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

14 matches · 5 unidentified

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?

2:53:19

Thank you, Mr. President. Um, just a couple, couple things as we, we approach, um, the month of February and March here. We received our audit, uh, copies our here recently as a council and members of the public listening. We of course have our budget meetings coming up later this month, and I think February and March are certainly our busiest as far as the finances of the, the city go. So I encourage members of the public to continue to attend, continue to stream YouTube, and continue to reach out to the council members with any questions you have as we make our way through the budget so we can incorporate that into our, into our questions. Other than that, thank you, Mr. President.

23:23

I know there's a couple—

23:24

I know in my area there's a couple that they had to come. That's a good example of this right here. Yeah, but the neighbor's got to be notified. But yeah, the ratification— so initially when we came up with this legislation, and mostly Councilman Betrus, we came up with the legislation, there was an appeal process. Um, we, we ended up turning that appeal process into the council can just pass to allow it because the council is the one that's closest to the people.

40:26

So perfect. The only, uh, before we close this, um, Melissa just put us, um, this piece of paper. We have like 25 minutes if you guys want to talk about it, the, um, for the fees for Val by Alice, or we can talk about it in 6 o'clock meeting. Um, so I don't know, you guys want to wait or you want to get a couple minutes here? I mean, it's a good time, right? We might as well talk.

1:15:01

Okay, I think also— sorry, I think part of the problem is early on, the first legislation we ever passed wasn't the correct 4%, so I think part of the 6% would— we tried fixing it a couple times. I don't know.

Unidentified speaker 1:15:42

go ahead. Well, I can just say, I can speak to as to why you're getting it now. Typically this was done up until the last couple years where it kind of fell through the cracks. Typically they were submitted at the same time. When you got the budget, you got legislation to correspond for the sewer rents. It got sent down now so you have it ahead of time and you guys can make your decisions come budget season and not forget that you have to change the rates in accordance with the budget.

1:22:02

I can, please, between Stephanie and I, we Certainly. There was a mor— the Council may remember that there was— this body passed a moratorium almost 6 months ago. That was a 6-month moratorium which is up within the next couple weeks. So this piece and the next piece which addresses better battery storage was in response to those two moratoriums. As far as billboards, this— the moratorium was requested because we had— our office had seen an uptick in the number of requests for zoning approvals and Planning Board approvals for additional billboards within the city, including one on the triangular site at the western gateway of Oriskany Boulevard into the city, which the Zoning Board actually granted approval for. But fortunately, DOT thought better of it and actually denied it, or we would have had a big billboard on that site. I'm suggesting that there be no more billboards allowed in the city, and that that would basically prevent any reviews by Planning Board, and that only existing billboards be permitted to remain.