing the mayor to enter into a contract with the boys and girls clubs club of the capital area inc for the purpose of providing trained personnel to administer and operate the south troy pool facility and the knickerbocker pool facility through september 8 2026 council president steele at the request of the administration is there a motion motion Council Member Favreau with a second.

Second.

Council Member McKee. Discussion on the resolution.

You can go first. Sure.

Council Member Favreau.

Sure. I just have a couple financial questions for the administration. If anybody can answer those for me. Thank you. I was, for clarification, the Boys and Girls Club, they do not supply us any funding for this, correct? It's just the trained personnel to work at the pools?

We supply funding.

Correct. Okay. That's what I thought.

They don't supply any, correct.

Correct. My question, and I had emailed them earlier, I was just curious what the total 2025 budget was and how we came out at the end of the year. True that.

I believe the 2025 budget was on the bottom line of your attachment. It was $230,000. We were over budget for, I believe, $22,000, and we had CDBG money to offset that.

Okay. And leading into that, so the total budget for just the South Troy pool was $230,000 last year. But this year, for personnel cost, it's down $16,000 to $214,000. The top line?

This budget is specifically directly from Boys and Girls Club. I can ask that question why that is decreased. This is not our budget.

Yeah, because that was a concern, especially hearing if we did come over budget, why those were decreased. I didn't know if we were cutting hours or what caused that.

No, we are not cutting hours at all. Okay.

I think there might have been some overtime situations that developed last year at the South Troy Pool, which might account for the overage.

Okay. All right. That's all I had.

Thank you.

Council Member Struver.

I was going to ask the same thing. Okay.

Anyone else have any other questions? Council President. Councilmember DeLorenzo.

Just looking at this, can you explain, maybe you guys don't know, maybe you do, can you explain for the public, why is there a difference between the South Troy pool and the new Nick pool? Meaning the difference in prices? Yes.

I believe the pool, the Nick pool, would be much bigger. That causes more staffing.

So it's actually more expensive for the South Troy pool? Is that just due to the timing of the opening of the NIC pool?

Maybe that's going to be open a full two months before.

No, I don't have that.

I can get back to you on that. I'm not sure. I would think it would be the other way around. So I would get back to you. All right. Sounds good.

Any other questions?

council president council member mccleary do you um correspond with boys and girls club as to how it's going if they're going to have enough lifeguards if they yes we met with them frequently in the last few months and everything's going copacetic right now they actually just submitted the uh safety plans to renter county as we speak um they do not have any concerns for hiring or anything like that so they they feel pretty good about it okay all right thank you

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Resolution 55 is adopted 7-0. Resolution 56, resolution declaring support for LGBTQ plus Pride Month in Troy, New York, Council President Steele at the request of the administration. Do I have a motion?

Motion.

Council Member McLaren with a second by Council Member Struver. You have before you, in front of you, a number of amendments to this. Um, rather than read them all, I would entertain a motion, an omnibus motion. Um, what this will do is update this resolution and also make it pride season in Troy, not just pride month. So, um, is there a motion motion to amend? um could i just add something sure um well let's do let's take this amendment first and then it's on this amendment oh it is okay changed the final paragraph does not include season it still says uh months okay so if we would just also change that one as well okay very good so we have a motion by council member with Clarence or Struber Struber to amend with a second by second Council member McKee okay so we have the amendment uh everyone is clear on the sections to be amended we have a motion made and seconded all in favor aye opposed on the amendment on the amended resolution are there any questions All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The resolution 56, as amended, is adopted 7-0. Resolution 57, resolution determining that the proposed action is a type 2 action for the purposes of the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act. Council President Steele, at the request of the administration, is there a motion?

Motion.

Council Member McLaren, second. second by council member struber discussion on the resolution all in favor aye opposed Resolution 57 is adopted 7-0. Resolution 58, bond resolution of the city of Troy, New York, authorizing the issuance of $2 million serial bonds to finance the purchase of a fire rescue vehicle apparatus. Council President Steele, at the request of the administration, is there a motion?

Motion.

Council Member Struber for the second by Council Member McKee. Discussion on the resolution?

Council President.

Council Member Struve.

Is anybody from the Fire Department here? Thank you for sticking with us tonight. Could you tell us what this would mean for the Fire Department in real everyday terms and not just money terms?

It would mean a tremendous amount. Our rescue squads, our specialized vehicle deals with hazardous materials, high angle rescue, water rescue, ice rescue, vehicle extrication. It's the centerpiece of our department. Across the state right now, across the country, manufacturer times are extended to almost three years now. Our current frontline apparatus is a 2016 and the spare apparatus is a 2003. The 2003 is in pretty tough shape. It has 147,000 miles on it. And I think I remember, if I can remember, the 17, almost 18,000 hours on it on Troy City streets for the last year. 23 years or so. It's a pretty beat up piece of apparatus, but it's our only spare. Again, it's a specialized piece. So it's not like when the frontline piece goes out of service, it's not like we can go to any other vehicle. We need the extrication equipment and such. So we're coming up on that vehicle is 23 years old. The production time for a current vehicle is three years. So it's going to be 26 years old by the time we get a replacement for our frontline.

Thank you.

Sure.

Any other questions? I have a question. Council member McKee?

I don't think you can answer it. Seamus, maybe. What is our debt limit?

Are you talking about when you say the debt limit, are you talking about like what New York State, the constitutional debt limit is or which number are you referring?

Don't we have a debt limit for the city? City of Troy?

so yes that's what so i just if you're referring to i mean new york state you know dictates that the city has a constitutional debt limit to not exceed here it's probably talking about i think it's uh it's a little over it's actually 182 a little over 182 million dollars and where are we we or So there's a couple of nuances to the way the New York State, when you calculate that too. Same just like the way that the bond market will look at it when it comes to the credit rating. I think between all funds, we might be somewhere around that 100 million number that you're saying, but what takes into account when you're referencing it to the New York State debt limit, that is also less debt involved with the water fund. you'd actually, that number I want to say is a little bit closer to 75 million.

Okay. At the end of 2025, I mean, yes, 2025, it was 104, it was about 104.

There's, yeah, just in relation to the way that New York State with that constitutional debt limit, you would really put the $75 million number up to it. Of course, that's debt. I just mean in relation to that constitutional limit that New York State requires. And just to, because I think this is some value too, when you also look into the way that, say, an S&P is going to look at our debt and they're rating it from your total amount of debt to how much revenue is coming in, that percentage, even with doing this, would stay right in line with the median number for an A-plus rating in S&P. So I think that's valuable to point out as well.

Is it like a 9% of the assessed value?

It's the it's a 7% of a 5 year average of the of the assessed value. Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Council President members favor.

I was just curious. What is the total cost right now of the apparatus?

And the chief can confirm, but I want to say it's coming in right now a little over 1.7 million. Since we last tried to do this, it's gone up about almost 200,000. This is $1,741,129.64.

The memo you had, I believe, in here of support, it says it'll lock in the price. Is that correct? Because in the email you had sent, you said we bond for a little bit more.

And then if it goes up above, then we have to come up with- What we actually do is, so with your bond authorization, that allows us to submit the order and for the apparatus to start being made. Like the chief noted, it will take several years. What the agreement lays out is that if there's an increase for the apparatus and that stays within 5%, they'll still keep that price that we have quoted here. If it goes over the 5%, then we're gonna be susceptible to that. So the reason that you see a $2 million bond authorization before you is we wanted to give that enough cushion. So if it does say, if this increased 10%, You know, and you're looking at 170 or so thousand dollar increase there. That's what we'd end up have to actually bond it for upon taking delivery of it. And just to be even clearer, we don't, you give us the authorization through this bond resolution that we don't actually go to bond for it until several years from now when it comes, when it's gearing up to get ready to come in.

Okay. Thank you.

Council President, Council Member McClary.

I know in the past you've talked about being able to get like a demo or like a prototype so that you didn't have to wait as long. Is that a possibility in this case or is it so specialized?

No, it's not. It's a customized unit specifically for our equipment that we carry, the extrication equipment, the water rescue, high angle rescue. It's too specialized.

okay thank you council president council member de laurenza so if we were to approve this motion we'd get a 2028 model uh for the new uh yes 2028 so then we would also have a 2020 or a 2016 model and the 2003 model well the the 2003 model

probably isn't going to make it three years okay that's what i was going to ask and uh spare or does it you know how does that i'm sorry how does that 2003 model is like it goes out to auction commission okay it's taken out of service because out to auction to 2016 then becomes our spare gotcha thank you yes out of curiosity who purchases that uh on auction uh 2003

No, I'm just asking, is it just people who want like a deep?

Yeah, sure. Whatever their needs are. People bought it. It has a water and it has a 500 gallon water tank and pump on it. People could use it for watering crops. I don't know whatever to use it for. Or they, you know, it's an American LaFrance people. have an affinity for America and France, whatever your flavor is, I guess.

You might have a potential buyer here. Who knows? All in favor? Aye.

Opposed?

Resolution 58 is adopted 7-0. Thank you. That concludes our agenda. Thank you. At this time, we have a public forum that is open to the public on any topic. And if anyone is Watching from home, I believe we ask you to raise your hand to let us know you want to comment. Does anyone wish to comment on any item? Seeing none, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Council Member Favreau for the second by Council Member Struver. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned.