so
[Music]
i'd like to call to order the city
council committee meeting for
monday
june 22nd
tuesday june 22nd
21st
we have a couple of presentations
uh first by
commissioner ferrari
2021
audit
[Music]
i like to present uh
john kofloski a partner at uh our uh
independent auditor company kuzak and
company uh explained the audit of the
city of schenectady for uh uh
2021.
thanks tony uh thank you everybody for
having me here tonight i wanted to start
off just by saying thank you to tony and
the rest of your staff here at the city
for everything they do during the audit
and especially to liz nelson who's our
primary contact during the audit we
really appreciate everything that they
do to help us out during all the time
you have great staff here very helpful
with all of our requests and i just
wanted to extend my appreciation to them
um our ultimate responsibility during
the audit is to review your financial
statements and issue an opinion on your
financial statements as to whether
they're materially stated and combined
with generally accepted accounting
principles otherwise known as get
our audit takes place in three main
phases the first main phase is our
pre-audit phase this takes place during
december and what we're doing during
this phase is we're reviewing your
internal control systems we're testing
those internal control systems we
perform preliminary variance and budget
analysis we do the council minutes and
we also go through our own internal risk
assessment procedures
the next major phase of our audit is
fieldwork this takes place in march what
we're doing during this phase is we're
taking the information that we obtained
during our pre-owned phase we're using
that to develop our audit programs which
we use to test our final year imbalances
and determine whether the feel the
material is stated or not
so the final phase of our audit is our
reporting phase during this phase what
we're doing is we're reviewing the
financial statements that are prepared
by your senior accountant and we're also
reporting on the final results
so the financial statements that you
have in front of you are a 76-page
document overall and it's comprised of
several major parts
first major part is going to be your
management's discussion and analysis
that's on pages one through eight of
your statements
this is a required but unaudited section
of the financial statements
it summarizes your operating results and
other financial highlights if you're not
familiar with the financial statements
in general i always like to tell the
clients it's a really good reading gives
you a top side summary of what happened
during the year
through eleven of your financial
statements this is the independent
orders report
um this is where we issued our
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next section
the draft
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so pages 9-11 is your independent voters
report this is where we issue our
opinion on the financial statements
one important item to note on your
financial case these are presented at
the fund and account group level only
exclusive of your non-current
governmental asset account group
i am pleased to say that we've once
again issued an unmodified opinion on
your financial statements this is the
highest level of insurance that we can
give you it's considered a clean report
we have no reportable issues and no
financial aid
pages 12 through 14 these are
governmental fund balance sheets
statement revenues expenditures and
changes in fund balance
your approximated operating results for
the year ended 2021
general fund had a surplus of 5.6
million dollars
water fund had a deficiency of 57 000
sewer fund had a deficiency of 745 000
primarily because of the use of your
capital reserves
recreation fund had a surplus of 84 000
special grants and special revenue
deficiency of 5 000 and your capital
projects had a surplus of 7.3 million
that was primarily due to proceeds from
your cereal bond and issuance of ban
redemptions
so the contributing factors to your
overall surplus and the general fund and
these are all approximated numbers
sales tax revenue exceeded budget by
about two million dollars casino
revenues exceeded expectations by 841
000
uh prior prior year tax lien collection
exceeded expectations by 975 000
insurance recoveries exceeded
expectations by 1.2 million
aimed funds withheld by the state of
2020 were now recouped in 2021 560 000
sales city properties exceeded your
budget by 478 000
and the federal market funds which were
utilized uh 786 000.
overall we feel that management does a
really great job in monitoring your
reserves uh year-end fund balance in the
general point of 16.3 million dollars
six million dollars in restricted funds
the ban on tan borrowings decreased by
18.1 million for your principal
repayment and conversion to serial bonds
new york state efc borrowing increased
by 4.2 million
zero bond debt increased by 12.8 million
for your bank conversion
overall there was a decrease in the
city's net pension liability at 49
million dollars for underfunded ers and
pfls liabilities balance at your end was
13.7 million
total liability that increased by 4
million to 336 million
and those two um liability accounts that
i just mentioned those are undergasm
statements 68 and 75
which require that under uh underfunded
pension and liabilities and other
post-employment benefit liabilities are
reported on an actuarial valuation basis
page 15 of your financial statements
that's your custodial fund as required
by gaza statement 84 this is no longer a
typical trust and agency relationship
this custodial fund includes your
property taxes collected for other
governments but not yet committed
pages 17 through 59 of the financial
statements these are your footnotes
detailing the significant accounting
policies the material account balances
as they appear on the face of the
statements
pages through 66 this is your required
supplemental information
includes your budget to actual reports
ers and pfrs pension liabilities and
also your op detail and related ratios
pages
67-76
this is your federal single item because
the city expended more than 750 000 in
federal funds we're required to have
what's called a single audit
total federal expenditures for the year
6.6 million
we are required to rotate your major and
high-risk programs every third year so
the major programs that we tested during
2021
excuse me your esg grant your lead
hazard grant dot grants and also your
workflow funds
we feel that the city has good internal
controls over your federal funds and we
had no
material weaknesses significant
deficiencies or any reportable items and
we weren't able to issue an unmodified
report on the single moment as well
our funds are these are required to be
obligated by december 31st 2024 and
dispersed by december 31st 2026 city
currently has approximately 52 million
funds
um between 21 and 20 2021 and 2022 that
need to be expended by 2024.
the general fund surplus and operations
shows the city has continued to improve
um overall from an accounting and
control standpoint the public controls
the city are very good
operating has designed county
information is reliable
um the last item that you received in
your packet was the post governance
letter that's a required communication
towards the end of the audit um
this is normally the old management
letter where if we had any comments
during the audit we present them to you
at that point no items to report to you
the audit was very clean overall which
our controls are good and we didn't have
anything to report to council
at this point i would be happy to take
any questions on the audit process in
general or the financial statements
well
did anyone have an opportunity to review
this prior to the meeting tonight
i was trying to pull it off okay
so um
if you have any general questions
it was transmitted to the clerk of the
13th and it was forwarded to all council
today no the third thing is
11 20 am
so um do you have questions
otherwise um i would i would suggest
that we you make sure we have an
opportunity to review it and then just
before the council meeting um next week
we could just call finance to order and
um just vote on it then as it's
i want everyone to make sure they have
an opportunity to review
oh
here it is
mr
right and then we can just call finance
to order and um vote on just prior to
the council meeting next week you have
another opportunity are there any
general questions today regarding the
audience
yeah you have a great team here they'll
do a really great job in helping us out
this your audit is a very big
undertaking i know it's it's easy to see
the financial statement saying here's
the final audit but there's a there's a
lot that goes on you know during auto
before the audit during the audit
afternoon so a really great staff here
everybody does that's a great job
i do have a question you you have notes
that you read from to explain to us what
was on each page is there a way for us
to be able to get that information i can
just send it to you if you want yeah
it's perfect so that way you can refer
to absolutely
good question so you were saying these
general operations are getting better in
the airport during 2021 there was a
overall surplus in the job fund of you
know 5.6 million
so it was a very good year overall it
was kind of seeing that recovery of the
code period sales tax revenue increased
significantly a lot of items came back
online that were either held back in
2020 or you know there was no new funds
that were out there that allowed uh you
know
to reap the benefit of those
okay
thank you thank you so what we'll do is
call a special meeting at 6 30 next
monday for finances
all right
don't listen to seabrook
thank you for your time um
i'm sorry
thank you for your time
i'm going to start off with an
introduction um while representatives
from axon get the powerpoint hooked up
and mindful of your time tonight
and i just wanted to talk about um
why we're here
and um
and i'll turn it over to them to kind of
go over the platform
we're here to talk about technology at
the police department
and
we're at a time when we need to make a
decision
on
which path to take on our body long
cameras
back in 2018 we made the decision to go
with panasonic
um we knew that we had about a three to
four year life
on the cameras themselves
we went fully deployed in 2019
and three years
later we're in 2022 are expected by the
end of the year that
they are going to be at the end of their
life they're already out of warranty so
we're we're paying for the repairs as
they come up
additionally we've had some problems
with them um in the three and a half
years that we've been using them and
that's what forced me to start
i should save me myself and the command
staff to start looking at other vendors
as we transition
staying with panasonic and just
refreshing with them is not an option
because
um they they sold their product to
another company they renamed it i pro
and we would literally we would have to
buy a whole new platform anyways because
the docs that they go into in the cars
no longer fit the product that they sell
so we're basically buying everything all
the way up
as we started looking at the different
products out there we realized that four
years later technology has advanced
everything's gotten better and cheaper
we are a uh a customer already of axon
which makes our tasers
so we started looking at them a little
bit closer and what i quickly realized
is that
they're an industry leader in this space
they bring
technology to each individual component
that really no other competitor brings
as we started conversations with the
sales representatives who are here
tonight we realize that they actually
bundle everything together and when they
bundle it together there's cost savings
and there's benefits to where that
digital evidence goes which is uh to a
cloud-based platform called evidence.com
and there's many benefits that come to
using that
on our end and with everybody that we
interact with from the district
attorney's office to public defender's
office defense attorneys
um
and even citizens and their ability to
send us video that they retrieve if they
see it out
in the community so
i will now turn it over to ben uh who's
the uh there's a senior sales
representative here and doug um and his
colleagues jim and john or somewhere in
the room
and they will walk through the program
and again uh there's going to be an
entry level introduction and feel free
to ask questions at the end thank you
chief
good evening everyone
um assistant my name is ben durins
senior regional manager for axons for
the past five and a half years i've been
working with the agencies that will
deploy axons technologies i'm
accompanied by doug gleidler doug is
working with you
as your taser camera excuse my
counterpart thank you guys for your
partnership you know with the taser tool
for law enforcement here that is
deployed within the day
what we're going to cover today is
really kind of scope down to a high
level
that provides and gives a general sense
to axons law enforcement tools
specifically a bundle we call the
officer safety plan um we start as taser
now acts on our mission is to protect
life
that's both you know officers and
citizens
the body camera and a lot of the
evidence capture components are there to
capture the truth and protect the truth
and so this bundling the officer safety
plan that we're going to go through
or we're going to highlight some of the
key elements of it why it's important
doug's going to touch upon a little bit
around the taser seven and then we'll
open it up you know for any questions
that you may have so you know with that
really
one of the key elements is going to be
really the body camera and that's what
the officer is wearing today you know
you have a body camera we'll talk about
the axon body three
better protecting
making sure we're not missing those
critical moments
we've got
the camera that has the ability
to you'll see shortly turn on based on
critical events so if the weapon is
drawn if the taser comes off of safety
the light bar on the patrol car goes on
we have the ability to you know start
this camera
the camera has a built-in buffer so
we're never going to miss a moment
we can go back up to 18 hours
to
grab that footage should an officer not
activate his or her body camera it's one
of the key features here and this is
the first ruggedized body camera in the
market that has embedded lte so
being able to do things like where is my
officer
on a mask who what are some of the
officers around her and
be able to live stream to see what
they're seeing so you can make the best
life-saving decisions for all involved
in the incident from this camera so
uh on the next slide kind of lays out
what i mentioned around the activation
of these cameras the auto activations
this is a technology that's
not deployed within the current platform
for the city and these are critical
officer
safety
features that are going to ensure the
camera activates the first one is signal
sidearm small sensor on
the holster when a weapon's drawn that
body camera axon body cameras in-car
cameras
are going to start activating they're
going to start recording based on that
action
the second one
is axons
signal
for the teaser sentence so on the next
slide you'll see
when a taser you saw the weapon being
drawn specifically with a taser when
that taser is taken off of safety so
it's energized
we're going to emit that same burst
and what that's going to do is again
push that bubble out turn on cameras
within a 35 foot radius and continue for
30 seconds to ensure
anyone here on scene is actively you
know recording so
just
quickly kind of demo that jug has a
teaser with inner cartridges but he will
just power it on
and this camera which was in a buffer
mode goes on and buffering you see here
now i'm blinking red i'm actively
recording
and i've captured going back 30 seconds
what happened and now i'm actively
recording and capturing that here on
this camera so i'm going to go ahead and
end that recording
the next step on this camera
talked about lte so this camera is now
actively recording
but what it's also doing is
communicating in real time
back to the police department that a
weapon
was taken off of safety or a weapon was
drawn or see that was taken off safety
and so that provides an alert that then
provides the ability for law enforcement
to be able to live stream in on this
camera to be able to see you know what
is unfolding in front of officer agreed
us so that is providing you know help
when it is needed needed where is my
officer you know how could i best
respond
to them
and then i'm going to end this recording
really quickly
i have the ability
from this camera
to offload that video immediately
to secure cloud storage so now it can be
reviewed and started to be digested
along with other evidence captured from
the axon in car
in near real time on the back end system
so that's you know some of the key
features of the axon body camera as well
as signal and respond
in addition to the hardware specifically
the body camera
we have
built in
complete fixed cost
packages
for
refreshments of the body cameras and the
docks so they come with five years
warranty each you can talk about hey
they have come up on in the life and
typically significant cost increases to
keep refreshing these technologies we've
built in the program to refreshes of
cameras and docks so you're insulating
yourself from you know technology
costs that do typically go up
on the hardware side of this and then we
also provide these software components
for our officers to
be able to use mobile apps to tag their
videos
in this case we're going to be
automatically tagging the officers
videos for them so tagging is very
simply
making you know titling as a traffic
stop so we know how long to keep it that
takes time to every call for service
while we're able to do that
automatically because we're going to
talk to can rms and save that officer
time the detective's time and make sure
that evidence is
correctly categorized and managed within
the system
through both an app and then
automatically
a lot of what you're going to talk about
now once you get to be on axon fleet 3
which is completely integrated with the
body camera
so
you have it in car solution today
separately agencies have you know alpr
they're really beholden to
a significant spend and they're able to
do like four vehicles
what axon's done and you can see our
dash camera actually has two lenses
is we're not only capturing the video of
the dash of the vehicle
as well as backseat camera view
but that second lens looking forward is
doing real-time alpr
and we're able to do it for every
vehicle
rather than just four
so these are you know real-time alerts
from hotlist so officers can get alerts
when you know certain
different
hits are made off of
specific lists
for bad guys so that's going to enable
safer streets safer communities you know
with that real-time alpr with axon
in-car
[Music]
i think i typically
cover both on that one
all of this evidence um the in-car the
body cameras
axon interview room as well
feed to a central back-end system and
this is where
everything gets streamlined
everything is secure this is essentially
a seizures very secure environment
hosted environment where you can
bring it automatically up back some
things are going to upload but you can
bring and click and drag in all types of
video from bodegas cctv security tv
citizens videos you're going to be
managing your cases there you'll be able
to securely share them
with partner agencies such as the new
york state police who are running this
exact program
as well as many other agencies
throughout the region
so within evidence.com we've got tools
specifically for redaction
you know automating processes to redact
these videos
so varying different stakeholders
from what we call capture which is you
know as an officer going here and find
his or her video tag it all the way
through the courtroom how do we get this
to
you know a defense attorney somebody who
needs this for a foia request without
burning dvds and driving them doing all
those significant you know time
spent uh workflows today so
second thing with evidence.com
is
the complete unlimited cloud storage
the sieges
security provided by our partners
microsoft azure within their cg skills
lab
and
axons of security
so we're taking on the risk of you know
malware ransomware and housing and
protecting you know that precious asset
if you will
so
um
i'm going to move on to the next slide
that
automates the redaction so the blurring
of faces the ability to
frame by frame
track and ensure that an audio element a
screen is not part of the video
the solution goes as far as to use tools
we've test an ai engine just to go in
and identify certain things that are
majority
that are redacted such as faces
mdt screens
and license plates and it's going to go
do that huge time savings for those who
have to
you know manage through that
because we're cloud-based we're able to
introduce a lot of elements of
additional ways to get better richer
evidence faster while on scene
to better solve that
incident that murder would ever be much
quicker so
things like an app called axon capture
so additional photos and videos for
detectives can be captured
um this is a great tool during code
where we're doing you know
audio statements not having the person
come into the pd but then doing a front
portion of the phone there and having a
conversation you know social distance
that is part of this as well so we're
getting additional photos those offload
directly up into evidence.com
and then on the next slide
uh
capturing evidence again from that
bodega cctv from a suspect who may have
it on their phone we've got axon citizen
which will enable a very quick
on-scene through the mtt in the vehicle
or through a mobile app the ability to
send a text message or an email
you know auto-generated you know phone
number
to an individual that says thank you for
you know helping connect to dpd
you know share you unanimously if you
want more names this particular
um
incident you have on your phone you know
so previously taking that phone off of
that suspect that witnessed excuse me
taking that and having to upload it take
their phone giving it back um not a
process that anybody wants to go through
this is a quick tool that allows you to
send a text message they pick the one or
two pictures and they send it to you it
goes directly up as part of the case
within a matter of minutes while you're
still on scene or after the fact so that's a
um
a really really time savings you know
couple of click tool that has been just
a huge change
for agencies who are
not only just looking to go buy another
set of cameras those set of in-car but
really transform how they're doing
and managing digital evidence because
it's not going away it's only becoming
more burdensome in the amount of which
is out there and they are critical to
all cases
so
there's a process that agencies have
where
you know you've invested in body cameras
and car solutions
how do we know we're getting our money's
worth because how do we know it's being
used and typically it's a manual process
randomly we look at videos
see look at calls for service was there
videos that's time consuming in itself
we've heard from agencies can you
automate this and that's what actual
performance does it's
a analytics tool that sits over the
system that'll show you in real time
all your calls for service
but that's great show me all the calls
for service where there's no
corresponding body camera footage
who did not turn their you know camera
on and so you'll be able to see that
specifically from
the reports and for the analytics that
are provided through these interactive
dynamic graphs
also activation rates i'm getting kind
of in the weeds here but are the cameras
being used who's not leaving their
camera on full shift and who's turning
off a lot of times before they leave
between when they get back
who's not docking their cameras who's
not spark testing their teasers
and then it also
automates the video review process so
you know command needs to look at four
videos a month it'll automate that send
them an email pick those four randomly
and flow them through a review so
that is a you know a key metric for
understanding you know making this
investment how do we use it
i'm going to pass it over to
doug now just to cover a little bit
around taser 7. again
these are
deployed at a smaller number here
and you know along with the proposed
package would be you know providing
these a tool to all officers
the seventh generation of our taser
weapon
when we built taser 7 we built it on
three colors i'll touch on each of those
we built it first on
confidence next on connectivity and the
last on community so for confidence we
want to give our officers the best tool
that we have out there to give them the
confidence in the job effectively and
have the best in the escalation right
um this this taser is the first of its
kind to have two different types of
cartridges these cartridges can fire the
table between four and 24 feet
tasers in the past
the minimum distance to be fired was at
eight feet and as you can imagine
generally speaking our conversations are
usually between four and five feet so it
was uh something that needed to be
adjusted from the taser weapons
standpoint
um correctly that uh from a connectivity
standpoint
uh we finally have a rechargeable
battery right so these batteries will
last all five years it's a five year
life expectancy for our taser weapons uh
in the event that anything were to go
wrong with the batteries with the tasers
with the docking stations all of that is
covered with our full five-year warranty
uh this is also going to give each
officer their own taser right
we supply all the training cartridges
for the full five years for each officer
we include all of their duty cartridges
we include from the community standpoint
also so that's an afterthought we're
hooking new trainings to it's basically
a full velcro suit so we're doing
scenario-based training uh an officer
can approach i'm sorry as a
training officer can approach
uh an officer would say a knife or be
suicidal and we can do it through all
different types of drills when to use a
taser so when the time comes they can
actually use it in the field and have
more real-life examples
um
another thing i'll touch on here i think
the next one is probably the vr
so we tied together our virtual reality
training with our taser 7. so the
agency's current tasers actually already
work with our vr system
we have three different types of tools
that we that we built into our vr system
one is uh your basic
uh online based um
courses yeah about 45 minutes of each
one of our modules the different types
of modules we have vary anywhere from
schizophrenia to
uh to
uh
we have peer intervention uh
domestic violence our commitment to the
agency is to produce one of these every
single month uh so they're gonna get our
full library of uh virtuality
community-based training scenarios along
with that we'll also get our simulation
simulator modules so we create one of
those every two months and then we dump
it out to the agency so this is more
where it's instructor-led
oregon b
we have artificial intelligence that's
driving this so as you see the
instructor has a tablet
we can change it by gender race
have this be an assault no assault all
this is configurable within the system
we have
uh
virtual reality training cartridges that
will turn this case taser into a vr
taser
so it takes away the functionality of
the real world
makes it uh suitable just for the vr uh
the r world has anybody ever used a
personality that i thought should have
asked that
if you haven't you're important
experience we this is a great community
tool too because it gives you it gives
everybody the opportunity to really see
what our officers go through
and getting back to the community
engaged modules
our officers are going they're
experiencing what it's like to be
autistic or schizophrenic or
um
be hard of hearing right so they're
experiencing that for a couple of
minutes and then we flip it and they're
the opposite interacting with that with
that person so we're seeing it from both
lenses and it gives them that experience
it's it's great it's a great community
tool tool too
we've had agencies using in schools
at uh career days at fairs
just to you know give the public an idea
of who the police are working with on a daily basis
but
[Music]
short high level on the taser vr side
anybody any questions on the taser or vr
i kind of breeze through it but happy to
answer any questions
yeah
so um i've heard of instances where
tasers where people have health issues
and then they've been tased and had a
negative outcome yeah so
can you talk about
it's a great question so we
during the training there are certain
areas that are more suitable to be like
hit with a taser obviously the heart is
an area we want to stay away from the
neck the head area um
a little bit below the waist we want to
split the belt line so in a optimal
teasing
uh we want to essentially um
we're gonna we're gonna fire two darts
the one is from the top the one is from
the bottom i promise you after five
seconds you don't even know what hey
this camera turned on recording
everything's done
but i want to split the belt line right
so
one of the neat things with the taser
weapons is the only area that is
actually being locked up is the area
between where these two lasers are
everything else is a sympathetic
reaction i can tell you from experience
that you feel it from your head to your
toes but after the five seconds are up
it's five seconds from the time that the
trigger is pulled until the time it
stops
you really don't feel anything i mean
being a little sore from where the darts
hit um
but
everybody's going home
the only outcome is that and i'll bring
this up because
due to the question so when the subject
falls we've had instances um in that
regard where they fall and they hit say
a curb or concrete or if they're running
you know there's
obviously there's
optimal situations to tase in and
there's some that could be a little
questionable
but generally speaking that's where
we've seen some a lot of a lot of
dangers and if it were to hit the heart
there is a slight chance especially if
they have our condition but we train not
to
fire in certain areas um
another component of the virtual reality
this gives them the opportunity without
spending you know
loads of money on cartridges to be able
to fire a taser as many times as you
want and they get that training in a
virtual world
also with the simulation suit that
lawsuit
this gives them the opportunity to fire
live card which is in a live setting um
you know and training that platform
thank you yeah the question so i know in
previous models of the tasers it would
cycle so like you'd have like that five
seconds yeah then it would like maybe two seconds or something i
don't know what the time period is but
then it would like give another
uh so you can re-energize yeah we call
it re-energizing so it's gonna i'll show
you real quick here so
we have this built-in it's an automatic
shut-off for five seconds so if i pull
the trigger
it's probably a little hard to hear over
the bolts but you hear that little
beeping sound
now if i wanted to re-energize i can do
that it's gonna give another five
seconds
okay but you have to do that manually
correct and all of that is recorded so
you can go back in evidence.com and
anytime that trigger is full or even in
performance we've been spoken about
before uh we have four different types
of metrics that we record for the tasers
uh one is anytime it's taken off a
safety another time is any time the arc
switch is full this is the r switch
right here so this gives the officer you
know the opportunity to say uh taser
show the show the volts um all that's
recorded anytime i pull the trigger all
that's recorded and anytime i deploy the
cartridges that's required too
you said you got two different type of
cartridges yeah what's the difference so
i pull these out here
this is our close quarter cartridge so
that is designed to be fire between four
and ten feet
and then this is our standoff cartridge
they go together like legolas you can
just piece them together oh okay um just
the lighters have to be up but they uh
they stand out fires between 10 10 and
24 feet now i'll show you something neat
with this so if i put these in the taser
so i have my close quarter
loaded in day one sorry man i can use
you again
so we call this tilt select
so say uh i need to back up and pull out
a knife what i'm going to do is i'm
going to take the taser and i'm going to
tilt it to a quick 90 degree click on my
wrist pretty much
notice how those probes got tighter
now if i needed to advance on them i
could do the same thing here
now that i have the post quarter part
again
also that switch switched on switches
the cartridge itself yeah we toggle we can go back and forth
between cartridge base
um we see uh on the back which is our uh
our cid screen it shows a line under
which which bay it's in
is that an actual switch or just you
moving your wrist this is me moving
around you want to drive no it's pretty
neat
just a quick back start on this so the
taser has to be for the most part um
pretty upright and it has to be done
within a second and we do that in the
event that that officer was running with
a taser we can't do this by accident it
has to be a force movement
so do you have capability with the laser
to
tell the distance so the cartridge
shoots automatically the correct one not
yet so yeah that's refraining comes in
um generally speaking though if you have
you know agencies will load their
cartridges one way or another you're
either gonna load it both close quarter
both standoff
close quarters standoff or stand up
close quarter
it's for the most part that's the way
agencies set their cartridges up um if
i'm at 10 feet with a close quarter
cartridge you'll see i'm going to have
two and a half feet of probe spread
and that's going to be a pretty
difficult shot
now you're still hitting still be
effective now the nice thing with this
taser is this has two bays so in the
event that i even missed say if i missed
that right one see or
i'm sort of pointing the chief but
now if i missed that bottom one right
and then i fired the second bag
but i landed the bottom one there
so i fired i landed one on the top from
the first big one on the bottom from the
second bag
i just got to get out of the laser
after we just got lasik surgery two
weeks
but we'd still get a solid connection i
just need a positive and negative so
this gives our officers another
opportunity um
you know to avoid having to use uh
through the force right um this is
essentially the
in between of all that right we have
hands on we have a taser and we have
lethal force um
i have two two cartridges in my taser if
i'm able to
use the taser and avoid that another
pretty cool stat that we have that isn't
spoken about a lot
so
75 to 80 of all deployments nationwide
or taser uses uh nationwide are without
a trigger poll it's the presence of a
taser or just displaying the
um the electricity from the art switch
without having to pull the trigger
so it's only one in five and this is
from 25 plus years of data that we
collected
um
that we've compiled there
[Music]
so i definitely applaud your agency for
applying or
providing the community engagement
trainings i just wanted to know have
they been
approved or reviewed by any health care
institutions just for their authenticity
yeah we have a great question we have a
whole team of subject matter experts
from universities to police departments
retired sheriffs furnitures retired
chiefs current chiefs
professors from i think was it ucla i
think a few of them
but yeah there's a whole team of subject
matter experts that are getting all of
this information out we are eventually
going to be accredited we're able to use
this for actual training to receive
credit hours it's part of the roadmap we
so we just launched the simulator
portion we've had the community
engagement part out for about two years
now
the simulator we just wanted to make
sure it was perfect before we finally
launched it and we launched it a couple
weeks ago out of our uh you know the big
public safety conference called
accelerate up in arizona that just
officially launched it
so um
this is a little bit more about kind of
going back to the body cam because i'm
really impressed with the way they work
together i think that that's really great tool um
with the unlimited cloud storage
um that would
essentially say like officers can leave
their body cam on their entire shift
right like to wear a previously you
might have to be more mindful of that
right
correct
um
you're still definitely going to use
this camera and activate the camera for
the policy so the toss isn't necessarily
changed
because the storage program changes
but there could be it's full shift i'm
leaving on because i'm just over here on
a crime scene i'm
watching over something so i am going to
leave it on the entire time
and that's kind of the the glory that
fixed cost is that you can
you know operate the camera that
distance but typically because we have
the unlimited storage it doesn't really
change the policy as to where it has to
be activated when is it deactivated
that's all standard policy from the
agency
um and the statement
but yeah you could lean on
um
and whether it's the in-car the body
camera
all you know unlimited storage
with the alpr's do you have capability
put those in other city vehicles and
when
a hit it goes automatically to the pd
yes
and
would that be part of this package or
how much extra is that yeah so it's uh
currently scoped to the patrol vehicles
um you have to learn a little bit more
as to what you know vehicle we're
looking at we want to make sure
technically it has
um the components to support it just
then you know be able to include it in
there but yeah it could be you know our
parking vehicle
[Music]
i'm thinking garbage trucks they're
going around the city all the time
you know if there's a
accident yes but uh if there's a
hit on a warrant you know on a car
and do you have any data on the return
on investment on those aoprs
in terms of being able to maximize your
well usage and
the
you know the hits and the
arrests as well as maybe
parking fines and things along those
lines yeah it's a great question i have
to look into that i think that's usually
very agency's specific data they keep
that's just a matter of us
asking for that
um
but that'll be we could follow up on
that
and then
last question is do you have capability
for when an officer exits the vehicle
the camera turns on automatically
yeah we call that a door trigger
that's an option we've seen a lot of
canine because their hands are really
consumable
you know
the dog
the door triggers a possibility and that
case hasn't worked there what did you
talk about
for a second because on those lines
[Music]
yeah so talk about that automatic
obviously you can manually turn this on
and off that button automatic triggers
sort of shortness in that moment through
the taser holster the light bar door
trigger
because these are connected devices
we now have the ability through cad to
activate this specific to that officer
dispatched
juries to the call turn on
the devices he's locked into his body
camera and stable car
um
once we're dispatched those are actually
recording the second cat activation
would be through geofence as chief
mentioned so if the call for service is
at one two three main street uh we're
gonna put a bubble around two three main
street so we're gonna be in a quarter
mile from there coming in responding
everything will then start so we're not
missing
anything we're capturing everyone's
involvement
so
chief was talking earlier about the
current
about kids we have now and that they
run their life expectancy and they're no
longer under warranty the
what's you're seeing a five year uh
expectancy you know and what the devices
being under warranty for that entire
five years so our typical contract is
five years
the body camera life cycle two and a
half after that we start after two two and a half years we start to see
battery degradation in terms of not
being able to support that full twelve
hours with the prevent buffer so thirty
two and a half years on the body cameras
in car five-year life expectancy so what
you'll see is that five-year contract
two refreshes of the body cameras and
the dots so midway through right towards
the end and on the eight card you're
gonna see a refresh at your five
so then what about the warranty though
full five years of warranty on
everything
um the refresher started to get warranty
refreshes and in addition to that that
we call it the technical assurance plan
for sure will also include on-site
spares so officers never going out
without an operational camera so we'll
have spare cameras on site while these
are getting
swapped out is that great
and then refresh the next generation
so it's going to be the same generation
of refreshes next generation okay
refreshing the next generation
of the
body cameras these are body camera
threes
the next one will be 84 85 and then core
does your software integrate with the
esri system in order to have it
automatically downloaded and put into
that
which system esri gis
i'm not familiar with that it would
integrate with the calcium system
so in order to retract data we could
protect it from the pulsing system
so
you were saying that there's a mechanism
for a citizen you know they can get a
text message which is like for a lack of
version like a link for them to send in
photos or videos or something that they
witness
now that
is that link operates one way correct
like in other words like that link and
clicking that link isn't given
permission to access that citizens only
the photos and videos that they
completely one way and it expires
so from a generic you know 672 number
will make it up i'll get it click that
link and
provide that evidence they can't respond
to the officer's open communication it
will then you know expire and they'll
already be usable
what's that
what happens to all the video and data
that's uploaded into your system if
let's say after
the contract is over we decide to go a
different vendor what happens to that
yeah great question so everything we do
is nothing's proprietary um you own your
evidence
of all of your evidence is yours and so
you've got a couple of ways you can
download it so if you've got another
area you want to bring that into you can
do that you know that's at no cost we
also provide our api tools to you so
you've got another cloud provider you
can
with some simple you know empty
background through our tutorial
you'll move it that way the third and
that's at no cost the third way third
option is if you say you know exxon can
you help us roll up your sleeves what
would it cost for you know x amount of
days to help us move it from here to
here
um
that would be the cost option there
have a question about your taser yeah
well more about officer training so what
does the training look like and is there
something once they're trained that you know give them a test basically to
know that they
know how to use the problem no
absolutely so um training is once per
year uh for the taser 7 over the course
of the five years though at the minimum
have to fire 28 training cartridges
and they also have to do a written and
it's a comprehensive
portion back on it's we call it axon
academy so it's about four hours of
coursework um that is in addition to
firing the taser cartridges it's about a
full day
and so our current officers would just
would would be
would you get that too
yeah everybody that carries a taser has
to do this once per year
in order to be able to carry a taser now
the nice thing is with that vr system
that's in addition to all of this too so
they can just put a headset on and
be in a variety of different situations
where it could be from a traffic stop to
a drug overdose it's in there and you
know it could be even at fire you know
we have different levels for the firing
range we have an actual range then we
have um
different types of threats that could be
involved uh to raise the skill level
that would be needed uh for the taser
audience
thank you someone else mr williams uh so
councilman patrick and i had the
opportunity to attend your brief
training earlier and definitely
appreciate you providing them with us
access i wanted to know if chief
clifford or acc or if you're able to
talk to something that's an important
component of it the administrative time
that's saved where we traditionally
think of police officers responding to
events but definitely there is a
workload of paperwork that's attributed
and how this will help with some of that
workload
i'll touch on the teaser part real quick
here so on the
every previous generation taser it was
just like herself on it every to do an
update we had to plug it in our
recommendation was to do quarterly
updates uh if there was ever an incident
with a taser where there's a malfunction
first thing our tech support team is
going to ask is when was the last time
you updated the firmware software right
just like your phone if you don't do it
if you want the software on the computer
it starts to
be a little wonky the way it works right
so the nice thing about our taser
whether it's new ones
there's no more plugging in and doing
any of that with rechargeable battery
when they're put in the docking station
we're getting automatic software and
firmware updates and they're done our
recommendation is to dock these once per
month so they're getting 12 updates over
here so it's always going to be optimal
what the health
for our weapons
on the body camera side they're all body
camera and the fleet in there as well
uh traditionally when you work
technology it's always additional work
and time
and so what we've done is kind of with
this and our software as part of the
package is the other areas in which we
give that all of our time back so for
example
this camera after a traffic stop
interaction when the officer walks back
to the vehicle and has evidence.com up
he can see the transcript of what
unfolded
um
so he can you know better understand you
know exactly what was said what he said
and what the suspect said
driver
um but then it also provides you know
them the ability to
talk to
the camera before they can talk to the
mdt
to write their reports so typically this
is a process where they you know write
you know
what happened what was said and like
writing they saw what they smelled they
can talk to the mdt it's going to
transcribe what they're saying and copy
and paste it put it into the record
and
um
so we're talking about saving a ton of
time the auto tagging feature typically
that's you know my body camera i got
attacked back got my main car i got
tagged that and then the back seat video
that attack that is rolled
this lumps it together and then it gets
auto tagged auto tagging saves about 200
per month per officer
um
from our case studies on that you have a
tagging piece and then it really gets
into the time to redact
so an hour's worth of footage takes
eight hours to redact to the point we
can hand it over
the ai tools have really brought that
down to you know two hours
to be able to you know fully adapt that
and then it's really around the evidence
sharing
elements where you're able to share
these large case files without going to
all these different silos and different
codecs and burning and dvds and thumb
drives that are driving them around
where it's brought in in any format
brought in here through part and
evidence
create the case right click and you can
share it inside the agency with
the va
so um
around your uh the virtual
reality trainings and
those scenarios i know that you know the
chief has been working um
hard to
make sure that
officers are going through you know
anti-bias training
do you know any of the partners that
you're working with from the university
have you know has there been any
intentional um uh development as far as
early you could switch race switch
gender um you know is that is there any
intentionality around not reinforcing or
perpetuating existing biases that happen
that can have disproportionate outcomes
i have that you know doug's on the cusp
of that with teaser in the er
yeah
to answer your question i mean we're
constantly coming out with new modules
and one of the nice things with the
system uh
we're taking feedback directly from our
customers and creating these modules
based on what
they're asking to be presented right so
i'll bring up a couple years ago there
was a lot of protests and
um
situations like that we were able to
create a module
30 days we had one out um
based just on that right and the same
thing
is current events pop up um you know it
could be uh yeah peer-to-peer is another
one and you'll i don't know if uh you
noticed on the slide before but we had
we haven't broke the three now period of
here uh intervention once so
just to kind of keep it you know keep it
moving and change it up so it's a little
different module
one thing to know on the community
engagement side too so these are real
people in in real world settings um the
simulator side is they're all animated
cool thing with it though is
we're able to create literally unlimited
outcomes with it we're on the community
engagement side these are fixed outcomes
it's kind of like choose your own
adventure if you will
we have
it'll pause and you'll have three
different outcomes that you can choose
each one is going to bring you down a
different path so each one of those
community engagement modules has about
30 different ways it could play out um
and they're all
eight to ten minutes long so you know an
officer could throw a headset on during
roll call as they're waiting in line
with these taser research you know a
number of situations um but yeah it's
your point though um
our library is constantly expanding and
we're trying to hit on some of the most
important topics right now and obviously
that's gonna be you know one of them for
sure so
not out yet but probably within you know
i'd say within the next six months for
sure they're pumping things out pretty
quickly we get an email every single week with
uh with our new hires and all these
engineers on our vr team are based up in
seattle
kind of like the tech capital of the
country anywhere right
and half of these new hires are your
team so it's just growing at a rapid
pace right now
um
so what are your camera capabilities
with drones and or remote control
vehicles and also do your
cameras pick up heat signatures
so the body cameras
and the in-car cameras and their gamers
don't pick up heat signatures
um
but what about drones or the remote
controls
are the latest generation of that so
we've got a partnership with dji
um as well as uh there are two other
photo kite and
skydio girls so the three main events
we're like we are long
premiere provider for that on top of
those best and brief technologies that
include infrared clear
rapid deployed smaller deployed drones
or larger
drones
we provide
many many options on the hardware side
we layer on top of that
our drone sense software
and so it feeds and uploads and live
streams directly to evidence.com on the
backend so it's just another large area
of digital evidence that's
right now very you know hot you know for
search and rescue for patrol that you
know when you're having a protest
in body cameras you can really see where
things are moving get ahead of them
all on our axon respond which is where
the live streaming evac playback is i'm
making
deployment into a building pick up a
heat signature find out where maybe
there's weapons
we're doing it today
with our solution so
that's absolute ability
any other questions
people want to wrap it up yes
so
one of the reasons why we're here today
with this presentation is that
on an individual basis body cameras in
car videos
training
we we've already come to the council
we've already spoken to the mayor about
funding for each individual one bringing
this all together under one platform
you know the mayor and i spoke about
transparency as being a part of our
police reform
commitment
that we agreed uh that the council
passed over a year and a half or about a
year and a half ago so that's the reason
why we're here today uh discussing this
is that
we want to be fully transparent um about
where we're going with this technology
and why
and i really appreciate all the
questions and the engagement here and
any feedback that we can receive thank
you thank you thank you everybody
thank you
get out in time i'll come over and try
the taser
can we do finance and government
yes okay so um mr muveira has to leave
as well so first we'll do finance then
we're gonna move to government ops
because then it'll be on the two of us
on the committee so um go ahead
order finance committee the first item
is the 2022 budget amendment for the
fire department chief mourinho
[Music]
so here tonight to speak to everyone
about our arts indication
just a little background the artisan
division right now is a four-person
division
there's a deputy chief of two tenants
and a firefighter
all of them either are or will be
full-fledged partisan investigators
so uh when we get a fire now we'll call
in one of the arts and investigators
and um
two of them are current one's a
firefighter i will command and the other
one is a lieutenant
there are times when that firefighter
needs to make some decisions
and it's not at his authority level
so we may have to call in the lieutenant
or the deputy chief
to make those decisions
so we propose to change that
firefighter's position's title
from a firefighter and make that
position of lieutenant's position
it makes sense it gives that person
the authority to do the investigation
without additional help there are times
he still will need to bring in another
investigator depending on the scope of
the investigation
currently the person that's in the
firefighter's position has been there
a good 12 years if not longer
highly qualified
he does besides the partisan part of his
duties are
special operations
now i don't
when we make this position we'll have to
go up for promotion
that person is on the list he's number
one
not saying he's going to be promoted um
because we have other people that we
have to interview also
because the person doing the job now has
been doing it a long time highly
qualified he's up for promotion
maybe he makes a promotion
the main thing we're asking is that we
change that position from the
firefighter to lieutenants
will save us a little money
finance uh
informs me that it's budget it's a
budget neutral right now so it's not
going to be an impact
so that's what i'm here to propose
chief under the revised budget uh filled
number of months can you address the 0.5
1.25 position
[Music]
yeah it's happening right yes
because we're already into the year it's
june by the time this happens so there
is a
between the lieutenant and the
firefighter there's a differential it's
an eight percent differential
so that position now will receive more
money than he would as a firefighter
okay it's only a half a year that's why
there's a differential but
speaking with finance director
he feels we feel that
by making that person a lieutenant not
having to call him additional help could
be some savings in in overtime
and we're not talking a lot of money
we should
the next item is the 2022 budget
reappropriation for the code enforcement
department mr lam
thank you council
i'm proposing to put on a full-time
assistant building inspector for uh code
enforcement
currently we're running uh an assistant
that's a part time three days a week and
not here from november until january
um he's actually just put in his
resignation so
we really need to have a back up for my
uh position
and here some somebody that's
responsible here
when i'm not
available
it's budget neutral
go ahead please
um so you're moving
someone from a code enforcement officer
to this position is that correct
uh
we're going to look at the best
candidates
well i don't mean a specific person i
just meant generally so um how does
first of all are there currently um 10
code enforcement officers do your
current other positions all filled
no there should be 14 but now there's
six okay so there's six currently so
losing one will do what to
the
person who the you know the staff of
co-enforcement out there doing the work
i mean they're all doing work but you
know actually going so so this this
person will actually be out he'll be
working at the until until we become
full capacity they'll still be doing
other work as a code officer
but assuming responsibilities and you
know moving up into a manageable
position
[Music]
until we fill up you know make the
appropriate appeals
thank you
any other questions
all in favor aye thank you
the next item is allocating twenty
thousand cdbg slash cv3 funding to feed
albany inc mccarthy
thank you mr chairman uh these requests
brought forth to me were feed albany
it's an
acronym involved out of covet where the
kitchen and always preparing meals for
communities across the capitol district
some of the information is detailed in
the
narrative that's provided
the program in schenectady will run out
of money roughly at the end of this
month
and so
the uh
twenty thousand dollars is an amount
that would get it through
the end of the year
allowing them to uh
again continue at the level that they've
been doing
for
the last year and a half
go ahead
somewhere at some point i'm going to get
a more inclusive name
i'm sorry at some point we'll get a more
inclusive name uh they are looking to uh
rebrand that
uh my name is matthew peter i'm
president of the board of food albany um
we were asked to come to schneckte about
a year and a half ago by the samantha
police department which we had
established this program um at the very
beginning of coded
specifically it started off with
foreign restaurant employees who were
laid off we were very worried about that
i'm actually the county legislator who
represents luxury in albany so i met
with some restaurant owners we started
preparing meals so that those who are
very dependent on
you know daily income while they're
waiting for unemployment weren't going
hungry at the same time we started
hearing about uh people in
eastern albany the only housing
authority where people were stuck in
dorsey couldn't get out to get food they
can get nutritious meals and we want to
focus on that and then about a year into
our work
after we were established 501c3
we were reached out to you by cnxdpd and
been working with them on two different
uh styles one is the curbside program
we're already doing deliveries right so
we're based out of albany but we're
making delivery specifically with albany
med's cancer survivorship program
um for those who are suffering from
disabilities who need meals
and so we expanded the program and we
also are connected with schenectady
community college with their culinary
program and we work with them union
college students help us deliver the
meals and obviously the semester police
department is key
the long basically we got hit sort of in
a triple factor which is why we're sort
of asking some of our partner
communities for help
one
when we started we were mostly volunteer
we had volunteer cook
we have volunteer cooks we have massive
donations of food from cisco and things
of that nature
and then since then we now pay
you know some people we have to pay for
all the food and food prices to come
about 20
we do pay a part-time chef we are
obviously a volunteer board no there's no payment there but we
basically have three part-time employees
a part-time chef a part-time executive
director as well for their finance
boards up and our part-time volunteer
coordinator
distribution of meals and getting that
there so we're a pretty bare bones
organization but we've had to make the
choice that as donations have decreased
both financially and in food we've had
to make the difficult decision that we
have to start going to a core mission of
how we can continue doing this for as
long as possible
because the need specifically wants food
and security is not going away
it's just that it's not on people's mind
as much
so this is going to allow us to move
forward but um
to your point
the long-term goal is to have each of
these sort of sub-branches start being
independent if we can establish it so
there might be like a feed capital
region or fetal umbrella but there would
be a feed schenectady as long as we can
get our feet under us
in the short term we've applied to
senator schumer's office for federal
grants and we've been looking to work
with the seneca police department the
mayor and obviously the common council
that we're successful in establishing
the presence to make it long-term viable
the reason we came here is we also get
approximately fifty thousand dollars um
in federal grants actually from the city
of albany and we thought that was a way
that we could continue doing this in a
sustainable way while we also
fund raising problems
thank you
[Music]
i just want to you know say that it's
been such a phenomenal success the
program and i know i think that
councilwoman de toro
um but just thank you for you know
everybody that stepped up to the plate
at the beginning
uh
you know two and a half years ago and
thank you to our uh police force and
volunteers
it's a team effort though you know we've
i think we've since the starting we had
about 600 000 meals yeah
it's
[Music]
well it's just you know such a great
example of people just identifying a
need and immediately
you know responding to it instead of you
know
having to figure it out and you know
that kind of thing it's just been
phenomenal that's what we're gonna have
we're gonna get it out there
go ahead please
just
so um so every week we go we set up the
meals
different setup locations there's
certain locations that are definitely
more warranted as far as need than than
other locations on front of vale
cemetery it's been one of our our
biggest outlets there and then christina
always brings there's all kinds of fresh
produce and bread and then we even have
mike
from
st luke's food pantry
every week he brings us
food and goodie snacks
and then christine takes some of those
back to feed albany and then the
bethesda house we drop off
meals there and whatever is left the
officers bring down to summit
towers just to put in the community room
and they make the announcements there so
it definitely gets around the city all
the food yes
and the kids love the police officers
so when the officers are there and they
come up and they talk to them and show
them the lights on the cars sticker
matches they love stickers
but it's there's definitely a need in
our community for this
so it's
sometimes 145 meals a week um
yeah i think we're just connecting alone
i think we're up over 6500 meals so far
that we paid it out
and that program from i think we started
out with nine
uh people going through chemo and like
um disabilities like just general
disabilities they couldn't get out um
you know anywhere from immunocompromise
to like i said
chemo radiation therapies and that's up
to over 80 some odd meals that we're just
personally delivering out
to those individuals in the city
yeah it's approximately 125 250 meals
per side and then approximately 80 meals
every week to those individuals who are
as
we talk about
compromised individuals and things of
that nature
and that's how i first started was just
going delivering to them to the people
like oh they invite you in they want to
talk um you know you just sit with them
that's an important part of it you know
they they await the the coming others
are like leave them out just leave them
on the porch cover it with a topic okay
but thank you it really is like just to
see like people's faces and just to
interact with with the community it's huge that alone i think is
wonderful
but
it's i mean it really
it would be a pity to see this fall by
the way
um so definitely uh i know we're talking
about the contribution that the city can
make but i don't know if you've reached
out to the school district definitely
superintendent solay is actively working
on implementing a community schools
model where this very much i think could
be something that they can undertake so
i don't know if you have established
communication probably definitely
we haven't yet but we are working on
that as part of the next step as we
expand we want to sort of make sure to
see who our partners are to start with
um where we can afford you know be next
year as we're getting these grants more
cash flow issue until those grants come
in and then we'll be looking to say okay
you know one of the big ones we have in
albany is the city housing authority and
they help direct distribute the school
districts are a big one that we're
looking to we work with some of the
charter schools specifically so we'll
reach out as well as the state of albany
public schools so it's definitely
something to be interested in christine
also has she has coped so she can't be
here unfortunately
but she's reached out to the
senator todisco and told me about the
wright family so they're yeah they're
reaching out for them and to
disconnect foundation as well so they're
they are working on that
[Music]
aye thank you
take care
you pop up an app store
okay i would like to call government ops
to order one item discussion filling
vacant position on the city workforce
mr field thank you so we talked about
this a few weeks ago um and we came up
with some things that we were going to
do part of which was um
working with uh marianne and hr to make
sure we knew what the job opportunities
were
uh which we have done and she actually
was at the green market uh this the
second sunday handing out applications
there's a they've created a flyer with a
qr code letting people know you know the
jobs that are available
and as you heard um earlier we that our
code department is down people and
that's just happening all over um
all over the city
but not only that i was watching the
news where there's airlines that are
grounding flights because they just
don't have enough staff so this is not
something that just is happening locally
and um so i just thought we should need
to talk about how
we could address that um this this
particular topic has come up numerous
times in these conversations so i
thought i should bring it to this table
currently um if you're a resident of if
you want to work for the city of
schenectady you have to actually reside
in the city of schenectady
and so the question comes up do we
expand that to the county
we actually have lost people to other
municipalities within schenectady county
because you don't have to live in
rotterdam to work in modern day we've
left they'll have people leave who work
for the city to work in rotterdam
because they didn't you know
there may be have been other reasons but
that stipulation wasn't there so it
didn't
make them stay in schenectady so um
in talking with staff just to be uh to
be completely transparent um
conversation's been brought up more than
one time so i thought it was something
that we should discuss and talk about
how we can make sure that we get our
workforce
um
back up to what to be in in terms of
considering considering people having
residency within the county and not just
within the city
the county itself did something similar
to this a few years ago and one of the
stipulations that they did have was that
if um let's say a person tested and at
all things being equal
that the person in the and one within
the city and one in the county the
person of course that lives in the city
would um be their chosen candidate so
i just kind of opened that up for
discussion i'm not even sure what it
takes to get us there but i think it's
something that we um we really want to
consider and i'm sure that the mayor has
made an opinion on that but as i said
it's been brought up to me numerous
times
and um
so thought it's something we should
discuss if we're really um you know
serious about making sure that we
be able to employ people um that we need
to employ
so
mccarthy is a residency board um
functioning that's my time
there is not a residency board per se
it is if there's an issue that comes
up upon the residency board
and
conveniently
hearing a review
on that status
is this something that you can consider
on a case-by-case basis is there an
application in and somebody is
considered to be suitable for a position
to waive that residency
it has been done in the past on a
case-by-case basis
the uh
one was done when we took the
uh
wastewater treatment back in house
where
farmed out and the olia had it so there
was no residency requirement brought
those people in they weren't held to the
residency requirement
since then the only one that i have uh
gone for a waiver was judge eidens when
i appointed him a
public safety commissioner
he was a little bit older
like life lived in glenville and
was
not interested in moving but
served with distinction i didn't go for
the residency way when that i've not
done that for
commissioner devine
so i'm not sure he technically needs to
need to seize only part-time
and again
but would look at it on a get a
case-by-case basis
and just uh you know
so thank you to whoever update the
website most of the positions are there
so thank you whoever did it
well mary and you're making sure
so that was good and i recorded i shared
it to all my contacts and i encourage
everyone please go on there and share it
and
getting hits
and i'm encouraging people to submit
their resume directly
for each of their positions so
agree um but but my my point really was
us do this overall not by a case-by-case
basis that means every single person
that um that wants to employ the mayor
has to you know look at every single
application
uh every single person that that doesn't
live in the city that lives in the um
county and i'm not sure what the
criteria is
um in terms of the case by case well one
reason was you know the marriage escaped
that the person was older their wife
didn't want to move makes sense you
don't want to sell your house to if
you're at the place where you're going
to be retiring in a couple years anyway
so
but i just really want us to consider
it more broad term
so the question is have been have we
been receiving resume from
residency outside of connectivity
we on a routine basis get applications
for individuals who do not live within
the city of schenectady current code
allows me to appoint
anyone independent of their place of
residency but they're required to move
within the city within six months of
appointment
so i think when and we've heard this
instance multiple times just tonight to
reference something that was recent with
the chris talking about the code
enforcement having sis off six officers
out of 14. i don't know how you can
routinely expect them to perform to the
highest degree when just they're that
understaffed
i want to be
aware that there may be other
considerations that i'm not aware of as
a new council member but to me i would
either recommend temporarily suspending
it at least until we can get our
departments either fully staffed or
whether we can identify uh departments
that are in critical standing but of
getting them to a standpoint where they
are functional
whether we define like a 75
what have you um or permanently deleting
it or permanently doing away with it the
only reason why i recommend that is uh
it seems that we are trending in a
direction with with staffing that is not
in line with things that have previously
worked
i don't think that this is an instance
where schenectady isn't
being
promoted as a ideal living situation and
i recognize that our city is making
efforts to present itself as an ideal
destination for for families but it
doesn't seem to be in place a
effective mechanism that has a pipeline
to staff these departments and the one
thing that i would hate to see is
that exiting to continue and then we'd
be at one or potentially departments
that are not stopped
that's one question from mr coleman
if you want to suspend
this requirement do we need a call for
public hearing if you're looking to
temporarily change the code yes because
that's essentially what it is yes
you would um i mean the current
mechanism in place for somebody who
doesn't reside in schenectady would be
to seek a waiver as provided in the city
of god
please
so what would residents say thank you
carl for all that but what would you
know that do to our schools and our
community and
you know we just be a destination to
come and work and everybody leaves right
after work
i i don't know i just i i don't agree
with it but i think we're in a position that everyone across
america is in i probably everyone's
departments are low you know i don't
know but again
you know we want to build our home sales
and our schools and our community
um
you know like downtown albany you know
it's
that people are all over um that's why
people are looking different ways to
handle it and so um there are places
that other you know who have opened up
like like for the housing authority let
me give you an example before you only
could live in schenectady county they've
changed it now that if you live in
contiguous counties you are you can work
for them so because it's a problem
that's ongoing
we have to approach it in a different
way and um i understand what you're saying i'm not
sure if i have really the same concern i
don't anticipate people move out of the
city and all of our school districts
will go on and in terms of the school
district in order to work for the school
district you do not have to live in the
city you don't even have to live in the
county so we already have people that
come here to teach in our schools that um you know they teach
um and i'm gonna say i know a lot of
them that are still committed to our
students etc they come they teach in the
schools and then they go home because we
just didn't have enough of a pool to
draw from in terms of our school
district so i think we're almost in the
same situation now
so just a follow-up on the application
that we cut some of the application that
we have for a non-resident
can consideration be given to look into
them and apply the waiver
uh we we'd like to uh if they're
qualified yeah as you're qualified you
know we would like to bring them to the
mirror but uh a lot of times because of
the six months rule that we have people
automatically tell us well i i only have
like two more years of the pay of my
house i'm not gonna move in the city in
six months so you know we have to
disqualify them because they tell us up
front they're not coming in but you know
what we need to do is cast a bigger net
around the continuous uh counties and
stuff like that so that we can get the
best possible workers or uh that you
know that applied for each position uh the city is connected you know we've been trying like you said we we
have all those job openings and and we
always go out we try to tell everybody
about these jobs we just can't get the
right qualifications uh to meet with
them but if we can cast a bigger net
we'll be able to get more applications
and more people in i also believe that
uh people who do not live in the city
right now start working in the city and
seeing what the city has to offer they
eventually will move into the city but
you know to be an option to get him here
first is through uh through uh uh
employment
and like it says throughout the country
employment is hard to find
so we're even we're making our
employment status even smaller by
casting that small net right in our
little city
so we need we need to make it bigger to
get better employees
i mean for andrew so what about the
employees that already live in the city
i mean would they be able to move out of
the city now
if something like that came about
presumably if we were to remove the
restriction that somebody who's employed
by the city or somebody who seems to be
employed by the city doesn't have to
live in the city
then
yes you that the potential is there for
that
go have kids
it's an extremely hard thing to
administer
i firmly believe in the residency
requirement
there is a provision
most people when they are hired
pre-signing a resignation if they move
out of the city if i enforce those
your staffing levels would be critical
today we get by
um yeah i'm sure that so you know but
without that being mirrored that means that that
wouldn't even be a concern because as
long as they're in the county i just
want to be clear i'm not talking about
other counties i'm not talking about
somebody moving to albany school i'm
talking about expanding um
at least to the county and see how we do
in terms of
um getting more employees and as mr
ferrari said just cast your bigger net
so talking about the county of
schenectady
you said we already have people who are
in that situation
that's what i'm hearing
yes they
don't live in the city uh
maintain a paper residency or
in other ways have created a charade
that
complies with the current residency
requirement
good
so
one of the major criticisms of the
school district is
our teachers aren't living there
and
they take our tax money and they leave
and that doesn't mean they're not
dedicated to students but they're not
dedicated to our community
and that's a detriment
similarly we could have a situation
where our workers do leave
there needs to be something in place
if we're going to do this where
there's skin in the game
if you're living in the city you're
contributing to the community you're
contributing to
the tax base
if you're not living here then there
should be some sort of
eight ten thousand dollar
less
pay or something
to compensate for that incentive and
there needs to be an incentive to
move here and be part of our community
that gets
the umbrella wider but it also puts the
playing ground at an even
keel for the workers who
are in our city and are dedicated so any
new employees that don't live in the
city should have some sort of
penalty and
i understand there's
contractual
issues related to that
but uh
i firmly believe that that needs to be
in place
so if you're
segments what you're saying i don't
think financially penalizing people to
be involved in the community
means to long-term successful impacts
part of the reason why my family moved
back is because we wanted to
and i will entirely bet on the fact that
the
ambitions of mayor mccarthy the
ambitions of superintendent soler will
yield people wanting to buy into the
fact that schenectady is a thriving
community and i think if we are then
compared to other cities
and someone chooses somewhere else
we need to honestly look introspectively
and say is there anything we could have
realistically done better and if it's no
then accepting that but whenever we have
our parades downtown whenever we have
our uh sunday events in downtown
connecticut i'm asking people candidly
do you live in our community and when i
hear no i thank them for patronizing our
businesses and let them know that we do
have houses that we do have safe and
successful neighborhoods and they should
choose us
and i think that that is the aim that we
need to take on
so i just want to follow back and just
clarify just so we're having the
residency is that for six months only
is that for a period of six months only
waving residency
i would have to convene the residency
review board they would have to vote a
waiver the city council can change the
actual code and that weaver doesn't have
the limitation
of whatever you enacted
no currently
what we have currently if you were to
wave the residency
is there a timeline
is that permanent i believe that it's
permanent like it's great
i suppose the residency review board
could
do a limited waiver but the ones
have been done on a permanent basis a
section of code to review if i'm sorry
the section of code to review on this is
87-6.1
and the sub-sections
that goes through you know the
procedures and the um
the considerations
uh for granting a waiver
yeah i think i personally think that we
should look at the waiver based on the
application coming in and if there are
non-residency we can look at the you
know application they're qualified look
at waving the residency
because we we need to increase the
workforce and we need to do something
good sorry a couple of issues i i think
and just to twist that around i think
the idea of giving an incentive to
someone that's living in the city versus
penalizing somebody you know that's not
so i think i i i hear what you're both
saying i like the idea of giving an
incentive to someone and many of us have
that at different workplaces over the
years where you look at health insurance
for example are you going to accept the
health insurance okay or if you don't
accept the health insurance hey we'll
give you an extra two thousand dollars
in your salary because it's saving the
organization so i mean there's ways to
play around with with that as well um
i personally
feel the same way you want people to
live here we want this we want people to
recognize what a fabulous place this is
to live and there and i think that more
and more people are figuring that out i
would like to know
whether i mean because we all have
identified that the workforce issue in
our country
is just
you know i mean why are people not
applying for all the jobs there's
millions of jobs available um and folks
just aren't even like stepping up to the
plate to try to apply for the job so i
guess i'd want to dig a little deeper
and know is it because somebody doesn't
want to come and live in schenectady or
is it that we're just not getting
applications uh in general you know
because when people see that
they don't even
okay yeah
so we wouldn't have high data on that
actually yeah so that's that's one thing
i want to say and i also think that
um i can see a difference between for
example an 18 an hour
um you know person who's going to be
working on a garbage truck versus um
someone that's coming to work in our
corporation council office at a much
higher salary i mean i'm just saying i'm
just trying to bring up issues that i
think would all have to be um
considered in this in this as a broader
topic that
you know i think flexibility around
someone that's making 18 an hour
and maybe doesn't want to move here um
to make 18 an hour
versus
you know someone else's salary so i
think it's i think there's a lot of
levels
um it's like peeling the onion back uh
in terms of in terms of this issue
go ahead i know that currently if
there's someone that we really need to
fill at a higher level um that that the
mayor is willing to you know and has
considered people just because if we
can't find someone not only want a name
position but a particular position um
that requires a certain skill set it's
that um that that person
you know um probably may consider us
like there was a woman who did work for
um
our assessment assessment and she didn't
live in the city i believe she had a
waiver at some point because she brought
the skill set that we needed to the
table so i think
it's kind of like a little bit different
than what you're saying actually because
the people with the highest salary with
the
specific skill set i'm more inclined to
be able to get the waiver as the people
at the uh 18 an hour
because it's a skill set that may be
difficult to find within the city
i'm saying we need both though just so
you know
like clearly
i think we were talking about somebody
working the assessment so i was
appointed by a prior administration who
did not have a waiver and i did not
reappoint that person
go ahead please
have we ever considered i don't know but
raising our
pay scale
okay we have well we have okay
maybe we should consider it again thanks
for bringing that up
but
just talking about incentive i think in
our last year's budget there is a
discretionary line
towards amazon budget to use
as an incentive to attract
but i did
attempt to hire an individual used all
that money and put some other money on
the table and still was not able to hire
the person
so does that mean that we should be
looking i'm sorry don't go ahead that
means we should be looking at ourselves
there are other factors that play there
so um you know i i think it's something
we really should consider currently our
police officers don't have to live in
the city our chief does
so
mayors are cheap he lives in the city so
um so i think that it's something we
should consider if we want to really
build our workforce back
and i to your point um ms patrick i i
agree that we should incentivize people
that already live here
um maybe maybe um
not penalized incentivized so maybe
really increase the salary for people
that already live here and the other
people just come in currently so i think
that it's a lot to think about but i
definitely believe it's something we
should think about
to figure out how to um increase our
workforce and get
people here
go ahead please
in uh just in
general information my
last conversation with paul milton at
ellis madison ellis and that was
four weeks ago five weeks ago they were
down 500 positions on a workforce that
is
3200
normal staffing
and so and that's across the board so
it's
higher level medical people it's uh
administrative people
lab technicians
everybody so again it's not unique just
what the conversation has been
it's a national phenomenon now where
there are a lot of openings out there
how do you
match people up to it and create that
workforce development that
gives us people to
fill the slots a lot of things that ron
gardner is doing
you know they're not
[Music]
quick but i believe they're going to be
long-term solutions that'll give us
quality and uh
highly skilled people that are motivated
to do the right thing and be
part of the bigger ecosystem we've all
talked about this narrative here the
good things that are happening
in schenectady now and we want to
continue
i think we need quick now though
so you know i mean i think even if it's
temporarily but we definitely need to
and as i know that it's happening all
over the country so the question for me
becomes what do we do to remedy it for
us
and you know how do we look at that so
ellis is another employer and of course
they're in the city but they're people
everybody in the city council could just
give me one name so i'll get seven
resumes
so then then our code department will be
filled and then what about the other
side well no not just codes i'll
restrict you can give me a police officer a
firefighter boat officer
the police fire don't have to live in
the city
let's say you also have a penalty for
not living in the city firefighters are
exempt by state laws
only for five years
please help us
so
well i'm definitely i want to look at
the code
87-6.1 to see you know about that but i
think that we really should
really give some consideration even if
we do it on a temporary basis or if we
say
i mean i know that it's up to the mayor
to like interview everybody so do is
there
i guess we need to have that discussion
with you in terms of if everything was
equal and residency was the only issue
if that would just be someone that you
would be willing to hire i think that
that's important for us to to have that
conversation as well
so and
to your point um i don't know what that
does for people who
live in the city if they want to move
out of the city so i think it's a lot to
consider but i
strongly believe we need to consider it
because our workforce is down and you
know all the departments that um that
i've spoken with
has you know how they're running on a on
a shoestring basically and everybody's
understaffed so
what can we do to remedy that to make
sure that our staff is uh
you know just not so overworked
so i will look at the code and mr coldin
um you know i'll have those discussions
with you and then we can bring you back
to the council what's currently here
and um if the residency if it means the
residency board needs to be called
well definitely you know we would have
to work on that
any other questions on this so we'll
bring it back in two weeks be back in
two weeks okay
motion to return
so i'd like to call to the order of the
public safety committee we have two
items that will follow us the first is a
discussion reducing city limit to 25
miles an hour and i'll be talked to my
company
thank you
um well
[Music]
as you know the um
state assembly and senate have passed
what we asked for
um i think last year was that mr
palamani um had asked
had brought forward i think in the last
couple of years you brought forth
something two years ago and then last
year last year was to go to the state to
ask that we would get the ability to be
able to um
lower the speed limit within the city
the 25 miles per hour so although that
has that's now awaiting
on the governor's signature
uh for that and i don't know when that
might happen but i
asked to meet with the mayor and the
chief and uh our assistant chief
and mr coluccio uh last week so that we
could start talking about some of the
issues that would be involved in
reducing the
speed limit to 25 miles per hour we've
certainly heard from our residents um
whether it be the
sun the united neighborhood association
or just i'm sure uh it's definitely i'm
getting calls i got
emails and calls today um but every week
probably all of us are hearing from
residents about the speeding issues that
are happening in the city as a major
quality of life issue and a safety issue
obviously for for our pedestrians as we
start to think about
i shouldn't say start to think about but
as we continue to think about making the
city more walkable and more bikable um i
mean this plays into that safety aspect
as well
so
i'm bringing it forward i would like to
recommend that we actually do
reduce the
speed limit to 25 miles per hour within
the city um also we do have the
assistant chief and we have mr cruzo
here um who could speak
to their side of what they think
regarding
the signage and everything that would go
into that uh change as well as the
enforcement issues so if we could maybe
ask them to come forward
sure sure
so yes
we did a defending defend keeping um
database of science since about 1999
you know an actual database we have
files for all the city streets but in
the database and there's been about
141 um
30 mile an hour speed limits uh in that
database
uh installed repaired replace so
if we added an estimate to that
maybe we're talking 200 signs that would
have to be replaced someplace in that
vicinity because you know you're going
to get requests for additional signs
um
you know over what we have now
so we're estimating around forty dollars
a sign or something around there prices
go up horribly and take forever to get i
think we're probably
um if we were going to do this
i think we're talking three to four
months at least
um
maybe around ten thousand dollars that's
what i'm estimating um
for the signs and
some of the installation
we talked with the mayor he was we
talked about uh refurbishing signs and
yes we can do that but
i know we need to do this on a
rather quick basis so that we don't have
mixed 25s and 30s up in the city which
will be very confusing um
and that size sign we actually can use
for other signs that we have out there
so i'm not um concerned about wasting
the metal if you will we resurface most
of our signs
so um yeah
so it's certainly something we can do
my own couple of comments um
very difficult to enforce the 30 mile an
hour speed limit we have out there so i
don't want anyone to be
the solution that 25 is going to be any
easier to enforce um
you know it's a feel-good thing i think
that's certainly important that we're
looking in the right direction
but it is going to take enforcement and
maybe that's something that we need to
consider as far as
some additional dollars for
some of that enforcement right off the
bat to make sure that
you know we start off in the right
direction we didn't talk about that
before but that is definitely
an avenue that you should consider
taking to try to make sure that
enforcement is done
oh what what do you actually mean by
enforcement
and putting speedy tickets yeah
officers going out in the street
reminding people of the new speeds
ticketing when necessary potentially
ticketing when the
speed is you know 15 miles over the
speed limit right maybe i should shut up
okay so you talked about refurbishing
the signs of replacing signs 10 000
about ten thousand dollars so um is
there an opportunity just to actually
paint the new numbers onto something
that could be riveted to the current
signs so that the cost is not um
as much and then the signs can actually
stay in place while you do it it's not
taking them down to reinstall them
they're just making out of whatever
material it's made out of and i don't
know all the technical terms however
so that you know stands up to the
weather et cetera and just riveting it
over 30 just putting 25 to 30. yeah and
there would be some cost savings there
it's possible to buy a you know fine
metal plate though and put that 25 on it
i can't go out in the field and do it
you'd have them all
cock-eyed
to do that but yeah we could put them on
plates and then drill the plates and put
them on but remember a lot of these
signs like i said are going back to 1999
and they're not in a condition that has
the
proper retro reflectivity to make sure
that the signs are visible right as well
so it's really an opportunity to
um
you know again i'm not wasting any metal
i'm going to take that metal down and
we're going to put a new face on it and
put
either another speed like a sign or some
other sign that's uh
24 by 30 inches but the new numbers
could be reflected
if you just added the numbers right it's not the proper way to do it i will
tell you that
could it be done
yeah but it's not the proper way to do
it
you want the science to be able to um
be on there you know the signs are dirty
up there you got to take them down and
clean them it's it's not that easy to
process to do that
especially well i mean i think also um
we spoke about the fact that if we were
to make the um
[Music]
well i mean there's less science needed
if we're making this change throughout
the city's um speed limit now some of
the streets would still stay at the
higher speed limit um that are not city
there's there's stuff within the ledge i
mean you can speak to this because
there's a couple of streams in the city
such as upper state street that has a
35 mile an hour speed limit and sections
of erie boulevard that are state
maintained that are 40 miles an hour but
i mean the majority of the city if you
do a city wide would be 25 miles an hour
except for uh in front of the school
hosted schools that are
um although your comments are kind of
it's not necessarily negative very
realistic that just lowering the speed
limit might not just fix this problem
speeding in the city um but i wanted to
take this opportunity to ask you have
you noticed any benefits from the led
stop signs
increasing visibility and seeing if that
actually has paid dividends and
so that's a really uh good question i'm
looking for the full year we got about
six months in on them i've gotten
extremely positive feedback from uh
residents uh you know the intersections that we
placed them you can see those signs uh
um
uh
and then a a whole block or a block and
a half away um had positive feedback
from the police department as well i
think that's a great opportunity but
i think we need to be careful with them
and make sure that where we place them
is
an intersection or location that needs
an improvement right we don't um i get
i'm already receiving requests from
people that say oh you got one here i
want one i want one what we you got to
have a reason right you got either high
accident volumes or um you know an engineering decision
based on the geometry of the
intersection that makes the stop sign
difficult to see i believe that there
needs to be um reasons to
place them i think there's 17 1800 hours
and not cheap
not that money you know it's safety
money it's safety without a doubt but um
you know if if both things can do the
same thing then you know why use the
more expensive uh tool right you know
why use a
sledgehammer and a
hammer holder right so yes i think that
they work very well um so far but you
know once the year is up we'll look at
the accident history for that year and
see uh we'll get some quantified data to
be able to come back to you and say yeah
this is this is a tool that we should um
you know use on a more regular basis
before assistant chief speaks i just
want to say that and i'm going to have
to read this because i won't be able to
remember it all but just to speak to
what you're saying in fact there is
research that shows first of all if
you're lowering the speed limit um
let's say someone gets hit by a car if
the car is going slower there's
more of a chance that the person is
going to live
that gets hit so there's that piece but
also there are
from the insurance institute
lowering the speed limit just by five
miles per hour on city street streets
does improve safety outcomes for
motorists pedestrians and bicyclists by
reducing the incidence of speeding the
study focused on boston which in 2017
lowered its default speed limit from 30
to 25 miles per hour they found that
after the city lowered its speed limit
the estimated odds of a vehicle
exceeding 35 miles per hour fell by 29.3
the uh odds of a vehicle exceeding 30
miles per hour fell by 8.5
and by 2.9 percent of exceeding 25 miles
per hour and the same thing um in the
new york city in terms of the
percentages
of accidents um when they lowered from
30 to 25 miles per hour as well so there
actually has been
research
that has shown i'm not
suggesting at all that i think that this
is going to eliminate the problem of
speeding and god knows we need to still
talk about fireworks and noise
as another topic but i just wanted to
bring it up as something
in terms of perhaps it might help us
get a handle on the speed of machine oh
mccarthy
yeah i think we've all gotten the phone
calls i was feeding or witnessed it
firsthand
and
you know some of it is a big education
curve to get people to just be compliant
but it's you know this topic uh
the next one that the council president
brought a couple times we've had
just trouble making the decision where
to put the one or two
uh
speed humps in place
i mean probably the way to get the
message out is doing this across the
board so you're modifying the overall
speed
those flashing
stop signs do have an impact whether
it's just because they're new
but
i seem to
my
unofficial or non-scientific observation
uh
we seem to getting more compliant so
if we can do
the couple of speed humps you do the
change in the speed
we do another
four or five intersections with the
flashing uh
lights
that it
becomes more of a city-wide message
that's trying to be more encompassing
that hopefully will get people's
attention and
again
raise the level of compliance
and simultaneously then you can do some
enforcement when you do the enforcement
you always push back over being overly
aggressive nobody likes getting the
ticket
and it's how do you
just educate people to
play by the rules and we all benefit
from that
that's from me so two things first of
all with the insurance companies
uh given that
if we do this they'll probably save lots
of money we should approach them and try
to get something from them
um
and secondly with the enforcement piece
the technological component
is an important piece in regards like
speed cameras and things like that
right now we're restricted to just
around school
if we get home rule for that
um
i don't believe we did
so i think we should also
make a resolution asking the state for
an end to home rule and things like that
so that we can
do the things that we need in our
community not just us but across the
state
and
i would recommend we do a resolution
asking mistake to do that
just in follows that where the
cameras around the school
we are able today to
i say we
the global community you can put
cameras on school buses that will fly
i mean the license plate reader so when
a car
goes past the bus that is stopped the
lights flashing uh and the fine on that
is i think 250 dollars
[Music]
i
entitled having a conversation with
school superintendent
would require
their
participation uh some activity in the
county but
i think that would
give us
a higher level of
compliance it's probably going to be in
the short term where people are still
violating you're going to get some
revenue
that might offset some of the costs
where we're either doing the upgrades on
the stop signs or
put in more speed humps and
get the
again
overall speed down across the city
uh any other questions or comments
sounds pretty
i think
oh
plenty of time in advance to let people
know to do public awareness campaigns
what's going on you know and do a race
period and possibly a time to let people
know what we're doing and then again
also just don't expect that they've
changed overnight as far as compliance
goes with everybody going slower in the
city uh majority of you going slower in
the city then i think that should help
the masses
[Music]
so
thank you absolutely for your question
so are you suggesting that we're
just just for a discussion of our public
hearing are we waiting for the building
to sign well um i don't actually think
that we need a public hearing on this
issue so i know that we would have to
obviously wait for the governor to sign
this into actual
law but i would like to actually move
this out of our committee this evening
with that understanding that if the
governor
or i should say when the governor i hope
um
would approve what the uh assembly and
senate have already passed um that we
would indeed lower our city's wide speed
limit to 25 miles per hour so i would
like to move that tonight you could move
it out to send a resolution to the
governor encouraging her to sign the
legislation
would that be a separate or the same
thing you can do as many things as you
want yeah
it's working i i think that during the
resolution the mayor says to encourage
them and then passing arms once those
assigned just
i just like do things like in order
that's just you know so that's that
would be my suggestion and also um
do we need to talk about the education
considering i'm glad that ac group will
brought that up because when we're
changing policies in the city um i i'm
not sure we always do the best job quite
frankly of letting people know that this
is changing so i appreciate you bringing
that up and that we should just
definitely um figure out an education
campaign around that
[Music]
so spectrum well so i had made emotions
so i guess i would have to withdraw that
motion if we were going or add a
separate motion i don't actually just do
it this way
just a different motion
because nobody seconded it okay so my
first motion would be that we
uh
create a resolution
but that we
would encourage the governor to um sign
off on the uh on the legislation
i i have the specific numbers if you
need that but
yeah right yep it's to uh
to
approve the
um
the bills that were passed in the senate
and the assembly to amend
vehicle and traffic loss section 1643
can reduce the um
minimum speed limit to 25 miles per hour
yeah the till the city expanding do you
have the bill numbers it's uh senate
bill number 2021
i don't have the assembly number offhand
okay i'm thinking let's look at that
the last time i looked i don't believe
they had transmitted that legislation to
the governor so it's still just time to
act down and they actually send it to
the government the governor has
to make the motion that once this is
signed by the governor that the city of
schenectady would lower its
city's speed limit to 25 miles per hour
um can i just go back to the council on
council
going in order i would just like to see
this little sign before i mean you can
do it immediately after
so because
i'm sure once the governor gets the
resolution from the council she's going
to say
oh yeah yeah
but i just feel like you know once you
find that we would then pass that
resolution that to me just makes sense
in terms of that
so
i hear what you're saying um i just know
that
in speaking with mr cluccio for example
um if we were able to well
i mean we're going to have to be ready
to go in terms of ordering signage in
terms of
seeing what the staffing level is going
to be like thinking about the education
um i think
you know i think this is something that
we've been talking about for over two
years now um well i mean i've only been
on council for two and a half years and
we've been talking about it that whole
time so i just don't want it to be
something that lingers out there and
that no action is taken by this council
on something that i think that you know
our residents have clearly communicated
to us that they want they want something
like this to happen so
i i don't think that we linger out there
i mean once she finds him with the
immediate order signs because we know
this is coming so i don't think it would
be lingering out there um mr camuccio
said how many months is going to get to
do that
since things have been so slow i'm
guessing four months before i get it
so i
[Music]
if the city engineer signs this people
and do they have to have the resolution
doing it on their own is it a resolution
advising the city engineer to set the
speed limit
that's a question for well i i don't
know if i have the privilege of the
floor to speak on that
and
it's full thank you
um so right now uh section 248 11 of the
city code um
grants the city engineer the ability to
among other things set the rules and
regulations related to speed limits
throughout the city
that's something that the city council
previously granted authority to the city
engineer however the city council may
modify or repeal those rules and
regulations as set by the city engineer
by resolution
so the city
council can act
uh unitarily to
change those rules
um
obviously through a resolution that
would you know
essentially have to be either approved
by the mayor or if you know veto
going through the process
um that being said as a practical matter
and i think mr caluccio brought that up
brought this up there are certain
streets in the city that you know are
not 30 miles an hour they're 35 miles
per hour on i think upper state street
perhaps
it's obviously uh something the city
council should consider when
um if they're going to take action to
determine if it's going to be every
single city street
within our jurisdiction that's going to
be set at 25 miles per hour
and you know there may be traffic
implications that the city council may
want to think about
i know i've talked to mr wallin briefly
about it i haven't had an opportunity to
speak to mr galluccio about it um
but you know i think if you're going to
pass a resolution at some point in time
it's are you doing this with a broad
stroke and everything's going to be 25
and then within city streets that we
have control over or is it going to be
only certain streets
you know absent you know you know maybe
it's
not upper state street that's currently
35 maybe we want to reduce that to 30
miles per hour just things to consider
rather than just painting with a broad
stroke
i think
i might have misunderstood what i was
learning which was that i thought that
some of the streets that were at the
higher speed limit we're not under our
control
um
and that that's why
those speed limits would remain in place
yeah if i if i may that that would only
be the erie bullhorn piece that's
allows the city to
make an individual street 25 miles an
hour
just not
the city
in totality
[Music]
i would also like us to consider a
resolution
to the state
getting rid of the whole
designation it's an antiquated
ruling that the state has
and it allows local communities to
operate in a way they see fit
i'm not on the committee so
case um point uh console road back in
85 or around there that was changed to
25 miles on that
so that that's the only street in the
city that i can think of that is 25
miles an hour
there's a stop sign on like every almost
every other corner on console road you
have to stop multiple times
what's that 1895.
[Music]
well i don't think i have a second on
the motion that i made
did you finish it all right um yeah but
i didn't sounds like
discussion
actually um
you know saying what the speed limit
would be i think it warrants i'm sorry if i if i
misspoke and i'm sorry to just interrupt
you um
right now the city engineer has the
authority to set what the speed limit is
in the city however the council can
still act to
modify whatever the speed limit is in
the city
by resolution
so if the city engineer said well i'm
gonna the law is changing right the law
changes city engineer can uniformly set
and uniformly say it's going to be 20
mile 25 miles per hour on those city
streets city council can certainly
hypothetically act on its own
to modify
that rule of the city engineer
to say no it's not going to be 25 it's
going to we're going to keep it at 30.
that's obviously uh you know this is a
hypothetical but
whereas the city engineer has the power
to do it so does the city council
so it said based on that determination
absolutely if someone has another
comment just
indicate that i would say if the city
engineers are already able to function
absent our resolution which could be
made out of order i think it's important
for us to remain in line with presidents
especially that's not going to
negatively affect the timeline for them
accomplishing this which it sounds like
they will already have an authority to
institute this once governor vocal
science
that means in other words let me try to
i'm a little confused here so what
you're saying is rather than us saying
let's lower the speed limit to 25 we'd
be hoping that the city engineer would
lower the speed limit to 25. no i'm
saying that once governor uncle signs it
rather than putting forth a resolution
before she signs it remaining in
precedence with how things normally
outline especially that's not going to
negatively implicate
them getting this started before
speaking again
so i'll say if we're going to put forth
he's just saying wait until it's passed
no i know i i guess i think that that's
what
i'm hearing from both ms porterfield and
it sounds like we could ask the city
engineer to do that i mean
does he i'm gonna i can't wait to read
this uh
this ordinance because based on what you
said that he could just do that i mean
what is it yes he could just do that
okay
i'm getting a guess even if the
[Music]
i
haven't read the full legislation what
does it say this will take effect
immediately it'll take effect december
31st
then the draft is immediately okay
immediately i think it's section four of
the yeah
[Music]
and i kind of think he would
and then in terms of your motion i think
i have to say that it seems like that is
more like government operations but um i
don't you know because that's a general
i think what you're suggesting goes
beyond public safety
into
more general operations
i mean it doesn't matter i mean it's a
resolution to the governor
and and to our assemblies they uh state
assembly and senators i mean it goes
across a variety of things but
it's an antiquated
law that the state has and it's about
time that we have
as local
municipalities the ability to do what we
see fit
so i still think we should move forward
with that
i agree that we should however i think
that we should make sure all the
information is here that we you know
have in our packets review etc
and read on it and then meet up on it so
if you could bring that
i would suggest in two weeks because i
don't disagree
that we should do that i don't know what
you need other because it's basically
saying we want to enter home rule
legislation
um so if you tell me what you want
so so what's the word what it currently
says and what you want the resolution to
say i'd like to see that in writing
that's just
who i am
[Music]
are there any other comments or topics
to befall the public safety committee
all right paul guys thank you uh so
we're going to move to the next agenda
item which is going to be discussion for
installing speed humps and i'll be
pleased to buy one
so i won't spend a long time because we
just spent a long time and i think the
mayor also mentioned sweet homes and
this is something that we decided well
over two years ago that we were going to
do my understanding is that they were
ordered um i'm not sure where we are
with that and um mr caluccio had spoken
to like you need to know where the um
where they were best needed by doing
traffic studies and all that um
i definitely know that you know we need
to do something because the cars are
just flying down the street like i mean
it's not even 35 it's not even 40 some
of them wait how fast they're going so
um and i think we talked about more than
two so we can go back and look i don't
remember the number
um that we looked at but we definitely
um
said that was something i'm going to do
several years ago so i think we should
definitely revisit it now and as we're
doing all of this to incorporate that
uh comments
mr well do you remember
how many or how long well
and i've been um with
assistant chief whipple and john
during this we were working on in 2021
it did fall off kind of our radar so to
speak uh some other things that were
coming up
you know one of the things that
you know i just want to impart on you
it's not to sound
arrogant or condescending in any way is
just that these are traffic control
devices there's an entire manual on
traffic control devices from your stop
sign to your mile marker to yield signs
these are regulated state traffic
control devices so
it's sometimes a little hard because
around the table i feel like they're
more
seen as objects
you know objects to be put where we
think they would be effective but you
know it's they're similar to where the
city engineer is the one who assigns
speed limits i did not write that that
was written historically the reason for
it was that the city engineer sat up
there at the time of 50 staff members
and they worked they did all the
analysis of the city and they assigned
speeds
you know we had 45.
yeah well you know now we have
less than fours
so that's where like i i think that if
we're going to go to 25 it is nice to
say but like i'd like to talk with the
cdta they have bus routes that use state
street those buses ghosts 35 they go 40
on erie they use the i just like to make
sure that everybody's aware because we
have you know we have main lines and
then we have secondary streets you know
and i i don't want to like we were
talking about paint with this broad
brush out there of you know we wait once
25. you know because i see the hungers
are here i'm sure they're here because
they want the stockade to be 25. they
probably want the stockade to be 50. the
whole city oh the whole city
but you know and statistics can be
misleading because if you go from 30 to
25 yes accidents go down where did 25
come from if you go to 20 it goes down
even more if you go to 15 i can walk
away
so like where did the number 25 get
really pulled from it
because it's a number
so i'd like i would like to look at it
more and that's where i've kind of going
with speed humps is that uh ac whipple
is doing a great job and he actually
found this speed hump procedure from the
city of rochester and this is saying
that you know if you would like to speed
hump in rochester you have to make a
letter of request it has to be evaluated
by engineering classification features
they do a traffic study
then they have considerations of you
know where is it is it by school is it
right here and then they need a petition
from the residence of 75 percent because
one of the things i did not think about
but mr crucio and i were talking about
is we have had things like this in the
past and residents don't like the noise
they make sometimes when they go over it
because it's inaudible to do
and it's fine when you're at work but
when you're trying to go to sleep some
people say oh my god this thing out here
you know and everybody wants it you know
not in my backyard put it down the way
you know so
we kind of came up with all this and we
talked about it and buying them is easy
i can spend 20 000 tomorrow with anthony
we could get you know we can get them
here and if we need more
we'll buy more but then the process of
where
i don't want to use that like we have to
find i know that actually you were
looking into some areas today based off
of their information
and i mean you had a couple yeah and i
don't know
with it
and there might not be locations that
you're thinking of they might just i'm
not patient
[Music]
like i want you to be seen not that
short
one of the things with the rochester
application if you will talks about you
know where to put them and looking at
engineering specifics concerning it very
important piece in there it talks about
um
parallel roads and not putting them on
parallel roads which is something that
i'm sure we would automatically do
because of the configuration of the city
but they don't want you to move the
traffic from one street to another
that's what we hear all the time about
doing things on one street say you want
to talk about we mentioned console road
so let's talk about the streets between
um console and state street right
you put them on parallel streets and you do this on one street and it pushes
all the traffic to the other so we want
to make sure we don't do something to
um cause more of a problem on adjacent
street than the street that we
yeah and another good one here johnny
touched down though was that the street
they have under the street might must
not be a primary
emergency vehicles are going to utilize
it right primarily fire trucks but they
don't want them on that they're off they
also haven't heard that they want a
primarily residential street not a
commercial street so those are all the
things that
and that i guess if we have that
guidance if we follow this which is
already a really great procedure we
start looking and that's what you know
that you started looking at it's kind of
in the guise of that where they could go
yeah that would be so far away from uh
returns can't be over seven percent
grade they can't be so close to a stop
sign there's a lot of things that go
into it
just looking at it quick without
all those things in fact a solution to
traffic was noble by diamonds eastern
parkway by elmer
dwayne by martin luther king
state doesn't work uh mainstream
education drive there's different
ones that are we're getting regular
complaints on so those are right
in
you have to look at the need to put
multiple on a street as opposed to just
one because
we believe that you're going to see the
traffic speed up right after they go
over that to make up the
loss of time so yeah you know if we're
going to do this i think you got to
consider a couple of them in any area to
really make an impact okay
thank you
so do you recommend
doing the speed helps or not doing this
i think it is
i think it's worthwhile that we can try
i'm just i guess the thing is is that
what we're talking about is
it was a bigger it was a bigger
conversation internally than just buy
them and put them down and when the
conversation got that big i think
everybody wasn't
you know right there prepared to make
all these decisions so it kind of got
set there you know like that and i i'm
glad that you you know you're bringing
it back up it's not that it's just you
know this is just this is another
initiative and what i don't want to do
just putting them down it's going to
have a season one of the things that i
was talking about with john and uh we
remember
kelly bonnett was uh you know are we
doing any data collection pre-post and
then how that's going to work you know
we're putting up a
speed camera that has the flashing to
say okay everybody was going 42 and then
we put this down and it didn't go down
but then you know on top of that you
know when talking with kristen and
development and some other people from
the engineering side and it actually was
in the paper i believe with tom carey is
that there's a whole other aspect of you
know complete streets and trying to make
a street feel narrower and trying to do
it naturally
instead of artificial
and you know that's something that's
another thing that you know we're really
not quite there yet one of the things i
didn't say what we're doing is um on
console we're going to be putting in i
call them blaze sticks i don't know what
the post reflectors we're going to be
trying those which is you know you're
used to a very bright stop sign and the
new thing is you put on a reflector on
the post
and when you see that when you drive
console after those are in they're going
to get your attention and they are a
fraction of the cause
yeah but we were just trying to because
we talked about it you know those signs
are expensive how can we do things you
know i know that we wanted to do trees
maybe some places uh we have that study
going on but i mean this can be
something but i guess my my issue is
that if we find
that the speed pump worked
then is the next step that we're going
permanent
you know is is that it or is this a
temper you know because we don't have
permanent permanent speed humps in the
northeast and even
you don't see a lot of them there are
locations i know of in the area county
specifically but you know then you get
to that next level so what is the objective we're trying to
achieve and is this the right tool to do
it and it takes a lot of thought and i
guess we haven't had a lot of time to
put all that thought into it so which is
why it got
kind of but we have the list we did put
a lot more effort into it since you
you've asked about us to pick this up um
i think that rochester's done a lot of
great work to kind of just give us a
template
um so i think we think we could probably
sit down and come up with some areas and
get some things ordered and we can try
it's just that
i just want to make sure that we're
always using these things as tools and
we know what we're trying to get out of
the tools so with that the as just the
rough number from last year the price
was around five thousand dollars for for
one
um from one we get four and then we didn't factor in the
cost for the signage around it and for
the bureau to put them install them and
remove them in storage so and then when
you go to order them we have to know
where they're going first because each
one is printed with different arrows and
different um emblems so
first would be to determine where
they're going and then we order them and
then we actually have to talk to the
guru about insulation and storage
and the other thing you guys briefly
touched on but it comes up a lot in my
circles of conversations is they call it
the three e's
and it's education enforcement and
engineering
and you know education is hard because
you're putting that on the person
and enforcement is difficult because
you're putting it on the police and the
police are you know already time
strapped so then naturally everybody
goes to engineering
you know and sometimes though you cannot
engineer things you know there has to be
you have to use the enforcement you have
to use the education you cannot engineer
someone on their phone you cannot
engineer speeding necessarily all the
time
so i think we really if we can go this
route but i think those other two e's we
always say we really have to to work
so can we like come back
uh in
the next session or two with a location
or a plan when we have something or how
we will we will pick it up i just don't
know what yeah that's i would like to
see does anybody have any preferences
that's true
so i think like the mayor suggested
earlier it'll be a big plan with the
speed limit and the new signs and uh
maybe a few more um
lit stop signs and maybe
you know
that all entailed in the one yeah
i would like to know whether by the time
i'm 70 years old instead of 63 we might
be able to actually do something in the
city of schenectady around reducing the
speed infractions um because i think
that's the issue that i'm feeling i mean
this has been how many years we've been
talking about the speed bumps
and you know
i don't know it's very frustrating um
because i think i hear what you're
saying
but um you know i think we have to start
to take some action somehow
chris where is the
process for
uh redoing
uh brandywine avenue from state to 890
that we've rejected that yep it's out to
bid right now so back out to bit that
still is the highest incident area for
auto pedestrian events uh
just outright traffic accidents
so it's unfortunate the numbers came in
high
we're going to have to do something
there if
the president if the bids come in high
again
who
they come back to the council look to
put some more money on the table so that
we could get that uh done the series of
intersections there because that is
going to pay off uh just our overall
number of events
i agree with that that is our
two busiest blocks
including downtown brandywine those two blocks are significant
um
oh another thing i was going to say even
john we talked about it how many years
ago was it five years those little
yellow signs those notification signs
you know those are something that came
out that state yes
you know i would love to see those
affected if you put them on randolph and
we put them on rose and these little you
know like they say cross traffic doesn't
stop this you know and those those are
the things that you know i think if we
always tally i mean there has been
improvements made but these are the
these are necks i just i'd like to know
before we put them down i guess we'll
have to work internally
then what is it a permanent are we going
to start seeing these and then we pick
them up in the wintertime or do we make
them permanent i just and i always look
around because i've driven a lot of
municipalities you just don't see
speed bumps in a lot of municipalities
in that kind of way to address the issue
so
but it's not to say that we can't set a
trend
so can i be clear so mayor are you
saying to put those on brandywine
because i thought brandon wine was a
primary student no no no no all right
just want to be clear
that
two blocks or a little over two blocks
and some of the adjacent streets
uh and just unfortunately the bid
came back in high so chris has gone back
out but that'll be a rebuilding of those
in two blocks
with again some of the traffic control
devices
well um
to uh to miss patrick's point i'd like
to see us do something as well we
haven't been kicking this around for a
very long time so i would like to
see something in a couple of see if we
could just
get this ball rolling sure
not a problem but not we don't want the
ball rolling too fast
i mean i think we also need to recommend
does we need a recommendation about
whether in fact that is the smartest
thing the speedoms might not be the
solution so so um
you know i guess when you come back
with that as well yeah you know we're
talking about configurations and making
sure they don't block drainage you're
not leaving gaps you know how if you go
to a parking lot and you see that gap in
the middle really shoots the gaps
you know we were talking about that you
know because the thought was okay can we
leave a gap for a fire truck it's like
leave the gap for a fire truck yeah
so there is some discussion and i guess
that we have a good template here city
of rochester clearly is putting them in
maybe i have to do a tour out to
rochester and meet with them and see
maybe
but yeah i can give you something what i
can do is do is take a map highlight
arrow the streets that kind of what
we're saying don't meet the criteria the
right way and then what areas would meet
the criteria based off of the
information that you're still collecting
and we'll show some other areas and in
the meantime uh
aca whipple and and anthony we can order
you know i mean they're set with we can
get them there this section and at least
get them here because i don't know what
the lead time on something that would be
but make sure we get it because
similarly to the signs even though we're
going to say if the governor makes it 25
tomorrow it's going to take john four
months to get the signs here and we
can't do both i think that would
more be
okay well then i will come back in two
weeks with more of a plan
uh any other items that fall public
safety
just making sure this time
thank you um i'd like to call the order
uh to the development planning and mr
if you don't mind i wanted to move up um
one of the items on the agenda that was
people who have been sitting quite some
time
so i wanted to move item number five to
the top of your line
okay
all right
so we're gonna do um item number five
first amendment to the cdbg contract of
nurturing craigslist mystia
good evening everyone um so this is just
bringing back the request
proposed two weeks ago maricopa credit
street
former carver center we have
the balance of 103 685 that we're
looking to
extend the period of performance
miracle crack street until december 31st
of this year and then the scope of work
for the remaining unexpected balance
um there was some questions for certain
materials that were provided
to the council and i believe the council
has recommendations as well
uh based on this so that's why we're
here
we do have uh
ray's this
sheila rivera here as well if there's
questions
so the last time this came before the
council there was an item in there that
was asking for a consultant there was a
lot of discussion around that and
frankly not the support for it
there was the impression that the um
that
the duties that were written into that
particular one were things that were
being covered by cap
and so um the budget has been meant to
include
um
just all services under tap as they have
put forward
and
not nothing um elsa well there has been
a change in terms of um
there was a rainy like 20
2000 something um
which is put into the summer landscaping
so this is all the ring funds that out
of the 150 i believe was the starting
the remaining funds that mayor khan
texas has right this is the remaining
yes that's what's remaining
other questions
this weekend and definitely the work
that they've made over the last few
months has uh
it deserves some faults so definitely
things well deserved
i think at this point i'm excited as a
new consumer to see this project
continuing forward although it wasn't
conducted in the manner that he intended
still i think seeing this project move
forward for the benefit of that specific
area but also for the city as a whole i
think is what we need to keep our focus
on um so i just want to make sure it
does
thanks for stopping by i appreciate that
did you have questions anyway no
questions
so
did you let's have a second one to me
because
uh no i just wanted to
come up here because he wanted to make a
statement if you guys don't have any
questions um
you know uh you guys requested more
information we provided it and i hope
that it's you know pretty clear on
um
you know this position is important i
know that
all the other line items were pretty
clear you guys seemed fine with it
except for the
uh site and manager position and uh like
i said we provide more information
as requested and
yeah just looking forward to more
support on this
so you have the budget before you so uh
so this is just to extend what we're
doing and now it's 103 000.
this is the only thing this is the this
is the final the final thing is that it
seems like what the council
is proposing or the cpd committee is
to from what marian said is to fund the
full tax proposal but not the board
consultant which was previously right
that's i just want to purpose
yep so i have no question
so moved
second i was in favor
thank you
all right so um
so the first time on the agenda the
discussion of the city's annual mf4
report for salon
hello okay
so
for law every year we are required
by the state to put together our annual
ms4 report which is for
stormwater uh in the city of schenectady
the city no longer has a storm water
officer that position
is open so we have been contracting with
ct mail
a local engineering firm
who specializes in things like this
they help us assist with this document
so what we do is we just talk about how
we are making people wear
storm water and how storm water affects
the rivers and um kind of inspecting it
once a year we have to go inspect make
sure on a dry day that there's no runoff
or ethanol everyone's coming out of the
pipes
the big thing of note this year is
what we did was uh i wanted to find a
page for you i apologize but what we had
was we had a thorough review done of all
of our outfalls and after that review
what we found was that we were double
counting a lot of outfalls in a way that
we were able to reduce
and so that was a a nice benefit to what
we were able to do i'm just looking for
a page that i don't have right in front
of me so what it is is that if you're
familiar with so uh
college creed oh here it is uh out falls
map 29 so three on the third page
so
what we were doing is we were counting
every overt originally in college creek
and essentially it's actually one so you
would come out you have one out under
the uh i believe it's west alley where
it enters the stock uh to the gt plot
that is an outflow as it goes under avon
as it goes under the road those are not
alcohols those are cold
so that originally was mapped not by
myself but by predecessor as an outfall
so we eliminated those so we were able
to go from 54 to 29 and the 29 allows us
now to just be more efficient most of
these are along the river we have you
know several along the river the biggest
being college creek um and we go down
and we'll be able to inspect those um so
you use the facebook page uh just right
there for 29. so you see this year we
number of approximate about falls map we
mapped all of them this year because
this was our first year doing it
um
so
yeah right one more
yeah yeah exactly oh right there i'm
sorry it's on the back the 29 right
there so it's on the back page so that is one thing one area i will uh
admit that we need to improve and as
with full disclosure is ct mail is going
to do some training for us
part of the requirement is that our ogs
staff receive some training about how to
spot illicit discharges just to be aware
of things like that um i mean we were
doing them and then up to cover we kind
of stopped any kind of in-person
training virtual training for our guys
is very difficult because you know it's
a it's more of a garage in the classroom
but now that everything has calmed down
we are looking to have ct mail go out
and do some focus training for our water
and sewer departments even possibly our
garbage departments because as we were
talking about previously uh you know
they're out they're out and about and to
be able to spot things
all right um so that's what we really
want to do is make sure people are able
to to spot things because they are the
kind of the eyes on the street i am more
or less always in city hall so what
we're going to do is um you know if you
have any questions you can ask it's a pretty generic
boring report but we do take it uh we
put it out and the public can see it
today then we put it on the website and
then it's always on the website 365 days
because that's a requirement as well and
we're going to try to you know like i
said up our training up some of it we
used to do a table at the farmer's
market we're probably going to bring
that back where we have a little display
we work with the county you know do you
know discharge
a little public uh input like that um so
those are the couple of things that we
want to do mostly involves
uh training in public and for the last
couple of years training in public kind
of work low but we're going to bring it
back up
mr bear
because i noticed one
small error i didn't pick up when i
signed it okay is the county's address
is listed as 107 in that street it's
actually 107. not terrace okay i will
pick the what page do you want
uh page three
of the report page
37 of the
console pack
okay right i will make that change
thank you
any other questions
you just wanted
all right
uh second item on the agenda to
authorize the issue is insurance
issuance of the revocable commit number
671 to very birds
and so uh
is a new gallery
on pedestrian j street and i would like
to draw everyone's attention to the sign
because it is very cute
has a barren bird on
so uh they will be utilizing an existing
bracket
uh and this has done a planning it is
very similar in style and size to the
other signs that are out there kind of
boutique
so we don't have any issues with it
fire training facility improvements mr
sure i'm going to speak about both of
these because they're semi-related
three and four three and four so um the
city uh engaged with h2m architects to
uh make improvements to the fire
training facility that's located at the
corner of golf in oregon
that is the tower that has been there
the tower has been derelict for quite
some time due to
some
miss i would say miss maintenance on it
windows open had a lot of issues with
birds and nesting and things like that
so the tower kind of fell into a state
of disrepair uh similarly uh situation
with the smoke house because that
training actually kind of changed so
through our conversations with the fire
department and h2m we decided to move in
a different path that building was small
it was solid but it just for their
training purposes it did not fit so that
building was removed in-house by city
personnel
uh and we're looking to replace that
building uh the first one we have
however is mid-state they are going to
be renovating the existing tower
so right now the tower is completely
clean it has been abated it has no more
garment it is sealed
and what mid-state is going to do is go
in
continue refurbishment
replace all the boards with actual
windows the windows will be different
based off of what was already been
discussed in the police sorry fires
procedures so some windows are double
honks some windows from all the way up
depending on where they are on the
building and how they're going to do for
their training so the first is to
renovate the existing training topic and
that is the mid-state industry we have
worked with mistake in the past we
worked with them quite a bit
reputable company that we've never had
issues with
any questions i'm sorry
okay
a second also in favor
okay the second is for the new training
structure which is essentially a whole
barn norton style building the
building's large enough where they can
get some apparatus in it and will be a
larger dry space where they can put an
apparatus in or if not
do
i don't remember the name of it i think
it's confidence training where they
actually set up obstacle courses and
they put it in the dark and they have to
kind of navigate so as a it's a bigger
building they realize they didn't need
to you know break into the roof so much
and do what they did in the older style
and then they wanted the extra space so
this is a it's a simple structure
similar to what we did at the golf
course it's going to be used for
training purposes the reason we did them
separate is just because we wanted to
make sure that a company that did the
buildings might not do renovations and
that is what we got so we have a
renovation company in the building
company so it did work and the low bid
was the same company that is doing the
golf course which is not surprising in
the golf course we have had a very
successful time with him
so we have no reason to
from my perspective not go forward with
the next building any questions
which question i'll move it
second also
i think that this seems wrong okay thank
you so much thank you
all right um next time would be item
number seven oh i'm sorry
swimming pool agreement i'm number six
mr colton thank you
um
for a number of years the city has uh
contracted with the boys and girls club
since
for the operation of city on swimming
pools
which includes the provision of
lifeguard staffing
in 2021 the city paid the boys and girls
clubs 145 000 for the operation of city
pools due in part to staffing concerns
the negotiated contract for this current
year would be 155 thousand dollars
under the terms of the agreement the
central park front street in quack and
bush pools will be operated through
august 26 7 days per week at central
park and through august 19th six days
per week at uh front street in
quackenbush
the boys and girls club has requisite
experience and familiarity with the
city's pools to operate them
and because it's been difficult
according to the boys and girls club
find
trained lifeguards
they're looking to increase the contract
amount to
cover the additional
wages they would have to pay those
lifeguards
so
seeking
approval
from the committee to
request or to authorize this agreement
with the boys and girls club for the
full council's consideration for the
2022 season
any questions
it's not a question just general
information from the council it's my
intent not to open the quack and bush
pool
review
by the council mr williams we've gone
through done some of the evaluation
quack and bush
excuse me after five missions
which one are you not going to killers
okay
i
apologize for the statement
uh
been losing a significant amount of
water every day
uh we have not been able to identify
that leak or where the water is going
but the potential is there that some of
the subsurface of the pool because it's
the lower drains
they've
filled the pool at the lower levels the
water goes out so it's the lower drains
that are losing it
it's going somewhere and worried about
there may be some compromise of the
surface or the support structure for the
pool
so if we total pull up
there is the potential of a failure
with the pool
and
just at this point not ready to run that
risk until we can do a
more in-depth evaluation with it
is the front street pool actually
usable
i don't know if you could go swimming
tonight
okay for some reason i thought it was
like in total disrepair
it's a good thing
so um
discussion hosting quarterly city
council meetings outside to help follow
him
so not to believe this topic um i think
the last meeting we're just going to
get more information about where and
what topic
um
i think the
apparent one would be addressing the
speed limit signs and then hearing it
from both ac whipple and also from mr uh
i'm talking about the three e's
education enforcement and engineering i
think it's important for us to get
behind a education campaign from the
city to inform people and i think using
an opportunity to meet outside of the
council will not only be able to have us
put this in a
more uh transverse
venue i think pausing really quick
having the opportunity to go to the
campus the office of cannabis meeting
and seeing that that room was packed
full on that topic was uh exciting and
trying to figure out ways to kind of
meet people where they are i think
taking this topic into the community and
allowing us to put in place the
resources such as the police and also
engineering and then providing them the
resources to potentially have a public
hearing
on the road i think is important or it
could be an option
so i would not do the speeding topic i
didn't get a chance to talk with you
about this earlier but um you know we
don't need to do a public hearing about
speeding topics
i think we've definitely gotten enough
input from our residents about the
speeding topic but i think if we were
going to have a town hall
outside of here
which is i think what we talked about at
last
whenever it was that we did say yes
let's let's do try to do some town halls
i think a larger issue
might be around noise
um and behavioral change around noise
and whether we include fireworks in that
um that may be soliciting public input
on how we might be able to make those
kinds of behavioral changes was just
something i was thinking about after i
um you know received your message but
because that's also the other quality of
life issue that i think that we hear so
much about but
um i don't know if anybody else had a
topic but i don't i don't really think
that we need to have a whole town hall
on speeding
issues
um so in terms of that
i did actually have something it's
something
in its public banking i think that's a
topping that topic that
hear about but i think it may be a topic
worth talking to people about in terms
of public banking and how the positive
impact it could have on the community so
that it's a topic that i thought we
could um to have a meeting
um if i could just address the
i'm kind of concerned about you know the noise part of it because for me um
as we think it through like if we bring
this out so we should also come with
some solutions
and so
what you know because we've been i and i
really wish we had a solution because
just like everyone else here i hear
about
all the time
non-stop um
phone calls emails
you name it we have it and we definitely
do need to knew
i was at a meeting just before this one
and noise was um one of the big
complaints about it and so you know we
looked at the the ordinance and there is
you know the city does have an ordinance
but it was more about and the police
were there
and they were talking about um
their priorities
calls that you know if they have a
priority threatening that's a if they
have a priority one noise is going to be
a priority three he specifically said
you may not see us for five hours
so
um i don't disagree something that needs
to be discussed but however um i think
it can get pretty emotional if we have
it there um wondering how we come with
it to say and this is what we can do
about it
so let's go ahead and step up sorry oh
yes um so
maybe we need to each think about or
send topics because i'm hearing what
you're saying i think when i think of a
town hall i think it's you know
the idea of being able to actually
solicit input from folks
um
so maybe that's too specific a topic also
in other words like maybe
inflation
um as a town hall issue
or
you know
environmental issues or something that
you know we can
think of some speakers
or you know
i i
i'm just saying maybe maybe we should be
kind of thinking of some topics and
sending ideas
[Music]
so i wasn't too hard pressing anyone
topic just more or less the intent of
doing something in the community i can
absolutely look and do a deep dive on
the noise ordinances and public
banking and then come together within a
proposed agenda and then we can kind of
have some information behind that
yes mr mayor are you looking to do a
city council meeting
or just going to be a separate
meeting of the council
my intent was to have a city council
meeting
and i think that's a good idea the only
thing i would submit to your
consideration
is sometimes you know you're going to
have the topic that looking for public
input
you might have something on the agenda
for a public hearing
the people for the public hearing
might not be concerned about
the topics there and those are people
who would traditionally come to city
hall you don't want to create an
impression that the people who
might be some controversy with the
public hearing
you're moving it out of city hall and so
there's just a scheduling issue there
which
should be
fairly easy to work around
it's just
seen sometimes where public hearings can
be more controversial than
the overall agenda and other times
everything just runs smooth and
i like to say we're all one big happy
family
[Music]
i think um i think though when we talked
about this last time we did decide i i
felt that we had decided that we weren't
going to do a city council meeting on
site but then instead we were moving to
the
i have three nodding heads here in a row
that it was more around the idea that we
were going to try to host some public
some town meetings on topics that might
be of interest to folks
to come and learn something um at the
tommy at least that was my impression
when we left that last meeting
go ahead
so i think the last meeting was that
there would be considerations from both
wasn't estimated no it wasn't
necessarily that we would um
not go down one um but again definitely
taking eating the mayor's recommendation
of making sure we're intentionally
looking at all avenues and potentially
exposing ourselves to this
i don't want to rush anything i don't
want to
expose us to with potential backlash or
[Music]
negatively affect topics that are of
benefit to the city so i'm not going to
do the work so i can come back with an
update
mr toro and and mr williams i totally
agree with you i mean our meetings are
kind of sad we need to bring people in
um
but going to them i don't think
necessarily would be the answer but
again if we visit their
neighborhood meetings which i visited i
tried to visit everyone's neighborhood
meetings but if we go as a group i mean
it's already being done
and we bring a a
speaker with us that day on
something but those meetings are already
being held in different neighborhoods
and um we just visit doing
rotations tomorrow neighborhood meetings
yeah
that's mrs wayne so i'd say we'd like to
organize a time for all of us to get
together and attend one meeting i would
absolutely not be opposed to that yeah
i most have stopped for the summer but
yeah
so we also
have liability potential of if we have a
council meeting outside of city hall so
a worker goes gets an accident there's
potential liability
we have a number of other issues
the mayor brought up a couple of those
um so
a council meeting outside of here i mean
we've seen
the attendance when
something of interest happens
it's been pretty good
and
you know the cannabis meeting granted it
was off-site but it's
right diagonal to city hall
so
i really feel strongly this is our
center of government
it's a symbol
and that's where we should have our
meetings
having a town hall all four
with a prescribed topic and
bringing in the neighborhood or people
around the city
fine
that's just us has a council showing up
um
but a council meeting
i mean been pretty steadfast with that
i i just will say that we this is not
new it's been done before the council i
don't know if america is on the council
of the time he's been on the council for
a long time but so it's not a new
concept
the city i can go back i'll go back and
give you the information so city hall
meetings have been held outside of city
hall before so it would not be a first
and in terms of you know i mean we did
through the cannabis meeting yes it was
there um that's because the size of the
space
um i just think that it's you know as i
said before and i'll say again that we
continually go to people when we want to
you know to solicit them and so bringing
a meeting into the community to me is
not outside of of us just saying to them
okay we come to you during election time
now we're coming to you as well i'm
putting something right in your
neighborhood i don't think that's beyond
the realm of possibility or or and i
think it actually even makes sense but
um mr williams said he's going to bring
back
some other considerations for us and do
you want more topics to do you want us
to send you more topics or are you just
going to work with the ones that we
discussed tonight
all right
is there any more input on that topic
okay
then i would entertain a motion to go
into executive session
okay we'll be going to
the executive session for the purpose of
property sales yes and i'll secondly
always in favor