Search · Utica Common Council Records

Yeah, anything we pass, anything we pass is city expression, and that's— so we're not approving a flag. Anything we vote on is city expression. People have the right to do a flag application based off city expression. This isn't— this is just honoring— this is just honoring Juneteenth.

So the application though that we're talking about, it says the city's flagpoles are not intended to serve as a forum for free expression by the public. Only the following flags may be displayed by the city as an expression of the city's official sentiments, and it goes into the 4 things.

That's why I made it like that. I knew this room was split and divided on flag raisings. This is just to honor Juneteenth and Utica's place in it. Of course, I don't— I wouldn't vote for that amendment because you can't cancel like City expression for one of these. That's why it doesn't make sense to me. Um, it's, it's, it is already— I think the judge already touched on this— this is already a federal holiday. The city already recognizes, uh, federal, uh, federal expression and, uh, federal flags at that. So it just, it wouldn't— you can try and say this one legislation doesn't have any effect, but it's just about the proclamation. It's not that deep. Councilman?

We can amend it to take off the application part, but I just thought it would also be good. And if there needs to be that— if you guys don't want to say that part, I don't see also how it hurts anything though. Is it contradicting the actual expression of a city?

But it's based off this criteria, which is city expression. So if this application process is wrong now, then we were doing it wrong all that past time.

59:22

It's city expression.

1:05:09

It is based off city expression.

So this legislation doesn't state anything about a flag, but just like the first 20 pieces of legislation here, anything that we pass here is city expression. So if it's passed, somebody does have the right and opportunity to submit for an application to raise a flag.