[Music]
so
[Music]
just just let them know that we're
waiting on a council member
patrick and
to be in person so we'll start in about
um
seven eight minutes
okay
hi
everybody chad i'm on i'm in jack's
office on her line
and
it looks like the video is not
sustainable with this connection so
sorry about that
hello
um
[Music]
so
[Music]
i'm called to order for tonight monday
august 16th 2021.
miss michael can you please complete the
roll call
for
here
president
your audio is not working properly we
have one resolution for a roll call this
evening if the clerk can please read
item number one
annual action plan budget and
authorizing the mayor to enter the
contract for the better community
neighborhoods incorporated to provide
256 000 of home funds for the elmar
gardens project
i need i need a motion to put this on
the floor
so i can
i any discussion
go ahead please
so um i'm glad you're here tonight to be
able to move forward
and i also want to
just
to thank i'm going to say chad kilmore
specifically
and making sure that the community voice
was included in what was being
considered here and making sure there
was also an understanding of the benefit
of doing this particular project was
that it would not just be for this
project but to benefit a larger part of
this particular neighborhood and also
going forward how um the leverage will
fund that and leverage or do other
projects within the city and
specifically um my history was the nrsa
area so um i just want to say thank you
to vcni and also the um
chair for
chad gilbert and for mr rutabara as well
and other council members that we were
able to work through this to come to
agreement to
understand the concerns that we're being
uh that were being brought forward and
also to be awarded those concerns that
so that together um as a community
[Music]
thank you any other discussion
that's michael please complete the roll
call
yes
[Music]
yes
the item is passed
five to nil
we have a motion to adjourn
second
all in favor we are adjourned
and we'll move into our regular city
council meeting from monday august the
16th and we'll go straight into health
and recreation miss
um patrick asked mr daley to come this
evening to give us an update on how the
golf course has been going for the
summer um
good evening everybody it's nice to see
all of you
um
i decided to i think would be a good
idea to bring our core superintendent
mike sesney down with us
as i'm not sure that
if you haven't met him
this is an opportunity for you to meet
him
i give you updates on the course often
but
to be quite honest with you mike is
really
the main reason why that golf course is
where it is
his countless efforts getting that
course in the condition that it is in
you know he deserves to be recognized
and
he has a few things that he wanted to
speak of in addition to what i have
and i thought it would be of interest to
you to hear what he has to say
so moving forward you know the state of
the golf industry
uh is very healthy it's incredible what
the pandemic has done for the golf
industry because there was talk for a
long period of time that you know
numbers were down nationally and so
forth
but i can tell you that the national
golf foundation which creates all
statistical categories for players in
golf
that's men women juniors and so forth
those numbers are considerably up so for
an example
in 2020
overall play was up two percent
which is the biggest net increase in 17
years
and the mayor and i often talk about
this that's the tiger woods effect when
he came into the scene
golf boomed and then it kind of lulled
now it came up again
um
people asked why the increase well last
year golf was one of the few things that
you could actually do outside golfers
practice you know social distancing
aspects
and we were able to create a nice safe
haven for golfers when they came to our
facility and it showed by the numbers
that we were able to create last year
another impressive statistical category
increase was in the women's end of
things
there's a 20 20 percent increase in
overall women's statistics
probably the largest of all of them when
you look at juniors saw 3.1 million golfers in 2020
30 percent of those were girls
as compared to 15 percent in the year
2000
and over 25 percent of the juniors that
are playing are minority base as opposed
to six percent in 2000 so big jumps and
categories all across and that's
especially important because that's the
future of the game
one out of every three americans either
played golf or watched the sport or read
about it in 2020 that's a considerable
amount
so when you look at all those numbers it
shows that the golf industry as a whole
is healthy our revenues this year are up
13.25 up from 2020.
last year we missed
i would say what like a good month and a
half
of revenue
opportunity
we were open then we were closed and
then when we reopened there was a lot of
you know unknowns
could you ride in carts and when we
finally did you can only want to run
rider per person so you're losing out of
revenue streams all over the place
you know in hindsight in 2020 from
looking back in 2020 yeah we probably
could have done all those things but at
the time we didn't know that
so obviously we took all the necessary
safety precautions
and so this year we're seeing our
revenues increase more than that and
last year we did almost 1.1 million
dollars in total net revenue so we're up
considerably that this year which is
going to help moving forward as we
continue to meet our uh expensive
categories and our revenue streams
and of course now the mask mandate is in
effect after we received notice last
week
uh we incorporated the mass growth last
monday so now we've started
and it has been pretty well received i
mean there's going to be the usual
complaints of players but for the most
part everybody has been compliant
and things are working well on that end
do you have any questions for me i guess
is the next step
in terms of everything that i have just
mentioned
so um how are the tournaments um are you
back on track with the tournaments yes we are yeah um we've had we just
actually just had our schenectady high
school football team fundraiser okay
they had their largest group ever they
had 120 players pass through which is a
very large number
uh we have run our schenectady classics
for the championships for both the men
the women and the senior divisions those
all saw big increases in numbers
and then september is going to be a big
month for tournaments as well
many of the events that were canceled
last year are now back on the schedule
so
tournaments are definitely uh high on
the list all right good thank you
um yes i was wondering are you doing
tournaments
we ran a children's camp in uh
it was end of june early july we did two
weeks yep and then we actually do a we host an event that's done to the
northeastern new york pga
golf tour
and that's kind of an annual thing that
we do every year they have a different
venue that they play each week
and i can't remember the exact day it
was in july
and it was one of the regular stops when
they come every year and that was over
100 children
yeah
big numbers it was very impressive
thank you
so can you tell us a little bit about
the actual facilities and of course
anything that needs means work
yeah
so as i i've mentioned in the past there
obviously are some capital improvements
that we need to address coming soon
which is another reason why i brought mr
sesney with me
some of the carp paths are going to be
need to be addressed one of the issues
that we face when it rains considerably
and we've gotten a lot of those rain
days
is that the course gets so saturated
that we aren't allowed to allow
golf carts on the ground
they can do considerable damage so we're
rewarded to walking only and when you do
that
not only do you miss the cart revenue
but you do miss out on green speed
revenue as well so it's kind of a double
hit
and so
we were
looking forward to do more of a routine
maintenance on the cart pads but more of
preventative maintenance down the road
where we can have a continuous car path
around the entire golf course
and that way we can police the players
better whether they just cart path only
many facilities implore that uh
that type of uh
i think we're working for they they
employ that practice okay so let's say
saratoga national they get a rainstorm
goes through their car path only they
have a continuous card path that goes
all the way around the course they can
still let their cards go on the facility
and players can still play the golf
course whereas ours
they're off we lose the revenue stream
and when that also happens league play
doesn't go out so it's kind of a it's
kind of a big hit when we have to
reschedule
league plays miss out on their week and
then we have to reschedule them and just
keep pushing them back
so yeah it can be a nuisance but at the
same time it can be fixed and we do have
a lot of already in place paved car path
there
and i want to say it's over nine holes
that's in place now some of them need to
be addressed but that would be something
that'd be worth the efforts to look into
saving us money down the road
um and then of course the big ticket
item would be a new irrigation system
it's aging
and uh
mike i'll let you kind of
take that direction if you'd like
good evening everyone
mike says i'm actually the president of
northeast turf and my company actually
has the maintenance contract for the
golf course but i'm actually the acting
superintendent to the golf course
and
i wrote down some notes for the
irrigation system of
our presence system is that okay
our present irrigation system is between
40 and 45 years old
the average lifespan for an irrigation
system is roughly 20 to 25 years old so
it's yeah it's definitely uh it's time
to replace it
it's a fully manual irrigation system
that has to be turned on manually by by
the workers
an automatic system has electric
solenoids that are activated by a low
voltage
current that is sent from a central
computer
that's what we're trying for is a fully
automatic irrigation system and our pump
house is actually
needs to be replaced too it's a 400
gallon per minute pump station
and our new pump station that we had
designed would be between 1000 and 1200
gallons per minute
this would increase the capacity by two
to three times
and the new pumps
would be a variable frequency drive
which are more electrically efficient
than the present pumps that we
have with a present system annual system
it takes approximately 18 hours to water
the entire golf course the new
irrigation system would accomplish this
in six to eight hours
the new system there will be
improved sprinkler head coverage and
more flexibility with water again
fertilizers and other products that need
to be watered in
and there'll also be enhanced
turf quality and improved playing
conditions for the new automatic system
and i guess the
final part is the cost our last
estimate we had was between 2.5 and 3
million for a new irrigation system
and 10 years ago we had actually an
estimate of 1.5 million so
i guess the longer we wait the more
expensive it's going to be
and also like actually
i just wanted to show everybody
a fairway coupler that that we were
using in the fairways
so this coupler right here will be
plugged into a valve in the fairway
there's actually 138 of these airways so
we can only
pass the pump capacitor we have now
we've only got seven of these at a time
and uh how many i'm sorry i can only run
seven at a time
these are actually in the in the
fairways mounted
in the ground so this would open up plug
that in like that and turn it so each
day a guy has to go out in the morning
and turn this coupler on
and like i said we run up let them run
for half an hour so there's seven they
can run at a time so they'll pull those
seven out go to the next seven you say
there's 138 of these so it's all for
it's labor intensive just trying to
water fairways
the new fairway head is
much more efficient it has electric
solenoids so i said this would be wired
to a low voltage system and this would
this head would
automatically come on at night there
would be an
interruption during the day as far as
ordering the golf course
so it's much more efficient it would
have better coverage coverage than the older style sprinkler the older
style sprinkler was actually uh
manufactured implemented in 1930s and
that was actually phased out in the late
60s early 70s so i don't i don't even
know of any other gal of course in the
area that she uses them
but everybody has an automatic system
that i know in the area
i guess it's time but i know it's an
expensive a big expensive place but
likes that the price keeps going up
every year plus materials are going up
so how many of those do you need
um
these i think they i think the new
system is going to have between a
thousand and twelve hundred
138 is just just for the fairways so we
have four to five sprinklers on each
green
in each green complex and ht complex
so there's probably three three or four
hundred on the course now but
i said it's not a uh the coverage is
very poor now with this whole system
this new system would be much more
efficient
and actually had
she had a
evaluation of the irrigation system done
in 2010 it was actually by a certified
irrigation designer he's over in boston
it's brian van casey
and
it's maybe a 15-page report but he
pretty much just
spelled out all the issues with this
system and he basically said it's time
for his system to
2010
so
we'll have to review that
but then you know yeah new systems will
be
much more evenly water distribution
and he can actually that the apps that
you can get on your phone you can
actually program away from your cell
phone
which would be incredible
it's just technology now is so much
better yeah i mean things have gotten
more expensive but the technology is
far superior
so by putting in the new irrigation
system without help with the golf cart
or that is something totally different
that's totally different yeah and today
yes do you have a price tag on it
no on the golf cart pads now
yeah and you know we're not even looking
to do
blacktop card pads we could do you know
gravel
carpets just something to have a
continuous pet yeah the blacktop would
look nice
but
you know millings
would would suffice just a continuous
path all the way around the golf course
something that would
they would be forced to stay there
rather than driving off so again
you know how players are not everybody
follows the rules
but
a little bit easier it's easier to do
that if you see something off the path
and with the gps system on top of that
you can program it so the cards when
they go off the path it notifies the
player to get back on the path
if it's not if i mean if it's not
difficult can you just share an
estimated cost
for a new car path yeah
well as mike said what do we think about
500 yeah
i'm not sure if that's something that we
could do
in-house or we would have to branch that
and outsource it but
okay
any other questions
i appreciate you both coming i mean it's
obviously i'm not a golfer but
everywhere i go people talk about our
golf course being
equal to if not better than the private
country club golf courses around and
obviously it's a
great revenue stream
for the city of cement and so i
appreciate it
to keep it being such a gem for us
appreciate it yeah thank you
pleasure to work there that's for sure
thank you for all you're doing here you
and your staff thank you very much all right thank you have a good night
[Music]
so the first item
is reselling requests like shop for
parks like 10 20 mcconnell street
joining us
good evening everyone um this request is
in regard to the reasonable request for
a parcel that's part of the store checks
redevelopment
it's from a c2 right from an r1 single
family residential to c2 mixed-use
commercial um the city council referred
this to the planning commission for
recommendation which will take place at
their next meeting on august 18th
the recommendation tonight is for the
city council to call for a public
hearing
regarding this request to change the
zoning
any questions
um
accepting funding for a trade inventory
and community forest management plan
the city of schenectady was awarded an
urban forestry grant from the department
of environmental conservation this is to
do a city-wide tree inventory and
community forest management plan um
so we are just asking for the acceptance
of these funds and for the mayor to
enter any necessary agreements to carry
out
the purposes of the grant
[Music]
sixty one thousand two hundred dollars
any questions
[Music]
okay mr
wallace little bit difficulty uh
hearings guys at the table so uh
so this is the
annual gaming program a little later
than normal
to various amount of
difference reasons
year that we're trying to call out in
our backup is that this is for
chips only
as you are probably aware previous
program we have three funding sources we
have chips we have local we have
cdbg um due to
surplus assist money do not have a
program to focus we decide to do a chips
program uh i'm working on a cbd program
and we will not have a local program as
we didn't really bond a ton of money
because we had it so we went forward
with a
more visited
approach so this is the chips program
this is the bigger program roughly three
million dollar program
and it's going to start
after wednesday and we are going to run
it probably right through next year into
june
um
contractors like that because it gives
them some some work to go with
some of our work we're hoping to follow
[Music]
any
questions
so is this going to run through the
winter are they paving in the winter now
or is it just the money's going no
we will have a shutdown immediately
right around november 15th
and then we'll pick them back up in
thank you
call the order finance committee the
first item on the agenda is to discuss
the parka public meetings
i'll let you support you go first
thank you
so i asked mr ferrari if he would today
come may explain um the amount of money
that we're getting how much we
spent so far
what can and cannot see
this cannot be used for and
so
sir
mr
thank you
council president mr porterfield mayor
uh
mr portfield uh
requested a few questions here and i got
some answers for him well a total amount
of arpa funds that the city's going to
receive over two years it amounts to 52
million 971 dollars
798.
that we were receiving two rounds of 26
million 485 at 899
and of this first uh round we received
the june 1st of 2021 of that 26 million
8 million
six 92
eighty dollars has been designated as a
loss of revenue which i have sent to you
guys previously
uh we're expecting our second round of
26 million and and change uh in june of
2022.
um so far
the city uh the city council has
allocated 233 thousand dollars
um 145 000 was to the boys and girls
club uh to keep these uh youths
participating engaged in summer programs
um
38 thousands to the uh schenectady fire
tomorrow department 30 000 of that 38
was for medication due to the changes in
the covenant 19
protocols and 8 000 was for the covet
cleaning of the trucks the offices and
buildings
the last
amount of 50 000 works to the
schenectady police depart department and
that is for the
protocol excuse me for the
protocol for the uh retired uh police
officers downstairs uh coming in there
today for covid and uh
checking so that's that's all we have
allocated so far
the third question is the timeline for
allocating the funds well the timelines
uh for allocating funds are eligible
costs from march 3rd 2021
through
december 31st 2024
we are out obligated uh
all our obligated funds have to be spent
by uh 12 31 2026
and whatever is left over we don't spend
after that date we do have to send back
to the fender government
okay
what what do we what can we spend the
money on is the heart is one of the most
difficult parts
i get one thing i can tell you here
is that
what we cannot
pay
what one things that we cannot pay for
is debt service
we cannot pay for pension plans and we
cannot directly or indirectly offset a
reduction in uh net tax revenue so we
can't
lower taxes which is i don't know
uh
but some of the things that uh that
we're allowed to uh cost for but these
are big
uh sections where you know you can do
things in between like for instance
public health you know you've got you
know
you can do covet testing you can pay for
uh
covid uh
vaccinations there's different different
things for uh public health uh
also negative income uh impacts you know
for instance uh you know one of the
things that we were discussing is the
higher back all the the people that we did not employ in 20 19 and 2020 to hire them back to uh
get them back that's part of the
negative impacts uh services to the you
know uh community to uh impacted
communities they're just
disproportionate this disproportionately
for funding so you know cdbg area
neighborhoods you know
by census track whatever you know things
you can do in those neighborhoods you
can spend money on and of course the big
three infrastructures water sewer
broadband but it's kind of where it's
kind of hard right now because with the
infrastructure bill just passed by the
federal government where we're
you know we don't really want to
anticipate like we want to put our opera
money aside for infrastructure and then we said oh god we could have paid
this for infrastructure bill so you know
that's why we're right now we're not
trying to obligate uh anything on in
those areas right now
also also you have you know
administration you know uh because you
know what uh
you know it takes a lot because you know
uh starting august 31st we have to start
reporting on everything and then on a
quarterly basis uh through uh
through the
uh us treasury website you know you have
to have the uh all your reports
quarterly reports done uh every quarter
starting august 31st will be our first uh first
payment and uh so far the only only
place that we're actually spending money
is for the officers we have downstairs
so uh um boys and girls club we're
eventually we're going to be paying them
soon and uh and uh in fact i got my
first call for the fire department for the cleaning supplies and stuff like
that so it's starting to work
there's a there's a uh
you know a lot
you can spend on uh
but you just have to be careful of not
of what you're doing uh we were looking
at the you know
with the mayor you know yeah i think
he's got some ideas they're talking
about getting some uh task force not
task force together but
a committee's together to start looking
at how and what to spend the money on
and i i personally think that's a great
idea i think that's the way to go a lot
of communities are starting to do that
but like ourselves every every community
is cautious and they haven't really
started spending money yet because
ever we're all waiting for the final uh
determination which was uh it was
supposed to end as a july 16th so it's
been a month now we haven't still
haven't heard anything final yet so i
think most that's what most of the
communities are waiting for
is there any other information i can get
for you
in the budget and the 2022 budget it
will be yes
actually we're going to show it two ways
we're gonna we're gonna show it as the
uh in the line item itself that what
we're using art before and then in the
revenue side we're going to have a you
know federal arpa number
that's one of the things too as you're
calling we did the 2021 budget we we
portioned i think 1.4 1.428 million for
federal money we weren't sure we're
going to get it we did get it so soon
you know as we get up as we get closer
to the end of the year we're going to
ask for to appropriate that money from
the arpa into that and plus our fund
balance which we have mentioned before
uh and plus again like i said some of
the jobs that we want to you know uh
bring back you know that would all be
part of the function we're just we're
just trying to we're actually waiting
for the final
uh determination like we're a little
surprised it hasn't come yet but
that's that's why we haven't uh these
were immediate needs uh the boys club
the police of fire so that's why we
brought him ahead
are there any questions
well just a comment that i think you
know in terms of the infrastructure bill
and all of us waiting
uh to hear what was going to happen with
that that i
completely
understand and get that was important to wait for that
and so
one thing to happen with the
infrastructure build that we're happy
about is prior to the passing it there
was that big thought that they were
going to claw back the second the second
payment but so far they passed the they
passed it and they did not mention it so
it looks like we're going to get that
second payment which really is a big
relief for all of us yeah yeah it's
the
it's important with the uh the 1.3
trillion infrastructure i mean
to make sure we're not
using funds duel for you know for the
same thing so
like uh there's broadband in the
infrastructure package there's water or
sewer so we can make sure that we're
using our our arpa money most
efficiently and effectively and you know
if if we went out and spent it right off
the bat we would
certainly not be doing very good justice
with that money
the other aspect that that i think we
need to be careful of is the three and a
half trillion
budget package and what kind of money
we're going to get there
what's going to trickle down to the
state what's going to trickle down to us
we have the county and the
school district to work with so we can
make sure that we're being effective
and not misappropriating the money so it
was
very prudent that we didn't
go out and spend it right off the bat
um
and uh believe me mr wilfond was waiting
are there any other questions
yeah if i may mccarthy is there a
timeline to put this committee together
if you may i was going to put one
out looking after labor day but after
your remarks last week i defer to that
we'll hopefully be able to negotiate
something we're all on the same page and
publicly sparring and the things that
are going on
well you know not really public sparring
is just that we've been getting calls
from a lot of people that's what is our
intention and you know we need to um
discuss this giving the names of those
people i'm
in terms of sure what the autonomous
would like to have the biggest impact
you know we did a needs assessment in
the community
a few years ago we've got the cdpg
plan
they're fairly comprehensive but
they don't really take into account
the impact of coping and some of those
things that we're still learning from
we're getting some of the new census
data in
uh you know it's where do we
put that money so that it's going to
have the biggest impact
and to be able to do it in a coordinated
fashion so it's not just the city but
it's the school district in the county
working
simultaneously to
leverage the resources to get long-term
sustainable results
that are
wouldn't be obtained
by actions by the individual of this
government
a prime example that would be brad plan
with the school and the city
uh exactly
where you know they have
you know a big need when we saw the
combat
that
i think people uh very clearly
understood the need for students to
learn but then people working at home
the mothers and fathers
got shifted into an environment that
they didn't expect and so how do we
build capacity there
that will
allow us to function whatever they call
a new normal where yes there's still
going to be some remote learning
from schools that probably wasn't done
before but at the same time how do we
foster economic growth to create job
opportunities for
i'll say local businesses but that's no
longer true it's really global
businesses you can hire people here that
we're
supporting operations anywhere around
the world
are there any other other questions
for
right
common generic conversations with corey
coleman the county manager i've got to
set up a meeting with
chair tony
in the near future
also want this to be done in a manner
that makes sense with
our normal budget process
so do we spend some of this money in a
manner that has a positive impact on
costs going forward
from our daily operation department
in some of these things there
are things that
you know
anthony was
joking a little bit semi seriously talk
about some of paul rafan's
interest in upgrading
new water wells those are major
investments
we would have to pay for those
one way or the other
is it something that maybe we take a
little bit of the arc of money to offset
the costs
but still
do most of the work under the general
revenue stream that's coming out of
the water
and sewer funds so we have to look at
those
in to leverage
those investments so that we can get the
biggest payment
if we can reduce our
borrowing or borrow in a strategic
manner because now
interest rates are
getting fairly low
how do you balance that going forward so
we've prudently
done the borrowing but at the same time
we've got
this money
other money that's out there
we aggressively seek that into a package
that benefits
the
city operations but also
the county and schools
are there other questions
just
thank you mr ferrari i appreciate all
the work that you did on this
i've done a fair amount of reading on
this my own my own um but it was to have
a kind of recap and exactly how i
interpreted it so i'm grateful that um
you took the time to do this quite
frankly and i'm grateful that the mayor
has been you know slow to spend
you know this infrastructure bill is
going to be extremely beneficial to the
city and i look forward to seeing how
much
dollars
filtering down to us so
thank you just i just want to as if you need
to get more information go right to the
u.s treasury
they have different things for that
it breaks it out for you and as you can
see as you know we've been re
my staff and i we go through it every
day where we break it out we're breaking
out by different things as as much as we
can we're trying to we're we're trying
to get it so uh we can use it uh
efficiently for our budget really that's
what we're looking for that's what we're
that's our goal uh and you guys got the
bigger ideas you got to do the bigger
stuff
i truly appreciate it because there's a
lot of information there yeah a lot of
information yeah the key piece is it's
not finalized yet and we really need to
leverage this to the best of our ability
mr patrick well i think that also
talking about community meetings
really
next on the agenda thank you thank you
acceptance of the 2020 assistance to the
firefighters grant i see we have chief
cynical here
do you have a seat or you can stand
hi
so this grant is uh is excellent timing
for us
it's a grant um for to replace our
thermal imaging cameras
they are a very high-tech
device
can you hear me yes yes we can
no okay so i'll talk a little louder so
it's a very high-tech device that it
just does that it uh by temperature wise
uh it gives us images in a fire building
it it enables us to locate fire victims
if our room is 900 degrees and the human
body's 100 it'll show us the outlay if
you will
of a barn or a fire victory for us to
locate
um
also it's
very safe for our firefighters to know
where the city of the fire is in a zero
visibility condition we don't want to be
above the sea of the fire we shoot it
off walls we're able to find exits
it's probably our second most important
piece of equipment we have next to our
turnout gear
so the grant is for sixty three thousand
two hundred dollars
uh our portion uh would be fifty seven
hundred and forty five dollars
coincidentally uh we've been looking to
replace these for a couple years now and
uh mr fryer and i
discussed um capital budget we actually
have a capital budget
plan together we had for 2020 which we
uh put to 2021 so
timing's right and uh we're very uh
we're very thankful for this grant
because it's that that important to us
are there any questions no i'll i'll
move this second second
all right
thank you thank you thank you
call to order public safety the first
item discussion traffic signal follow-up
mr palomini thank you
where we left off was looking to see
where
uh signage might be most beneficial
mr caluccio has done
an incredible amount of work
trying to figure this out and he's been
digging deeper
and i'll turn it over to
thank you mr palmany
so yes
i've done a little work
the last time we met
we looked at
the top 25
intersections
unsignalized intersections in the city
to look at the number of abstinent
reports
so this was from january 2016 to july of
this year
we don't normally look at such an
extended period of time when we're
evaluating intersections and the
problems associated with them we
typically stick to like a two-year
history because so many things change
over time volumes of traffic change of
where people come and go
geometric changes all kinds of changes
so
keep that in mind when we're looking at
it um the original list that
we looked at was
from
the police department reporting system
um what that means in comparison to what
we finally ultimately looked at is some
of those reports
were accidents that did not occur at the
intersection but were coded at that
intersection
some reports did not require
a accident report at all and some of
them were duplicate polls
so i don't know if you can see this or
not but this is the original breakdown
that we looked at
before starting at
you know a breakdown of the individual
locations by year
and the type of control that
is in use at those intersections i'll
just give you a second to take the days
over then
at this point we've looked at
five of the intersections
erie boulevard and seneca street fear
and gulf bedford and eastern and
mcclellan in the plaza and the second
column you see was the total number of
accidents that were listed in the
original report
by the time i went through them all you
look at the numbers all the way over on
my right side and those are actually
the number of accidents that uh were
reportable
at that location had the proper
information so you can see there's a
pretty good uh difference between some
of them you're in seneca's 48 it's
actually down the 32
here in golf 23 down to 30 etc so again
you can't always look at a book by its
cover you've got to dig a little deeper
this is the intersection of erie
boulevard and seneca street
all the accidents occurring during that
time period from july
2016 to present and the type of
accidents that have occurred there
again there were 53 in the original one
we're down to um 32
six of them are
personal injury accidents denoted by the
pink color
one auto pedestrian
the largest amount of accident types is
15 they were rear-end accidents
12 turning movement accidents and four
side swing accidents
not all terrible if you look at the
graph over time you can see that
some of those numbers have gone down
and you know why is that covet is
probably one piece of that
you know based on uh
you know last year the reduced amount of
traffic
again
this is an intersection maintained by
the department of state so i'm going to
take this information these accidents
which
you know also shows
contributing factors on them you know
what was going on before the accident
during so i'm going to ask the
department of state i'm sorry the
department of transportation to take a
look at it and provide some
evaluation of what we can do or what
they can do to improve the situation
there
next intersection is golf and fear
avenue
again what are we looking at a lot of
rear end accidents right um i bet a lot
of you are surprised that that's the top
type you would expect the right angles
right to be the the highest but no
they're rear ends and
the good part on this particular drawing
is there's only one pink which would
mean there's only been one
injury personal injury
another interesting fact you see the
four deer on the screen so there's a
few deer accidents at the
intersection as well as a couple of
people lost control during
bad weather
and again looking at the
graph over time you can see that really
even though there's so many that we're
looking at that they are actually going
down there but there's some things that
we can do
at this intersection that i think
can improve the situation we'll talk
about that on the end i'm just going to
go through the other two
bedford and eastern
certainly been in a large number of
accidents over time
also notice the pink on this one a lot
more personal injury
this
location than
others we've seen so far and it is more
of what you'd expect right the right
angle accidents people having issues uh
seeing or cars going too fast on the
main road versus someone coming out big
um more
to what you'd expect to see
over time
so
again i want to show you the graph on
this because it is a little deceiving
because
the amount of accidents has actually
gone down since uh we started looking at
this and there have been some things
that we've done there over time such as
installing uh no standing here to corner
signs
that
improve sight distance so that people
can see out of the intersection better
but we want to continue to
make those types of improvements to
make sure that these numbers stay down
this one that we're going to look at
today is mcclellan in the plaza
not a huge number but i did want to look
at this it's located at the corner at a
school so i felt it was a high enough
number that i wanted to find out what
was going on here so
again
a lot of rear end accidents right um
surprising that
that's the situation for
personal injury accidents and
a couple of uh
turning accidents as well
same situation though and you would
totally expect some of this to go down
in 20 right and you know over time not a
very uh
an odd pattern more or less
but
again there's some things that
we want to look at to see if we can try
to make some improvements at this
intersection as well
real quickly i just wanted to show you
this is a
chart with
all of the accidents that have occurred
in the city over that time period this
is signalized that intersect everything
and basically i'm asking you to look at
it to see what the three top
contributing factors are
driver inattention distraction failure
to yield right away and following too
closely if you take those three and you
put them on all my other graphs that i
did
you will see that those are the
contributing factors in all those
situations
so
even though we expected to see something
different this is what the numbers show
at these intersections versus other
intersections in the city
okay so what can we do here um erie
boulevard and center history
again it's maintained by the department
of
transportation we're going to talk to
them see what
they recommend the uh
that can be done there potentially other
signage maybe looking at the speed limit
that's 40 miles an hour there that may
be a potential
correction for that location
fury golf road
again improved signage um
i think that uh if we put a stop ahead
on golf road um you know back toward the
route seven that may be um
helpful um this is an opportunity for
one of the led stop signs uh it's uh um
you know
a they don't necessarily not see the
sign but there's just so many things
happening when you're driving that your
own you're you're not always paying
attention right
the deer accidents i think we should put
some deer signs up so that's what we're
going to do put some deer warning signs
up
we're going to look at potentially
putting intersection warning signs on
fear avenue you know sometimes um the
cars drive uh rather quickly on um
fair avenue and if your sight distance
is limited these people that are at the
stop sign
jerk ahead think they're clear and then
someone smashes into the backbone so
those are things that we're going to do
to try to improve the situation
replace the existing street name sign
with larger sign and relocate it
again you want to try to reduce the
issues that drivers have wherever
possible so if it's someone that's
trying to understand where they are
they're lost or something they're going
to take those extra seconds to take
their eyes off of the car in front of
them to look around them so we put
larger signs up
prominently
displayed and very conspicuous then
you know we think that we can reduce
some of the problems that are happening
as well as trim foliage you can get it
kind of hard to put all these drawings
together for you guys but if if i went
back to the golf in fear you could see
the sight distance problem with
the trees and limbs and that needs to be
done as well with that intersection and
that's what we're going to do
bedford and eastern i don't want to
forget about this intersection because
there it has had a poor past
so one of the things that we'd like to
do is remove a tree located on the
southeast corner it's on on
bedford uh at eastern and
this stop sign is actually on the tree
and the reason it's on the tree is
because there's no place to put it
that's going to be clearly visible
if we don't remove the tree so i think
that needs to be done and
that's what we're going to look for
support
last intersection mcclellan in the plaza
another location that i think that could
take advantage of an led of led stop
signs on the mccullen street approaches
as i said before there's so many things
happening especially around the school
that you take your eye off of the fact
that you have a stop sign there and uh
you roll into the guy in front of you so
i think that's a really good
location to try try these out and
there's also some foliage from the side
streets from the plaza especially going
southbound to the right
that
if we can get that trimmed by a home
owner actually then that will improve
the site distance and
improve the situation overall
that's all i have for you today i only
did five of them but if you can imagine
each one of those has taken me three to
four hours each to do i actually have to
go through every single accident report
and verify the information and and
graphics so i'm going to continue to
work on the rest of them but they are
going to take time but i don't think you
want to see me every week so
you know certainly it's something that
we'd like to
proceed with now that that was excellent
it was
an incredible
labor-intensive job and
we really appreciate it and thank you so
much for your
hard work and making sure that we're
using uh data to actually absolutely put
it in the right spots versus
anecdotal information great
thank you anybody else have questions
yes um
in the communities in terms of speaking
and so
how can we can people get signs or how
would a
i think the california avenue in
particular for people coming off the
highway just like
fun too so um
it may not be led signing but there have
been questions regarding four-way stops
it's one question and secondly um
science and children
so
yeah i mean let me separate them for a
minute so as far as the four-way stop
signs we follow guidelines uh from new
york state and the federal highway
authority on the placement of signs and
there are certain guidelines we look to
follow
i as i said to you before if you provide
me the locations we can certainly
evaluate those intersections it's based
on volume and traffic on the main and on
the side it's based on
pedestrian activity it's based on
you know
geometric uh issues
you know accident histories certainly
provide them to me and i can take a look
at them as far as children at place
signs give me a street that the kids
don't fight on and i'll you know
they're on every single street in the
city
we would never be able to
maintain an inventory of
signs for children that live on streets
because they live on every street in the
city i i don't know how you would pick
and choose as to
um
what street to place them on and what
street not to place them on i i don't i
don't have an idea of how i would even
do that so yes you drive into other
communities they have them every place
what makes them special nothing they put
them on dead end streets you know the
people that are going down dead end
streets are the ones that live there if
they don't know that children are
playing on their own street then
you know but again if you have locations
that people have issues please send them
to me i will evaluate them for other
potential signage and see what we can do
but you know i gotta have some sort of
data to back up why i'm doing a certain
thing
but i would be more than happy to look
at uh whatever you send me
okay
yeah contributing factors yes thank you
absolutely
how do we move forward from here um
i suggest we move forward with the
recommendations of mr caluccio for the
two intersections that he said to put
signs on
and then we proceed from there see how
it works
if we see some progress then
we might look at additional signage but
i think that's a good starting point
so we're moving it so authorize them to
purchase
the next item is a follow-up from
several weeks ago request for new york
state legislature and the governor to
amend the new york state final law
to mandate a minimum 10-year sentence
for people convicted of criminal
possession
of a
weapon felony the last time we discussed
this um
the takeaway was uh invite this
connected police department the district
attorney and the social service
department to help us with some
information
to support this
resolution i think it was we were going
to go back and do our own research
um which i think you know i thought
everyone was going to do and
you know come forward with uh
you know we have literal support from chief
clifford
is this something we want to support or
not support
um
you know something i'd like to move
forward and if i don't have supports in
the committee um you know
i'm
but i think we need to
you know
have some sort of stance here you know
there's
so much gun violence in our city and
across the region
and i'd like to
new york state legislature to take a
long hard look at it
and have some sort of
discussion around it and i think this is
a good resolution to get the discussion
building
to ensure that we
you know aren't
twiddling our thumbs here and um having
the i know they're distracted with other
things right now but
at the end of the day i still think
public safety is a
major concern for anyone who lives in
the city and i think that you know
having them have to take a long hard
look at this and understand that you
know we need to have some sort of
uh substantial penalty for someone who
is
you know willing to take a gun and
use it to settle a dispute
or use it to you know
possibly hurt or carve or kill and it is
a bystander and it's happening far too
many times
and
i'm not sure that the state legislature
is really focused on it and
you know my recommendation is let's get
the state legislature focused on it if i
don't have the support i don't have the
support but
you know that i would like to move
forward with something if i can have the
support from the committee so
open up a discussion
my understanding though is a little like
the last time that we would there would
be some i haven't seen anything
that there would be material that
as i've um before i think before we move
forward with something that we would
show but we've taken the time and effort
and diligence supposed to get the data
that supports the fact that why we want
to move this forward so um and i thought
you know
that said these are the reasons why
and this is what we put together the
school we come up with and you know
here's how many crimes happen here you
know in our community the support dates
fans all of those kind of things and
with that a couple of that um have that
discussion about moving quality and also
within that discussion um seeing um
looking for
where there have been mandatory minimums
it has been affected
in
people and determining people from human
rights so
yeah an agreement with that that's what
we take away from the last meeting was
to get information and get this agency
to provide us some information um
we can follow up and with this agency
i i i can follow up with this agency or
my cell phone is michael
to get some information directly from
this agency or would you like to follow
directly
before i go to
i'd like to make a suggestion go ahead
so
this is just a resolution
whether it has support or not
you know
we have to remember our civics so it's
going to go to the state if it passes
they would go to committee they would
research it they would do all the stuff
that we're talking about here we are not
passing this law
so
if there's support for
out of committee
vote for it if there's not support then
say so and it's dead and we move on
i don't think anyone is saying that
they're not supporting it it's just that
people are asking for more information
and we take away from the last meeting
was to get information from these free
agency and that did not happen
so that's why i'm repeating the ask
again
that can we get information to help ms
porterfield with some of the information
and then we'll move forward with it but
that's done at the state level it's not
done at this level so it's this is a
resolution asking for them to consider
upping the
mandatory minimum
so
that's where it's done um
if if there's no support then let's move
on to say there's no support and you're
done
[Music]
those are important things to consider
as we're asking the state to do this
those are the things
to consider i think we should be talking
with the district attorney about this
and someone who deals with this all the
time i think it's important to get the
input from people who
do this kind of work on a regular basis
and for those of us who do not just say
you know
i think it's a good idea without having
really researched why
so i think those are all things that we
really need to consider not just um to
say
10 is the number for whatever reason is
a number and i don't know the answer to
that so i i don't i don't see us i don't see myself supporting it without
something backing up that makes sense
for me to re-understand
us to discuss and like i said if it's
not 10 if it's if it's 10 now
it's it's less than 10 down to 10
and again
it hasn't been proven to be a deterrent
in mandatory members i think those are
all items that we should assess at this
level with that
[Music]
and i'd suggest we hold off until people
actually do the research and then
if when people get their research done
we can bring it back and have a
discussion but uh
you know we keep putting this on the
agenda we look ineffective
and
you know it's on all of us to do our
research and do our discussions
don't have any problem with what you're
saying so let's either do it or don't do
it and move forward
so i think we need clarity on you're
asking us what are you saying each of us
should do our own research
that was what all our understanding was
i thought we were all going to mr
legislation so i would ask the person
who's
so
that would be helpful for me
any other discussion
so whatever information that we have can
we share it i know ms patrick had
suggested send it to ms michael and they
can
send it out to the entire council
can we do the same again and send that
information to ms michael
for distribution
all right thank you
we'll go on to the next item this is
just a follow-up to see if there is
additional information with regards to
central park sidewalk petition a couple
weeks ago we had asked for an estimate
from mr wallin
i'm still in any updates on this um
sidewalk petition um
program
no update i've really been around for
three weeks i've had a
vacation and then a quarantine so i
really haven't been in the office i
apologize for that but i did speak with
alex about it about giving you
information uh you know john really uh
put on a show
no problem it's just a follow-up to see
where you are all right
[Music]
all right thank you so much
any other businesses for public safety
second all in favor
we'll just need to wait time