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22:06

Yeah, well, it's still— we're still borrowing money. And we need, we need to know what that's going to cost us to borrow the money, right?

23:09

But we still should have an idea what we're going to be spending.

Unidentified speaker 28:24

Okay, so just on this piece, Councilman came to me. Our job is to enforce the law. It's your job to make the law. Um, we used to have in our zoning ordinance, before you guys passed the new zoning ordinance, a vehicle weight limit, um, so there couldn't be large vehicles in driveways. That weight limit was abolished with this zoning code, and there was nothing to kind of replace it for large vehicles. So we still get a lot of the calls of people that are used to the old law that says, my neighbor has a tow truck, and you just got to hear that thing all times of night leaving the neighborhood, exhaust, they leave it running. You know, my neighbor drives a semi-truck. There's nothing in our law right now that makes that against the rules. Rules. So Councilman Betrus calls us on some of those things in his neighborhood. Other council people have called us, and, um, he wanted to come up with a law to do it. And I said I didn't think the weight limit was good because we don't have a scale, right? So we got to look at the model of the vehicle, we got to check the DMV, see if it's right. Sometimes the stickers aren't there. So just ban specific types of vehicles, and that's what this does. It names them: front loaders, pickup trucks, dump trucks. The ordinance names the vehicles that you can't park in the residential neighborhood.

Unidentified speaker 1:31:36

No, just a few things. I mean, I guess code-wise, ongoing battle with snow sidewalks. Um, since November 1st, Codes Department listed, um, has either tagged, sent notices to, or ticketed 183 people or properties for snow and sidewalks. A lot of those properties don't have people living in them. Sometimes it's the snow banks in grocery stores go over to the sidewalk and we got to get them to then clean it. So it's an ongoing battle. But the easiest way to report that is the 311 app. And the second easiest is just calling codes. There's nothing that gets reported that our officers don't go to. If it's a report, we have to show up. So that's the snow. The other thing that came up was, and it's funny because some of the people that were advocates for these people, the millennial housing that keeps coming up, Genesee Towers. I just kind of want to emphasize because of some of the things I've seen inside the codes, I don't mean to be too vague, is, you know, Genesee Towers, Lillian Cooper, Brandegee, the millennial housing spots are still a struggle. Hud is a big national company that has a big problem and they're underfunded and they're challenging conditions and we have to make tough decisions every day whether to kick people out of their houses or not. That's the reality, but they're not the local people that work in the buildings. The people that actually manage the buildings, the maintenance guys, the property managers are working their backsides off. They came in on the weekend to clean up you know, garbage because there was a social media post in the hallway. And there's, there's one person cleaning up 11 floors of stairways because there's garbage on the stairways up and down that they threw down there over the weekends. So, you know, the people that live here and work here do a good job. It's the people that live in Ohio that we're having an issue with. Um, and then finally, uh, you know, my father was on the council. I've been coming coming to City Hall since middle school. I was a reporter after that, coming to City Hall since middle school. One of the most helpful elected officials that I ever dealt with, a person I consider a mentor, taught me a lot of what I know about government, is Joan Scalise. And, um, she'll be missed. I was sorry to hear about her passing, and I hope, um, her legacy lives, um, as long as the strength in which she helped me. So that's all I have to say.

1:37:56

Uh, thank you, Mr. President. I, I again want to thank the organization to come in. I, I remember meeting a few, few of you at the West Utica Neighborhood Association when you came in, and I was impressed there, and I'm still further impressed today. And hopefully we as a council can go forward and assist you in some of these needs because it is important. And on a sadder note, I'm very sad, depressed because of my Buffalo Bills. Next year is another season. Thank you.

Common Council Meeting January 21st, 2026