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

32 matches · 6 unidentified

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.

10:00

And then they also have a professional arborist, right, that can go and say if it's dangerous or not. This legislation, a lot of it opens up— their legislation, I don't know how they do it, but to me it opens up a lot of cans of worms for lawsuits for the city. But I just wanted to discuss all of it before I wrote a piece of legislation and it couldn't go anywhere. So I'll open it up to you, and then, Steph, you jump in. You guys all jump in.

1:03:01

Hold on, hold on, because I do want to say this. We're creeping, hold on, we're creeping into the 6 o'clock hour for our pre-meeting. Is there anything? Well, it does matter because we have legislation we have to discuss that's going to be either passed or not passed tonight. So it does matter. Councilman LoMedico, that is your— Councilman LoMedico, that is your 6 PM meeting. If you want to adjourn this one, we could pick up the 6 PM, go through our legislation that's on for tonight, and then if there's any time left, maybe we could pick this up. But we, we should stay on track.

1:04:40

I think it's right, but what your legislation says is that a proclamation constitutes the approval of a flag. And again, that goes back on the previous legislation that you coincided the Pride Month flag with the flag raising, and that's not right.

1:29:36

So this legislation doesn't state anything about a flag, but just like the first 20 pieces of legislation here, anything that we pass here is city expression. So if it's passed, somebody does have the right and opportunity to submit for an application to raise a flag.

3:35:44

You sure? Okay, so last week when this— the legislation came out regarding flags and all that I spoke on it, why I was against it. Had nothing to do with Gay Pride, has nothing to do with Juneteenth. It has to do with the wording. And obviously the way I spoke, I must be right, because after our first meeting tonight, we had mad confusion on what it's going to entail. We just listened to the judge say he's going to work with, uh Councilwoman— Councilperson— I'm sorry, uh, Mr. Giorgio. Um, so last week after I voted, I was accused by a certain person that I was against gay pride when I've mentioned that I have gay members of my family. I think I've been on this council for 7 years, and I'm personally friends with all of you— well, most of you— and I think you all know what I stand for. Tonight I was accused that I didn't want to see the Juneteenth flag risen. So if anybody doesn't realize, I have a biracial grandson and I have a biracial grandson coming in 2 weeks. So the bottom line out of any of what I stand for is obviously doing the right thing, okay? Obviously there's mass confusion here regarding this flag legislation. We've seen what we went through tonight, the first week. So I was all set to vote on this resolution because it's a national holiday, until my fellow Councilperson in his district spoke up against different flags. That's what we thought we're talking about. That's what I was concerned about. When we vote for one and the next person comes up, we open ourselves up to saying no to a certain flag, and we open the city up for a lawsuit. So you people need to realize that. So I'm for all the organizations do it the right way, and anybody wants to sit with a stupid smile on their face, feel happy to do that, because I've about had it being accused of stuff that I don't belong doing that. I've never disrespected any of you people on the floor, and I don't need to get disrespected on this floor either.

Unidentified speaker 10:31

So first thing, Councilman Betrus called me, told me Rome had a resolution. I have a good relationship with the Commissioner of Codes in Rome. Called him immediately. He answered the phone. And I asked them about their legislation and what they do and how it came about and what happened. Basically what they do, they don't proactively look for trees. They respond to complaints from neighbors about trees of concerns to the neighbors. When they get a complaint from a neighbor about a tree of concern, they send their arborist to evaluate the tree. If the arborist determines that the tree is a danger for a variety of reasons, mostly it's dead. Then they tell the homeowner to remedy. The homeowner doesn't remedy. The city contracts a third party to remedy, cut down the tree, and they bill the homeowner as if we would in an abatement to move what they consider an emergency hazard. Now, the problems with it, with enforcement that I can pick up right away, Law will talk about more from a codes perspective. Kind of easy for us to enforce on those terms, but for the fact that we don't know where property lines are. If there's not a survey, I don't know whose tree that is. I know it looks like it's in the neighbor's yard, I know, so I could end up billing the wrong homeowner. And that would be my biggest fear, or not giving sufficient notice. Sufficient notice to a homeowner that goes. And then, you know, it's not a codes concern, but to some extent it is. It's more DPW. But from a codes standpoint, the right to access, right? Can you trespass on private property? And then if you're bringing trucks and saws and stuff on private property, they go. I asked Mark that, he said it's never come up. It doesn't mean, um, it's not good. The law is relatively recent. He wrote it himself. But he said that he's had success with it and he likes it. But like I said, my fear is the property lines. It's not so much the enforcement, the ability to enforce, because if the arborist is doing all the work, we're just responding to a complaint. So it's not the work, it's the property issues.

22:58

Right. And that's why I said— and why I said they put $100-some-odd thousand away. They use an independent company. And the reason I had this, I didn't draw legislation. I come to the people who know what's going on, and I'm asking them.