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

12 matches · 4 unidentified

Unidentified speaker 2:18:38

Thank you for your time. Gary Heenan, also a landlord. I've just about 120 units across the county. Got into the business to make money, a small business, and people sign a contract. The last thing I need to do to make money is evict someone. That's losing money. So it's, to me, it's unreasonable. We don't start the eviction process until 2, 3, 4 months when they're behind rent. So it's easy to start at day one. That's not the truth. That's not what happens. So somebody gets behind 3, 4, or 5 months, that's when you start that process. There's already a system in place, and that is cumbersome. And to say we need good cause to add a layer to the already difficult process— it's already in front of a judge, and that judge rules whether there's good cause already. So why would we have to recreate a system that truthfully works? It's a little longer in process, but why are we adding layers to that? Mayor Galime. So, you know, we work with people. I need people absolutely in these places, and we work with them. Single parent, that's kind of my wheelhouse. Christmas time, I'm losing thousands of dollars out of my choice. That's my choice because I work with them. It's going to cost me a lot more to evict them. So within reason, I'm just here to say there's already a process in place. There's already someone at the, at the judge's table that rules whether there's good cause or not. I'm not sure why we have to reinvent the wheel in this city.

3:39:08

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?

Unidentified speaker 2:22:11

I'm sure this isn't news to a single person in this room, but we can't regulate our way into more housing. Today, as it stands, I have 162 inquiries from amazing members of this community, all competing for 4 apartments. So this is going to lead me to my second point, but we need more units, more development, and more rehabilitation, not additional barriers for the folks providing housing. My second point, the good landlords are going to become more selective. When it's harder to remove these tenants, landlords are going to— before approving applicants, they are going to raise their credit requirements, they are going to raise the income requirements, and they are going to run rigorous verification processes. So this policy that's intended to help marginal renters can unintentionally make it harder for those same renters to get approved in the first place. 3, Tim already said it. Small landlords are not large corporations. This law was designed to target institutional investors and landlords. Mostly in our downstate markets. In our community, most of the housing providers are local families, retirees, and small business owners who are going to feel this the most. My fourth point is it's going to create more litigation, which has been said twice. Today I have two pending evictions that have taken over 6.5 months from tenants that I've inherited from a local manager. So this is just going to create more attorneys, more court appearances, more administrative burden for the city, and it doesn't create a single new housing unit. I respectfully believe this proposal risks creating more litigation, discouraging investment, and reducing housing opportunities, and making it harder for local housing providers to operate. If our goal is affordability, stability, and quality housing, we should focus on increasing housing supply supply, encouraging rehabilitation of our aging properties, and supporting the responsible landlords and responsible tenants alike. Good cause eviction does not create a single apartment, lower a single tax bill, or renovate a single building. What it does is increase uncertainty in a housing market that already faces significant challenges. Thank you, everybody.

Unidentified speaker 3:00:49

It's going to be short, believe it or not. It doesn't sound like it, but— and I got into this business because it was a great opportunity. Over those— these 30 years, over and over again, New York State has continued to cut the feet off of landlords, pass legislation to make it more and more difficult to do business, and the result, like everything else that New York State does to hinder small business, is that the cost of doing business goes up. And every time a piece of legislation is passed, it makes things more difficult. This good cause eviction is going to make things even that much more difficult than they already are, and it's going to cause the cost of rents to go up, the cost of doing business to go up. So I would ask you members of the Common Council to vote no should this legislation come up, that you vote no. We don't need it. There's already plenty of legislation on the books to protect tenants. There are— Codes Department. To keep landlords in check. We now have a lead registry in New York State to deal with the lead issue. So no, the good cause eviction law is not going to deal with the lead issue. We have a lead registry. So I appreciate your time. Thank you.

20:49

I understand that. So what I'm saying is that what the city is responsible for is the city's already done and they did tree inventory on. I understand that you're talking about somebody's backyard and stuff like that. And I personally, and you know my feelings on this, like I don't see how the city can go in, they can't even go in somebody's backyard for a codes issue if they have chickens or anything anything like that. So the point to this, and I understand what Joe's saying, and it is a big problem, and I don't know how the City of Rome does it. I thought maybe because it's a bigger city and they might have more land and it's easier to see something on somebody else's property. But I think that the inventory that we have is based on the tree inventory that we did as a city. We hired somebody to do. Anything outside of that scope, I think, is just too much for the city to handle and outside of their scope of—

40:06

Well, it's already on the book, so I mean, like I said before, I have no problem adjusting the fees. I mean, whatever's on the book, I have no problem because everyone's supposed to get a permit now for a garage sale. So whatever that fee aligns 1964, I had no problem.

46:50

Yeah, it's Councilwoman Betrus speaking. Thank you. Uh, so yeah, I don't feel comfortable. I've said this before, I want the actual fees of what everything already is, and then the council can establish those officially. I don't want to say replace those fees with current rates established by the Parks and Recreation Department because that is giving up our powers from the council to the executive branch, and that's not what we're here to do. So otherwise, I'm I think we're going to be agreeing on a lot of these. So if we can just maintain—

54:28

So having an application process as is, which is what we already had before this moment, which is We had the application. It's not an application process, it's confirming, it's just submitting the request.