Utica, New York Common Council Meeting Records

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

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

22 matches · 9 unidentified
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.
47:09
Go ahead. I wasn't finished though, and I've got to go, so really quickly, they're, they're, they're doing a soft reopening on February 13th, and that's in time for the kids that are on spring break. So I think that if you guys want to discuss this, you call for a special meeting tomorrow and, and get it to the— yeah, get it going, because we've got to get these rates going so that they know who they can employ, who they have to pay, how much money it's going to bring in. And that's, that's all I have to say. So I would, I would like to call for a special meeting tomorrow at 5:30 or 5 o'clock to get it going on the discussion, but I have to go.
Unidentified speaker 1:28:36
I believe it ends on the 25th. So, um, again, I think Brian sent it everything to Planning Board, so Planning Board meets prior to the 25th. So as long as you call for the meeting on the 20— or excuse me, before the 25th, Planning Board will meet. But as long as you call for your meeting on the 25th and vote on it, you should be good. I guess if worst case happens, I can prepare an extension of the moratorium for another month just to allow for the, uh, um, or to, you know, pass.
Unidentified speaker 2:15:48
the chief. Um, obviously, uh, we've had a busy January and a very tragic outcome from one of the fires one of the many fires that we responded to in the past month. Um, through the month of January, the fire department responded to 1,361 incidents. We transported over 600 patients to local hospitals. We had 29 reported structure fires in the month of January. 8 of them were working fires or second alarm fires or third alarm fires. Obviously, when we call a second alarm, that brings all on-duty firefighters to the fire scenes. Tragically, two occupants of a house on Jewett Place lost their lives during one of these fires. Earlier that same morning, we had several firefighters injured at 1014 Bleecker Street. They are all recovering, you know, Thankfully, their turnout gear worked the way it needed to and protected them. And, you know, despite some minor setbacks, everyone, with exception of one person, has returned back to work. Again, busy month. Firefighters have really stepped up. It's been a cold month. I can't emphasize enough, everyone, please make sure that you have working smoke detectors in your homes. Make sure that your egress— and that's how you get out in and out of your place that you live— is free and clear of obstructions. And have a plan if a fire happens. Also, please, if you're using space heaters, give them some distance, keep combustible items away from them, and continue to stay safe. And I worked with Francis. Francis called notified me he had an issue at his apartment and trying to help Francis sort that out. He's been having some carbon monoxide issues, so we were able to get National Grid there and address some of that. Carbon monoxide calls are a pretty fairly common call in the City of Utica, especially in the— during the winter months. Encourage everybody to make sure that they have a working carbon monoxide detector as well.
Unidentified speaker 30:45
I did hear your own appointment. That's one of the reasons we got the new software. Um, holes that I've seen in the Codes Department that I've, I've expressed in the past, um, and I've, I've had these concerns forever. I don't know if they're willing to say, but the, the, the, the 3 concerns I've had is a lot of people know when we work. And they do construction after we work, especially in scenic and historic districts, because it's more expensive to do scenic and historic districts. So I've asked for overtime to do on weekends. I've never been given overtime. It's because they're union contracts. I have to pay them overtime. I can't just have them do it. And it's frustrating to me because I get calls from— like, there's in every scenic and historic district, there's like 2 or 3 neighbors that really believe in that stuff. And they call and he put up new siding, he put up a new porch. And we weren't there to stop it. And, um, so the weekends are tough. The other thing that's tough is, um, the, the ride-alongs, like, um, with DPW. I'd like to do that, but then I would need overtime to do that, because if somebody improperly disposes of green waste, DPW can't write them a ticket. So they're just picking up their waste if Codes didn't catch it earlier in the day. Um, so that's a lot of people don't flag is put out after 4:30. And so that's— having guys be able to work those shifts, plus they work better sometimes when they're on their own, it's peaceful, it's office, because I think what a lot of council people or administrative people that I talk to don't understand is how many appointments they have every day. My codes officers will have between 5 and 8 appointments per day. So you want, like, everybody on the council and the mayor and and administrative people always want us to patrol the neighborhoods, but like those appointments are their first obligation. So a guy might have to write up 8 cases and be in 8 different apartments in a day, and then you wanted them to catch the neighbor that put their garbage out improperly on top of that, and, and they always don't have that extra time, you know. Um, so those things. And, uh, the other thing is just the volumes that are coming down. I mean, We're going to amend the vacant housing registry and, you know, right now we're one secretary short in the department and we're going to amend the vacant housing registry. They're looking at a permit for chickens. They're looking at other legislation that could require permits and patrols. And then after a while it's kind of like, you know, you send me tools like this, okay, they're doing the same thing, they can react to it. You send me a new permit or legislation, I got to figure out who's going to do that.
Unidentified speaker 35:43
it's been years. The only, the only issue I had with that was having a property manager is supposed to be, um, and having his displayed in the apartment, in the apartment. So having a property manager supposed to be there now, if we have it displayed on the apartment, it's cool. The only thing that I kind of worry about, but not really, I think it's a good law, um, it's just that it's going to change over time and it's gonna be— so, so the fire department inspects those buildings, and so it's going to be the task on them to call that number when they do their inspections is make sure it's the same guy, you know, because I don't want the guys to have the wrong information and calling the wrong numbers. So as long as they keep it current and we have a way to keep in touch and make sure it hasn't changed.