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

15 matches · 4 unidentified
Unidentified speaker 1:38:48
I've been following this discussion. And your legislation regarding certain things was sort of up in the air. I don't know that anybody knows very much about the process and what the process is, especially out in the public. But, you know, you're at a Common Council of City the of Utica, you can do whatever you want. You can waive, you waive residence requirements, you waive a lot of things. If there is some good reason for you to raise, to waive a rule that just became an ordinance because you wrote a veto, and You can do whatever you wish, and you don't have to argue about it. So if a Councilman wants a certain group, because Juneteenth is, I think, a national holiday, so it obviously qualifies anyway, and I can't see how an application process would be denied to celebrate any holiday. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] It's like the Fourth of July. So if you think that you would allow something to happen because there wasn't enough prior notice of a process that you just put into law by overriding a veto, you may do so. You make a motion, you second it, vote on it. If it passes, whatever the Councilman from the 5th District wishes to tell his constituents, who are the primary parties in this thing anyway, then he could do so. I'm just offering that as a way of keeping the community of this council in order without having a lot of bad feelings over things that, to me, at some point become much ado about nothing. So I offered that as a suggestion, and I offer that to the Councilman of the 5th District if he'd like to take advantage of that. And I don't— I can't really visualize you as a council not accommodating your 5th District Councilman and his constituency.
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 1:41:28
Especially since you've got a national holiday involved. I offer that. Like everything I say, you don't have to do anything I say or even suggest, but I sit here and I listen to this and it's sort of— it bothers me that— because I like the harmony of this this council. You've done very well so far, and I, I just don't like too much of that disharmony start creeping into your meetings. So someone would like to make a motion to waive the rule because of the time element involved and all that, and whatever the Councilman from the 5th District thinks is appropriate for his group.
Unidentified speaker 2:11:02
Well, again, my name is Tim Julian, former Utica Mayor, former Utica Common Council President, and current County Legislator in the 19th Legislative District, and also the County Minority Leader. I'm here tonight to speak out against good cause eviction, which many people on this council may be considering, and I know some people are looking for. I will cut to the chase and go past the point where I state that landlords are small businesses and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and pump hundreds of thousands of dollars into the economy each and every year. I'm just going to talk quickly about the eviction process as my time here is limited. And as you know, we already endure several-step process to evict someone, a process that takes months and costs us hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in service fees, legal costs— and we pay our own lawyers, not free legal aid attorneys— and lost income due to failure to pay rent. Most times after an eviction is finalized, we walk into an apartment that is no longer habitable and requires thousands of dollars of repairs. Good cause eviction will add to this time period and stretch the eviction process out longer, costing landlords, uh, small business owners tens of thousands of dollars each year. A quick example: I was in court on May 26th for an eviction of a person that has only rented since February of this year. He has threatened the lives of my employees. He has threatened to destroy the property. He has used racial slurs against his ethnic neighbors. He has thrown lighter fluid on police officers. He has threatened suicide, amongst other things. I started the eviction process on March 16th of this year, and when I go to court on May 26th, I was told he wanted to stay until June 30th. I stated I wanted him out on the 15th. I was then told, told if I could not agree to his demands, I would have to have a hearing with him, and the soonest date for a hearing was September 2nd. So I had to go along with this request or lose 2 more months of rent at the very least. As I stated the last time I spoke, no landlord wants to evict a tenant that is good, and being a good tenant is not a high bar. Pay your rent, keep your space clean, and don't be a nuisance to your neighbors. That's it. As a landlord, I can reasonably say most of my tenants don't know how to turn a screw. That's fine because not everyone should be a homeowner. For that, they pay landlords a fee to live worry-free knowing their needs will be met. Enacting good cause eviction will force more landlords to go out of business and further exacerbate the housing crisis that you state this law will solve. I'll stop there. Thank you.