Utica, New York Common Council Meeting Records

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

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

11 matches · 1 unidentified
36:00
The only thing is, there's a couple of pieces, and I'm still working on some things, so I appreciate everybody giving me some time leaving this stuff into committee. One of the local laws that's introduced is the registration and posting of owner and manager information. I would still like to see how passing the two ordinances that we had in regards to the city being able to go after property owners, I would like to keep that one in there. Obviously, the loitering, aggressive begging and soliciting, camping, um, that didn't have any teeth. I mean, we could probably dismiss that one. I have sent Chief Williams a couple pieces of legislation in regards to our Parks Department. I'm working on him with a couple things that might add that into it. So if we want to, we can dismiss, um, rescind and replace ordinance number 2. Um, as far as ordinance number 4, I'm still working on that one. Ordinance number 3—
3:15:41
Yes, I'd like to say my condolences to Melissa also. You know, the last couple council meetings, and we had a lot of speakers here on the FLOCK and the spot shooter and a couple council people, and people are pointing everything that they think is bad about it, okay? There's a lot of good things to it. There's a lot of agencies and towns that aren't going away with it. And it's a very, very good tool tool for victims. If you go on spotsafety.com, you'll see a girl that was kidnapped that was saved 3 blocks later that might have never came back to her family. I do see your concerns about the privacy, but each time these tools are used, they have item numbers put to them. People that use them have clearance to to use them. If they use them improperly, they are punished. Is it possible they use them improperly? Yes. But they will be punished. If you take these tools away from our police with the shortage of police we have, stores are going to be closing down. I already had one close in my area, Walgreens. I heard one of the landlords say that Dunkin' Donuts was closed because of crime. Our police need these tools for the criminals, for the victims. I don't hear anybody get up on that podium and say anything that was about the victims of these crimes, just of, oh, they might be misused. Well, that's why we put case numbers on every time it's used. So hopefully it's not misused. Let's weigh what it does to save people. And let's get on to do a little more homework on it than just how bad it is. We need it.
7:55
Thank you. Um, so I don't know about all you guys. Well, I do know that some of you's got a lot of calls about dangerous trees that aren't on city property. They keep telling me over and over that Rome has an ordinance, why can't we do it? So I had Marcus print me Rome's ordinance. He talked to the Codes Department out in Rome. I talked to Councilperson, Commissioner Sokolowski about it. And what I want to do in this discussion is to touch on aspects why we can do this, if why we can't do it. Um, I, I also invited Parks Commissioner Short because he is our arborist, but it doesn't look like he's coming. I didn't hear back from him. So, um, I'll just open it up to, um, Marques, if you want to start. We worked on this, so you know more Sure. The positives, and then I'll let legal go in and discuss it and what Mark's done. What I could just tell you about this right off the bat, there's a couple good things that they do right off the bat. Obviously our tree department, I think, what do we have, 2 or 4 guys?
38:18
Yes, and this I worked on with the public safety commissioner. So there was a couple of other things that I had talked to him previously that we want to work on. I just haven't had the time to sit down with them and kind of resolve what we wanted to say. And maybe it doesn't work out, maybe it does, but this was the last piece of legislation. And even Mark Chieco was included in the meeting. So I would like to— this to stay in there just so that we can talk about it for a little more, unless you have something else.
38:50
All right, thank you. All right, proposed ordinance number 3, an ordinance to establish a district-wide garage sale. So I seen Whitesboro do it, I've seen New Hartford do it, I've seen a couple other places do it. I would like for the Council to work on this. I think it's kind of cool to designate areas to have a garage sale. So if you can have a North Utica garage sale, East Utica garage sale, South Utica garage sale, I think this is something that would be pretty cool for our area to know if one part of the city is having a garage sale rather than everybody having one and having signs posted outside. We could know where that garage sale is going. So this is something that I will talk about in the future with the Council. Unless anybody else wants to add anything to that, I still want to hold on to that one.
Unidentified speaker 2:13:52
For those of you who don't know me, I've been the City Marshal for 41 years. I've seen Like I said, for those of you who don't know me, I've been the City Marshal for 4 years. I've seen all the judges come and go, retire. I've seen the mayors go, police chief, fire chief, and everything. I also happen to be a landlord in Utica. I've got 110 places. And it's hard to follow what Tim just said, but that's right on point. And I happen to be doing the guy that he's talking about. I have to go there and remove him. And the abuse that we take. I handled it easy. But the biggest thing is if we just keep ignoring what's going on— give you an example. A lot of West Utica is shot now. A lot of East Utica, deep East Utica is starting to crumble. What I mean by that is the student body of the city is not holding people liable. For the damages that are causing. I did 13,382 warrants in my lifetime. There's $7.5 million of unpaid rents. The landlords are taking this brunt, not those people. There's agencies out here that get government funds from the government to the state, hand them down here. HELIO, Shelter Care Plus, Reentry Program, all of these programs, Their job is to put these people in apartments. These are not all the people. These are certain people. And when they put them in these apartments, they have no repercussions on what they do. They move in. Now you got the squatters that go. They bring in 5 guys. They all say they live there, but the warrant only has the one person on it. Some of the agents— some of the communities around here put the name of the tenant, And then they put any and all other occupants. We don't in Utica. So when we go to do a warrant and the police have to go there and they say, okay, John Q. Public has to leave, well, that's my friend. He lives here too. He moved in here 3 months ago. You guys don't expect— and when I have to call for support sometimes, they don't back me up. That person lives there. He says he's my friend. He can stay there. Now we have to do the eviction. All over again on that guy. That's terrible that these landlords have to be put up with that. That's absolutely disgusting. So it's a much bigger problem than you think. And if we don't tighten down things on this— there's a lot of abandoned houses. Landlords are in business to try to buy a place, fix it up, rent it out, and make money. And this thing that Tim said about the fact— shortage of housing. No, there isn't. There's no shortage. There's hundreds and hundreds of apartments that the landlords won't even rent because it's easier for them to be in a two-family home not getting rent, but at least their place isn't getting damaged and they gotta spend a lot of money on it to fix it back up. They have destroyed, and again, it's just a certain element of people, and it's the same ones over and over again. I had a couple that moved every 7 months. They paid 2 months' rent a year. They would go there, by the time they got through the system, they'd go find another place. And they boned that landlord. They pay rent twice a year, 3 times a year. That's got to stop. We've got to do something about it. I don't have the answer. I don't know. Maybe somebody can come up with an idea. come up with an answer for this, but we have to stop it. And I want to go into this— 5-star Oneida Square. You got to be kidding me. Major Dunkin' Donuts leaves. Kentucky Fried Chicken leaves. You want to take a person down Genesee Street to go to New Hartford and show what a beautiful city it is, they got to go by there? That would turn anybody off. It really would. I don't— again, I don't know the answer, but as far as the good cause, that's just another branch for them to hold on to that's just going to sink these landlords out here that are trying to do a good job. And it's the same thing over and over and over again. I see it every day they come in, every day. And I don't have much more to say than we've got to start taking care of this city the way it's supposed to be taken care of. All right? Sorry.