Marques Phillips · Utica Common Council Records

Activity over time

January 21, 2026 June 17, 2026

Talks most about

law 18 tree 14 court 14 neighborhood 14 work 13 trees 12 house 12 officers 11 neighbor 10 legislation 9 neighbors 9 properties 9 problem 9 business 9

Meeting appearances

The bar under each meeting marks when they spoke during it.

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

June 17, 2026 10m 15s speaking 5% of speaking time 49 remarks

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

February 4, 2026 19m 1s speaking 16% of speaking time 76 remarks

Common Council Meeting January 21st, 2026

January 21, 2026 6m 56s speaking 7% of speaking time 16 remarks

Frequent dialogue partners

Immediate transcript handoffs around Marques Phillips: who speaks next, and who Marques Phillips answers.

They reply Marques Phillips replies

Samantha Colosimo-Testa 73 handoffs · 2 meetings 35 / 38 balanced Jack LoMedico 42 handoffs · 3 meetings 21 / 21 balanced Joseph Betrus, Jr. 37 handoffs · 3 meetings 18 / 19 balanced Frank Carcone 16 handoffs · 2 meetings 9 / 7 balanced Stephanie DiGiorgio 14 handoffs · 2 meetings 9 / 5 Stephanie DiGiorgio replies more Venice Ervin 11 handoffs · 1 meeting 5 / 6 balanced Rocco Giruzzi 9 handoffs · 3 meetings 4 / 5 balanced Katie Aiello 8 handoffs · 3 meetings 4 / 4 balanced

What they said

Marques Phillips 9:18

Marques Phillips 9:56

Yeah, they have— it varies from year to year, but they have money to contract the third party.

Marques Phillips 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.

Marques Phillips 15:09

Yeah, so—

Marques Phillips 15:19

Okay, pleasure.

Marques Phillips 15:37

So, but the distinction there is like, so, we have specific laws for abatement that are really regularly practiced in a lot of municipalities across the country. And because of ticks, grass is one of them. Grass is not there because of the cosmetic reasons. Grass is there because of the spread and infestation infestation of ticks. It's the same thing with unsanitary conditions, just like garbage, um, because it brings rodents that can carry diseases and things like that. So there's specific laws that are, that are trial tested that allow us to go on people's properties for reasons. Now, a tree in danger might be one of them. My fear would be, if I got to sign off on that as codes commissioner, is that I don't know how to determine which tree is more dangerous the other one. And I'm afraid that—

Marques Phillips 16:23

Yeah, yeah, but here's the thing. With the arborist, we're putting a lot of trust in that one person. Because what happens with the arborist is, if he says a tree is not dangerous and that same tree falls the next day, we cleared that tree. Right? So you got to trust that arborist that every tree he says isn't dangerous isn't dangerous. Now, he probably, probably, my guess is, errs on the side of saying take the tree down. Which— but then he's cutting people's trees that might not necessarily need to be cut. So, and they're charging them because this is thousands and thousands of dollars. It's not like it's a small charge where we cut your grass, it's $200.

Marques Phillips 17:01

You'd have to cut branches off it, the part he said that needs to be cut, right? Depending on what he thinks.

Marques Phillips 17:22

If a log falls on the house when we're there cutting it, now we're liable.

Marques Phillips 17:27

And we have the right of way. We own the easement for the aprons of the road in between the sidewalk and the curb. Those trees are our trees.

Marques Phillips 17:46

Yeah, but if we're on private property, it's nothing like you or I taking down our own trees. The whole city is going to ask us to take their trees down.

Marques Phillips 18:19

Yeah, but anybody who buys a house that has a tree on it will— No, but this is— this is— there's two concerns there. And look, this is a real issue, and I'm glad you brought it up because we get calls about trees all the time. And right now To be honest with you, it's a relief for my office to say there are no laws that govern the trees. We govern the buildings, right? But the trees are— the problem that you have with that is we can't impose automatic fines. So it would have to go to court.

Marques Phillips 18:51

Well, that's an abatement. That's an action that we charge them for. That's not a fine. It's not a civil penalty.

Marques Phillips 18:58

Yeah, but it's not a civil penalty. It's not a charge as a penalty. It's a charge for the labor that we provided.

Marques Phillips 19:39

Right. He's saying though, can't we just put a fine on them? And I'm saying you have to take somebody to court and adjudicate it to put a fine on them.

Marques Phillips 19:46

You can't just automatically assess a fine.

Marques Phillips 19:48

That's not a fine with abatement. And so that's one concern. The other concern is trees always end up in civil court for these same reasons. Whose property is it? Whose responsibility is it? If the tree is hanging over into somebody else's responsibility, like, I don't—

Marques Phillips 23:13

So that's it.

Marques Phillips 23:31

And the more we expand that definition of hazard, the more I worry, because like, I get calls about trees.

Marques Phillips 23:37

I get calls about bicycles. We're going to knock bicycles off of people's houses. They're an emergency, right? So I mean, like, what's an imminent danger? That's the biggest part of my job and the fire marshal's job is What's in imminent danger?

Marques Phillips 24:01

No, they do a lot.

Marques Phillips 24:03

No, no, it's been about, he said about 4 years.

Marques Phillips 24:07

No, they got, they have a budget to contract it out.

Marques Phillips 24:14

The city? Well, the city, but they bill the homeowners tax.

Marques Phillips 26:59

And we gotta have a, so what they told me is there has to be a reasonable expectation that we can fix the problem. And if it's gonna be out of the budget, then it's not a reasonable expectation, it's not in the scope of government. Once we start doing it, we start expanding that scope of what the expectations are. So let me give you an example. This happens twice a year probably in the city where there's backed up sewer lines in people's houses that push human waste onto other people's properties. We ticket them, we bring them to court. Is that a public health hazard that we have to remedy? You know what I mean?

Marques Phillips 27:35

how dangerous do you want it? Like, where do you go, right? And so right now, our scope, me being the Codes Commissioner, house is unsecure, there's people getting in it, we have a lot of fires, we can board it. Grass is too high, got a tick problem, we can cut it. Garbage outside, rodents infestations, we can do it. Those are the only 3 cases in which we do it now. If we start doing that, what about a porch that's hanging? Now can we fix the porch, right? Like, you're getting into scope creep.

Marques Phillips 28:50

And I don't want to dunk on Joe. It's not— it's not—

Marques Phillips 29:11

Just because they do it don't mean it's legal.

Marques Phillips 29:20

And I worry about the property lines. Like, we deal with this with fences all the time, and I just— I use these council meetings to give you an opportunity to see what I deal with every day. Somebody builds a fence, they say, look, the fence is on my property. What I tell them is Codes Commissioner is I have no idea whether it's on your property or not. All I know is, is the fence properly constructed? If it's properly constructed, they had a permit, then you deal with the property issues in civil court.

Marques Phillips 29:54

So I was told they were estimates because of the age of of the survey that they're based on. So we're— But we can still find—

Marques Phillips 30:34

What do you do? Can we see it from the city?

Marques Phillips 30:36

Can we see it from the street?

Marques Phillips 30:39

If we can't see it from the street, will one of the neighbors let us use our yard or will the homeowner give us access?

Marques Phillips 30:44

We see it, we determine the deck is a danger.

Marques Phillips 30:48

If the back deck is unsafe, you're talking single-family home or rental, they're two different things. So if it's a single-family home, we usually send a notice to the homeowner, tell them that we think your back deck is unsafe. If you don't fix it, we'll bring you to court. If it's a rental property, there's people involved, we have to determine if not having access to that back deck makes their house unlivable. Because there are situations where you need two exits to get out of a house.

Marques Phillips 31:21

And then we would post the house unsafe to be occupied. But either way, the ultimate remedy is a ticket to city court. And the problems that we have with tickets with city court are so much different than I think everybody else has. It's, you know, we hear about lenient judges and out-of-state landlords. Most of the problems we have in city court are people who show up to city court and say, "I don't have the money to fix the problem you named." You told me I gotta fix my back deck. My back deck, I got 3 estimates. The lowest one is $22,000. I got $400 in my bank. So the court finds them $200 and says, "God love you." Now you got $200.

Marques Phillips 32:00

that's what I'm telling you.

Marques Phillips 32:29

Yeah, that's, but those are the judges. That's 90% we go to court in, in a single-family homeowner situation. The landlord situation, right, is different. But if you own your house and we ticketed you for problems in your house, usually the judge tries to get you to fix it.

Marques Phillips 35:28

And don't forget, Rome had a tornado that they kind of had a trauma response to.

Marques Phillips 40:53

And just the way that we enforce it, very, very hard because they get like— they get like 2 for free. We don't work on nights and weekends. We don't work on holidays, right? And so we got to determine, is it their third garage sale? Is it the thing? So what we do with garage sales right now is if they become a neighborhood nuisance, nuisance. We have the officer document them over a period of time, and we charge them with the zoning violation of using a residential property for commercial purposes. If they're having a garage sale from a commercial property, it's almost impossible. So right now, we mostly prosecute garage sales out of zoning ordinances.

Marques Phillips 18:03

Right, yeah, please. When you guys amended the zoning ordinance, you took out what was on the books so that there's nothing on the books. There's something specific for school buses now that came since, but there's nothing on the books now for what vehicles aren't allowed in the city. Um, it used to be a weight limit, which was tough for us as codes because we don't have the ability like police to look up DMV records. So like, we would kind of guess, well, that looks like it's over the weight. But we don't have the weight of that vehicle unless we have its VIN number. So, you know, we go up there trying to get the VIN number or whatever, but some of them are parked in the back. So this was better because it just— and you guys can amend it all you want. It just explicitly bans the actual vehicles we don't want. And there's— there were some edge cases like a food truck, right? Like that's an edge case. So food trucks aren't in there. But, you know, me and Joe worked on which exactly he wanted to see. So box trucks are in there, buses are in there. So huge food trucks wouldn't be in there, but like a van would be fine with a window in it, you know? So it's really up to the council what they don't want to see in neighborhoods. We get it mostly, I'll be honest, like we have some yards, like Joe and Joe have yards, but we get it a lot of times with the semis, when people run them in the driveway to warm them up, the smoke bothers the neighbors. The exhaust noise. Yeah, the noise in the exhaust. And some of the truck drivers leave at night, so that's, that's where we'll hear about it in code. But, um, yeah, it's up to you guys.

Marques Phillips 19:41

So the word—

Marques Phillips 19:58

It depends on if you want to. So, so the word that we use in this legislation very intentionally was keeping. So it's not parking, it's not storing, it's keeping. If you keep the truck on your property, then it's illegal. So if if we have more than one instance of idling, I would say that was keeping. If we get one call about idling at a property and we only see it once, probably say, okay, that's something that's not repetitive, right?

Marques Phillips 21:14

And I mean, we got another one on LeMond Place where the guy has a tow truck, parks his tow truck there sometimes, sometimes he doesn't. Um, he has a commercial business to tow cars. It's just easier for him to sometimes drive straight home after the tow. The tow truck is loud, it bothers his neighbors. Right now there's nothing that would stop that and tell him, no, you got to park there and switch cars.

Marques Phillips 22:08

Councilwoman Colosimo-Testa is talking about what's currently on the books. It's currently against the law to run a commercial business from your home just because the vehicles are there. It's been hard for us to prove in court that they're running the business from their home.

Marques Phillips 22:25

Selling cars is illegal, but I got to prove that they're selling them. The only way that we've been able to successfully prove it—

Marques Phillips 22:31

so we set up rules on how to enforce it—

Marques Phillips 22:33

the only way we've been able to prove somebody is running a business from their home is if they basically, if they advertise or have signage. If the numbers aren't written on the cars, they don't have for sale signs, and the cars aren't advertised online, it's really hard for us to Unless we find somebody they sold it to or something, which never happens. So sales, we look for signs and advertisements. So if you want to stop a commercial activity in a business, those are the two things we tell the neighbors we need. They have to advertise it or they have to have a sign there. Otherwise, I don't— I can't prove it. Like, everybody claims their neighbor has a hair salon because women are walking in and out. I don't know that.

Marques Phillips 23:12

I don't, I don't know.

Marques Phillips 23:13

And again, that's a good example because there's certain areas where people have came in front of the zoning and got permit to do that. Yeah, you can have a residence.

Marques Phillips 24:11

you know, the city, like, if, if, if you got a truck on Pelletary Avenue, two houses, and your neighbor doesn't care, I'm not gonna break your chops, right? Like, um, it's, it's situation by situation. My officers get worried about that every time they see these laws. So every time you guys propose a law, I bring it to my department, we talk about it. Just ask me, what do you guys think? This is the law we came up with. But these laws, they're, they're just worried about more on our plate, additional duties. Like, okay, now I gotta look for this, now I gotta look for this. And, um, you know what I told them is what I'll tell you guys. I don't look at these things as obligations. I look at them as tools. It's not something that we're going to go around the city scouring for huge vehicles, but if there's something particularly disruptive to a neighborhood or that doesn't look like it's in concert with the neighborhood, then we'll sign. Well, they'd be going there anyways, but in the past they'd be able go, they go there and they say there's nothing they can do about it. Now they can do it, right?

Marques Phillips 25:05

Yes, generally that's how I plan on enforcing it. Um, you know, but, but when I say that, there's, there's no— it's the law. We're going to tell our officers to follow the law. Our officers do patrols every day, so if they see a vehicle, they send a guy a notice. But I, I would assume that most of these are going to be complaint-based because You don't want to inhibit— if it's not bothering anybody, why stir a pot if it's not possible? Yeah, you don't want to inhibit somebody's ability to make a living, right? If somebody drives a tow truck or somebody has a food truck, I'm not there unless the thing is disruptive to the neighborhood.

Marques Phillips 26:06

Yeah, all right, any questions about codes?

Marques Phillips 26:30

Um, the only thing that I would say is that like, um, over time you find those things because people are used to them. And they're not there, and I think we've addressed the 3 major ones that we found. You had a particular concern about the distances between convenience stores. We added that language explicitly. Now, this zoning code replaced that with a licensing process. Now we got both. You have this, and then the other thing that had came up that the other zone amended was, remember we had the big chicken controversy, right?

Marques Phillips 27:17

But I mean, obviously, whatever. No, no, it's not. No fowls or chickens.

Marques Phillips 27:39

Correct. If you got—

Marques Phillips 27:57

So it seems like that. But so I got one officer— my codes coordinator is in charge of all the corner stores in Utica. He licenses each one, and he's supposed to do periodic inspections to make sure they're in compliance. If we get a complaint, we'll respond to it. It seems like there's a lot of stuff in their windows, and, and I think maybe I've seen some. I'm not doubting what you say. The rule is it's supposed to be 50% of the window coverage, so they can put signs in their windows up to 50% of the window coverage. And, um, see-through stuff doesn't count. So a lot of those windows are like wrapped like your car would be, like a tint almost, and light goes through it. So that's not an illegal sign. An illegal sign is if I put a big Newport poster up on the— you know what I mean? So it's, it's more nuanced than you think, um, but we'll definitely look at them if you got particular ones. You got— I got one officer I send them, they'll make sure that their, their windows aren't covered. And we've made people pull stuff out of their windows before, um, widen their aisles. The convenience stores are frustrating to me, and you know, I'm the one that advocated for a licensing policy. Um, I, the convenience stores are a pain in the tail.

Marques Phillips 29:08

Uh, like in patrol, like 6.

Marques Phillips 29:23

Yeah, so when I meant to say that I had one person, it's not only one person that regulates the code in the city when it comes to convenience stores. It's just I have somebody whose job it is to check on them, right? So if they see something in patrol that they think is wrong, they have every right to treat it like everybody else. Plus we do every 3-year fire inspections on them, um, which our whole department— so convenience stores are supposed to get visited once every 2 years for be in a convenience store, once every 3 years as a fire inspection, and in the daily neighborhood patrols.

Marques Phillips 30:42

Our new software is supposed to be better for that, so I hope that—

Marques Phillips 30:45

I did hear your own appointment. That's one of the reasons we got the new software. Um, holes that I've seen in the Codes Department that I've, I've expressed in the past, um, and I've, I've had these concerns forever. I don't know if they're willing to say, but the, the, the, the 3 concerns I've had is a lot of people know when we work. And they do construction after we work, especially in scenic and historic districts, because it's more expensive to do scenic and historic districts. So I've asked for overtime to do on weekends. I've never been given overtime. It's because they're union contracts. I have to pay them overtime. I can't just have them do it. And it's frustrating to me because I get calls from— like, there's in every scenic and historic district, there's like 2 or 3 neighbors that really believe in that stuff. And they call and he put up new siding, he put up a new porch. And we weren't there to stop it. And, um, so the weekends are tough. The other thing that's tough is, um, the, the ride-alongs, like, um, with DPW. I'd like to do that, but then I would need overtime to do that, because if somebody improperly disposes of green waste, DPW can't write them a ticket. So they're just picking up their waste if Codes didn't catch it earlier in the day. Um, so that's a lot of people don't flag is put out after 4:30. And so that's— having guys be able to work those shifts, plus they work better sometimes when they're on their own, it's peaceful, it's office, because I think what a lot of council people or administrative people that I talk to don't understand is how many appointments they have every day. My codes officers will have between 5 and 8 appointments per day. So you want, like, everybody on the council and the mayor and and administrative people always want us to patrol the neighborhoods, but like those appointments are their first obligation. So a guy might have to write up 8 cases and be in 8 different apartments in a day, and then you wanted them to catch the neighbor that put their garbage out improperly on top of that, and, and they always don't have that extra time, you know. Um, so those things. And, uh, the other thing is just the volumes that are coming down. I mean, We're going to amend the vacant housing registry and, you know, right now we're one secretary short in the department and we're going to amend the vacant housing registry. They're looking at a permit for chickens. They're looking at other legislation that could require permits and patrols. And then after a while it's kind of like, you know, you send me tools like this, okay, they're doing the same thing, they can react to it. You send me a new permit or legislation, I got to figure out who's going to do that.

Marques Phillips 33:49

But, um, like, the mayor has specific things he wants to see that I'm part of the administration and, um, I think are good ideas. And I think legal's working on that legislation, so we'll see how they all turn out. They've been in contact with me too. Um, the concern that I have about vacant housing is, um, first of all, keeping the physical registry Right, so we're anticipating 200-300 properties on there, keeping it up to date, making sure you have an owner, making sure you have a person. That's a big administrative task for a secretary that's already kind of stretched. She's taking all these phone calls, all these appointments, she's scheduling all our regular inspections, she's doing all our FOIL requests, she's doing all our building permits, and then she's got to keep track of these 300 properties with the codes officers. So that's a tough one. The other one is identifying them as vacant. Requires a lot of homework. So you got to make sure that either the utilities are off— there's like 5 things that qualify. You get a neighbor deposition, the utilities are off, codes officer observation from in the neighborhood, the windows are boarded. So you got to confirm that it's vacant. Then you have to do the follow-up of getting a reuse plan in place with the owner. And so somebody's got to approve that plan, has got to review that plan, has got to monitor that plan. This, if you guys pass this, I think it'll really help with the problem. I, I've grown on this law when it was first proposed, but then after I spoke to people, um, well, there was a lot of things wrong with the law. It should never be original.

Marques Phillips 35:36

that's what you're talking about.

Marques Phillips 35:37

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

Marques Phillips 35:43

it's been years. The only, the only issue I had with that was having a property manager is supposed to be, um, and having his displayed in the apartment, in the apartment. So having a property manager supposed to be there now, if we have it displayed on the apartment, it's cool. The only thing that I kind of worry about, but not really, I think it's a good law, um, it's just that it's going to change over time and it's gonna be— so, so the fire department inspects those buildings, and so it's going to be the task on them to call that number when they do their inspections is make sure it's the same guy, you know, because I don't want the guys to have the wrong information and calling the wrong numbers. So as long as they keep it current and we have a way to keep in touch and make sure it hasn't changed.

Marques Phillips 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.

Marques Phillips 37:28

It's corporate. I mean, really, the LLC things and every codes commissioner across New York State will tell you this. It's just, it's a limited liability corporation. They design LLCs. To limit themselves from liability. And it's hard for us to prosecute people as officers of LLCs. And having LLCs is— I guess it's an American constitutional right that we can't do anything about.

Marques Phillips 38:14

Yeah, and yeah, and I know you guys, we have to prove, we have to prove to a judge not only that the person's a member of the LLC, that they're the officer responsible for the maintenance of that apartment inside the LLC, right? Right. So you might be a vice president of an LLC, but you're not responsible for that particular land portfolio. Coach brings you to court and you say, that's not my responsibility, and there's nothing we can do about it. It's the most frustrating thing.

Marques Phillips 38:40

yeah, some cities— I've looked it up, I've tried to get them, and I don't know the answer. Some cities have charged a corporate tax, but now you're hurting businesses on top of— because LLC is a corporation, right? So they'll charge a higher tax rate for corporations to disincentivize people to register as LLCs. But again, now you're going to hurt somebody that has a commercial business. And so maybe it's a residential LLC tax. I don't know if that's legal.

Marques Phillips 39:11

Yeah, I mean, from what I understand, um, there's just no billboard signs allowed. So that's a council thing. The ones that are there are grandfathered in, and we, we get sign permits.

Marques Phillips 39:22

If they want to put up a sign, I tell them no.

Marques Phillips 39:26

No, no, we don't now because there's a moratorium.

Marques Phillips 39:28

We always did.

Marques Phillips 39:29

Billboards before were legal in the city, and this would make them illegal for additional billboards. The current ones that exist can stay there. I don't know how that goes for repairs. I think repairs should probably still be okay, but—

Marques Phillips 39:48

As far as I know, it's always been in perpetuity. I've never— until this came up I've never known of any limits on billboards at all.

Marques Phillips 40:18

But you guys look at the policy implementation. I don't care, right? I look at the codes implications. It's easier for me not to let anybody build the sign.

Marques Phillips 42:33

No, I'm not.

Marques Phillips 42:36

I'm here all the time.

Marques Phillips 43:54

I mean, it's—

Marques Phillips 49:28

Okay, Joe, 5:30 good For a special meeting?

Marques Phillips 22:17

So we went for this grant, we have the grant.

Marques Phillips 22:26

So the grant is for $2.25 million.

Marques Phillips 22:36

So we could be short $250,000.

Marques Phillips 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.

Marques Phillips 29:50

Yeah, that's, that's, that's— in the districts named in this legislation, they wouldn't be able to do that. They haven't been able to do that historically. What's supposed to happen theoretically with those vehicles is if you drive a truck, you pay for a place to park it in an industrial zone and the parking lots off of near the Thruway or on Broad Street. You pay for a parking space to park your truck. You can't drive your truck through a small city street and run it and park it in your driveway. That's what the law used to be. This law would make that illegal again in residential neighborhoods. That's up to you, you know what I mean? I don't care whether the truck's there or not. It wasn't there— if it's a day, a day here and there, it's okay. It's not a permanent thing where they can stay there. The word we used is keeping. You can't keep a truck on residential property, so it depends on what you mean by keeping.

Marques Phillips 30:47

We probably won't do anything, but if it's something our codes officer sees regularly literally every day in their route. To prove that they're keeping it there, they're going to have to see it more than one day in a row.

Marques Phillips 31:19

We dealt with that. And in fairness, the guy, you know, there was, there was a guy that came here during public comment. That was his complaint about his neighbor. He has a semi-truck. They live in East Utica. The neighbor runs the truck in the winter to warm up the engine. The smoke goes all over the neighborhood. The truck is really loud. And the guy, he's a truck driver, he leaves late at night, so the truck wakes him up. So I mean, it's up to you guys what you want to do. Um, But that's how we can enforce the law.

Marques Phillips 32:14

I don't think you have—

Marques Phillips 32:29

Okay.

Marques Phillips 32:36

but yeah, I don't think— and we'll check the zoning map if it'll make a difference to you. Um, you got GIS up?

Marques Phillips 33:57

All right, yeah, two things I would like to just point out quickly for you guys. So when I talked to my, my officers and Councilman Betrus about this legislation, um, it's not like the— I don't think it's the type of legislation, but look, I could— there could be a different codes commissioner tomorrow, the mayor could give a different— so regular grains of salt, he could give a different directive. I don't think it's the type of thing where we're going around looking for trucks and driveways. I think it's the type where we're responding to complaints, and then when you get a complaint, you deal with people. That's number one. But number two is you can also write an ordinance, um, the same way you can for an 8-foot fence, like the Councilperson just said, and give exceptions in your neighborhood. But then it's on the council to do that, right? So if somebody calls and says, I don't like that codes cited me for my truck, this is how I make my living, and it's in your district and you feel like it's within the character of your district, you can bring it to the council to try to— that's the main part that we put in there.

Marques Phillips 39:57

Yeah, so just quickly, um, it's, it's one of those edge case problems that Councilman Betrus is on the phone a lot. Those of you guys in the audience that don't know, most of us are on the phone a lot with Councilman Betrus complaining about something. Um, but that was a joke.

Marques Phillips 40:23

Yeah, I wasn't— I wasn't— no. Yeah, but anyway, um, so there's, there's houses with a lot of cars got the same problem. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of— there's houses with a lot of stuff in the front yard, right? And, and right now the code is limited to things that are neighborhood health risks.

Marques Phillips 40:42

The— right now they're limited to neighborhood health risks, so our codes officers can't cite stuff that aren't a risk to help the neighborhood. But so aesthetically, we can send officers.

Marques Phillips 40:56

Yeah, we can cite.

Marques Phillips 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.