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

6 matches · 3 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?

20:24

And the other thing that I talked about last, last time, kind of like when we— when they come in front of the zoning board, 4-foot fence is the minimum. But some people want a 6-foot fence, and they come and give their case. So if there is a complaint, and the guy— let's say, for example, it's summertime, a guy's got a food truck, and there's a complaint, somebody's really complaining, making a big thing— they could come up and we can amend that to give that guy a permit to do that. So again, it's not to try to hurt anybody, it's to try to help these guys. I just got frustrated when you call. And all of you guys probably do the same thing. You call up and they send codes there and you say, what happened? And they say, there's nothing, nothing, it's nothing in there we can do.

33:20

And Marques, I, I, we have a piece of legislation that's in committee that I submitted quite some time ago. I mean, previously when I was a council before I got reelected, is I think that that would be an easier streamline thing to do as far as vacant registries for buildings. And I, I just think that that would be less burden, a lesser burden on you So if you are to amend it, at least take into consideration that piece of legislation. Well, you— we talked about it together. I know, I know.

Unidentified speaker 35:37

Okay, I'm sorry, that legislation, the issue— and we never really talked about that, so I'm glad we can.

Unidentified speaker 36:45

And a lot of our, properties. I mean, we could talk about them now. We talked about Genesee Towers and staff meeting for like 45 minutes upstairs. Um, a lot of these properties, man, that are these huge buildings, um, we could think, think about something like Jack was talking about, something what happens when the elevator doesn't work, or how can we tweak those laws. But a lot of those properties, we're really good with the staff. We know the staff there, they work there. The problems they're having are from corporate. You know, the boiler broke. You have a maintenance person in there. If they can't fix the boiler, you know, in an apartment like that, it could be $150,000 problem. They got to get $150,000 from Ohio and nobody can get in touch with them.

Unidentified speaker 1:37:05

Yeah. And, and to be clear, there are, you know, much like other, you know, wind, solar, you know, there are a lot of concerns with, you know, having these systems in place. Um, again, we just said, um, you know, you can't put it out with, you know, regular, you know, water. So the fire department has to figure out, you know, how to handle that. And they're— so the last piece of legislation that I sent down is the actual regulations, um, which would require again, the special use permit, and there are specific things that the applicant would need to provide. A lot of those include, you know, providing, um, not just information about, you know, how it's going to look, but, you know, noise regulations, um, you know, their safety information, and providing that to the fire department, police department, codes, um, you know, inspections, site access. You know, there's a lot of different regulations for them. That they not only have to apply when they do their site plan approval as part of their special use, but as an ongoing, you know, changes in ownership has to be shared. So there's a lot of things that govern that. Again, we're not asking for the Council to act on this tonight. You can't, it has to go to a public hearing. And I know that I just sent this down today, 'cause I was waiting for clarification that we could get it on the calendar for Planning Board. But take a look at it, we can answer more questions. It is very detailed. Again, I took, you know, the model system from, you know, New York State as to what they recommend for their regulations. I tailored it ever so slightly to fit the City of Utica specifically. Um, but, um, you know, review it, and then if you have specific questions, I know one of the things I talked about with fire, um, and urban, um, was adding a, um, you know, distance from any residential uses, um, between the structures to prevent any fires. Um, so fire is still weighing in on, on the distance that should be between them.