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Common Council Meeting with Committee of the Whole Meeting June 17th, 2026

4 matches

3:35:44

You sure? Okay, so last week when this— the legislation came out regarding flags and all that I spoke on it, why I was against it. Had nothing to do with Gay Pride, has nothing to do with Juneteenth. It has to do with the wording. And obviously the way I spoke, I must be right, because after our first meeting tonight, we had mad confusion on what it's going to entail. We just listened to the judge say he's going to work with, uh Councilwoman— Councilperson— I'm sorry, uh, Mr. Giorgio. Um, so last week after I voted, I was accused by a certain person that I was against gay pride when I've mentioned that I have gay members of my family. I think I've been on this council for 7 years, and I'm personally friends with all of you— well, most of you— and I think you all know what I stand for. Tonight I was accused that I didn't want to see the Juneteenth flag risen. So if anybody doesn't realize, I have a biracial grandson and I have a biracial grandson coming in 2 weeks. So the bottom line out of any of what I stand for is obviously doing the right thing, okay? Obviously there's mass confusion here regarding this flag legislation. We've seen what we went through tonight, the first week. So I was all set to vote on this resolution because it's a national holiday, until my fellow Councilperson in his district spoke up against different flags. That's what we thought we're talking about. That's what I was concerned about. When we vote for one and the next person comes up, we open ourselves up to saying no to a certain flag, and we open the city up for a lawsuit. So you people need to realize that. So I'm for all the organizations do it the right way, and anybody wants to sit with a stupid smile on their face, feel happy to do that, because I've about had it being accused of stuff that I don't belong doing that. I've never disrespected any of you people on the floor, and I don't need to get disrespected on this floor either.

33:11

And again, the last thing, and I'll end it on this unless they got anything. My purpose of this was to get knowledge of what's going on. So when people are calling me telling me, why can Rome do it and you can't? I took the professionals here and listened to what you're saying. That's all this was about, okay? Before, the way we used to do it, I would have had to put this legislation in and when I didn't know about it. So that's why I wanted you here, and I appreciate you guys for coming to explain the pros and cons of it.

2:09:03

The last thing I'd just like to say, I'd also like to recognize their parents and their family. In the generation that we live in today, we don't see— you know, we hear a lot of bad things, but you could see see that these children are being raised the right way, and that's a credit to you people and our community. Thank you very much.

3:40:01

That's what we voted on last week.

Common Council Meeting with Committee of the Whole Meeting February 4th, 2026

2 matches

15:53

And I also just took, um, at a couple— just a couple locations, um, of pictures of what I was trying to explain. Uh, they're not the best pictures, but, um, I've talked to each one of you guys, or for the most part, and I believe all of you have the same issues in your district. I know last time when we brought this up they started talking about like tractor-trailer cabs and all that, and which, which would be a nuisance to if somebody was there next door to them. But I wasn't, um, that's not what I was talking about. That's not where my complaints have been. My complaints have been mostly, you can see by the pictures, where you have people operating businesses out of their house, where they have multiple trailers, multiple you know, pay loaders, plows. The one place in North Utica, they actually were next to the woods, and nobody really knows who owned the property. They took it upon themselves to cut trees down and move all the property and move the vehicles over there. And I've had multiple complaints. I talked to Marcus. When codes would go there, they would come back and tell me— Marcus would come back and tell me that there's really nothing that they can do about it. I know like last year on Lorraine Ave, we had a guy bought a bus and it sat there for, I'm pretty sure it's gone now, sat there for almost a year while he was remodeling it. Just stuff like that. I know I talked to you, Joe, you have the same issue. Talked to Bob, you had the issue. So it's just something, and we're not here, Marcus will speak of it too, we're not really here to go— for these codes guys to go out and look for all problems. It's more or less the people that are nuisance when there's a problem, they have something to help us out with. So that's what I'm trying to do. So, Marques, you want to talk on it?

20:24

And the other thing that I talked about last, last time, kind of like when we— when they come in front of the zoning board, 4-foot fence is the minimum. But some people want a 6-foot fence, and they come and give their case. So if there is a complaint, and the guy— let's say, for example, it's summertime, a guy's got a food truck, and there's a complaint, somebody's really complaining, making a big thing— they could come up and we can amend that to give that guy a permit to do that. So again, it's not to try to hurt anybody, it's to try to help these guys. I just got frustrated when you call. And all of you guys probably do the same thing. You call up and they send codes there and you say, what happened? And they say, there's nothing, nothing, it's nothing in there we can do.

Common Council Meeting January 21st, 2026

1 match

37:06

We did the same thing last year.