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Good evening. Welcome to the city council meeting of September 16, 2014. I'd love to get started

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and thanks again for everyone coming.

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Since we have no public hearings or presentations this evening, I will ask for a roll call.

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Present.

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Present.

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Here.

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Present.

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Here.

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Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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Thank you.

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We will go now into the public comment period, and if anyone would like to make a comment to the council as a whole,

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Please approach the mic and give your name and address and do try to keep your remarks to two minutes. Thank you.

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Hi, good evening. My name is Charlie Morrison, 88 Court Street.

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I have a little statement here to read that we'll just take a minute or two and I have something to hand out to you.

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It was all heard of the 70-car disaster in Locke-Mogantik up in Quebec last year, with

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on July 6, 2013.

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47 people were killed, many more injured, and the whole downtown was totally destroyed

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by a huge fireball.

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In this resulted from four cars derailing from an oil train, the whole train was about 70 cars.

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That train was hauling the same volatile oil that comes to the port of Albany from North

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Dakota.

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That particular train was going over to a refinery in St. John's, New Brunswick,

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but that same

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oil is coming down through here. Past Lake Champlain, through the Adirondack Park, through

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Fort Edward, and over through Saratoga Springs on its way to the Port of Albany, where

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it's then redistributed to refineries throughout the Mid-Atlantic and other places.

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It's coming

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through our watershed, through Luffbury Lake, across Spring Run. It's coming down behind

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the middle school and is coming past the back of Skidmore College and then past the medical

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buildings on Carolina.

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And these cars are only going to increase. Some of these trains

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are 100 cars long. Chuck Schumer, Senator Schumer, has been trying to get the US DOT to

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approve new cars with double skins because the single skin cars, among other things,

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this oil is very corrosive and it can eat through those cars very easily.

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But the most-

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Two minutes.

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I'm sorry.

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That's two minutes.

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That's two minutes.

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Believe it or not.

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I know.

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Holy smoke.

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All right.

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It sounds like a pretty complicated topic.

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I'd love to.

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Well, it is and I'll just hand out my hand out which has the same paper on it and I just recommend that we the county and the city should both take a good look at their emergency plans.

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Governor Cuomo issued an executive order at the beginning of the year to five state agencies about this whole thing that they should update their plans.

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And I think it's serious enough and potential disaster that could happen any place.

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And so just let me hand these papers to you and then I'm out of here.

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Thank you so much.

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You can put them right on there, Charlie, on the table, we'll get them at the end then.

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Certainly a topic that my colleague in Albany is dealing with on a daily basis, so thank

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you.

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Bill, I'm in a 55-year-old place, Saratoga Swings.

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Every once in a while in this town, we have

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arguments if the commission form of government is better than the strong mayor form of government.

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And I've always defended the commission form of government.

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However, the last election made it quite obvious what's wrong with this form of government,

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the commission form of government.

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Once in a great while, as we did in the last election, we elected a mayor who wants to do the

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right thing who realize that she works for the tax payer and she just wants to do the

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best job that she can. However, coincidental with her election, we elected four commissioners

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who have no idea what the right thing is, who have no idea that they have to work for

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the tax payer and they seem like they don't want to do the right thing. The city attorney

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She wanted to do the right thing.

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She was a very good attorney, one of the best we've had for a while, but the four council

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members put so much pressure on her that she had a resign to protect her own integrity.

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I am convinced that now that we need a different form of government, we need a stronger mayor,

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we have to elect a mayor, like we did in the last election who wants to do the right thing

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who works for the taxpayer and I implore the mayor to keep working for the taxpayer, get

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a re-appraisal of that column a lot and keep fighting for the taxpayer.

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Don't give in, let's see what we can do to prevent that land swap.

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I also notice that there is an item on the agenda, the Finance Commissioner's Agenda for

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a resolution about the city attorney.

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This is an obvious power grab, which should not pass.

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Thank you very much.

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Thank you.

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Yes, Bonnie Seller, 73-5th Avenue, Saratoga Springs.

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Thank you for your time.

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I was wondering about the item on Commissioner Madagans agenda about the resolution, because

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it's my understanding that the charter gives the mayor under the Commission for a Government

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that the responsibility to take care of labor negotiations, labor language, and all the other.

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So I was kind of surprised to see it myself.

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I have a different issue than Phil does.

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Thank you.

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Okay, thank you.

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Hopefully we can explain that later.

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Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council.

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Dave Brown and Roe Henley-Court Saratoga Springs.

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Tonight, I must unfortunately go back yet again to the land deal.

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And the problem I have tonight is the Public Safety Commissioner took the time

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an effort to write a Reader's View here recently on Thursday,

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4 September in the Saratokin, have it right here,

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to explain the recent land transaction that occurred.

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And, you know, pretty good effort on his part.

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However, when you read this article, I was struck by the fact

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that there's no mention whatsoever in this Reader's View article

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about the $1.1 million offer that was made by a developer

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from down in the Latham to buy that life. There's no mention of that in here. It's totally

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excluded from the article and you just have to ask yourself why? Why wouldn't it appear

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here? So we have the whole story, you know, as Paul Harve used to say, or the rest of

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the story, because we don't have the whole story here. We have part of the story. The controversy

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this has really been surrounded by Mr. Suppone's offer and a contract to pay 1.1 million dollars for that lot.

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And you know, it's never been discussed at this table.

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There's never been an explanation of it to the taxpayers of the city as to why the council just totally decided to disregard that and not discuss it.

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You know, we still need an explanation of this and I was hoping to see it in this article, but it's not there.

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You know, maybe the Pope saved the commissioner like to explain that, but it's not there.

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So, you know, I have a problem with that and so do a lot of taxpayers in this city because we don't know if we get or get any fair market value for that lot.

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And I would say the same thing that Mr. Diamond just said we need to get another appraisal on that lot.

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Mayor, you ought to go do that.

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That could not appraisal and settle the issue.

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Now I was happy to see, and I know I'm probably over my two minutes, that we are moving forward with the defibrillators.

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I got an email last night that we're going to buy 10 defibrillators.

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It's being put in the budget.

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That's all fine and, Danny, I'm glad we're doing that.

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I hope there's some other things we can do to increase the safety response for everybody in the city,

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not just the people on the East Ridge.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Good evening.

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First of all, about the people that ride bikes, there are no different than people that drive cars.

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cars as far as the law goes with traffic.

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People 14 and under, you wear your helmet right on the sidewalk

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that's fine and dandy.

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If you're older than 14, 15 and older, that's what the streets are for.

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That's what the law says.

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I have this up here because also I want to be seen when I'm walking or riding my bike.

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I'm not part of traffic enforcement like some people think I don't work for

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price shopper or anything not bullying them, but it's so I can be seen. We need to have

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something more enforcement so we can be seen. Albany, colony, they're starting to get

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on the ball. The state needs to bring it all over. It's not unique to any city. Also,

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code blue, people don't have homes are sleeping out on the street. I walk all hours of the day.

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I see them. I've been there. I've done that. We need to put funds or something there for

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them. The people that come to our city, they're like, oh, look at this trashy city when

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they see people like that out there. They think they're drunk. They think they're drug

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addicts. That's not always the case. That wasn't the case with me. Thank you for going

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to the events I've seen you at. I appreciate that. And the city is not mine. It's not yours.

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It's ours. Everybody.

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Darlene McGraw, one South Federal Street, Saratoga Springs.

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Thanks.

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Great.

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Thank you so much.

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Anyone else?

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I'll close the public comment period.

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I just would make two comments regarding Charlie Morrison's comments.

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Yes, that is a very serious problem regarding the railway and our public safety officials have

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been in contact with the rail system and are looking at what needs to be done to update our emergency

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preparedness for any such event.

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In terms of Colonel Bronner, some of the issues that you raised tonight about $1.1 million,

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I raised in my response to a gazette editorial that is in the paper, you can read that, and

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if you have any questions, please come to our public forum.

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Next Thursday night, September 25th, 7 p.m., anybody has any issues about city government or

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our stance in any issue or any resignations or any of that sort of be glad to discuss things

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with you.

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That's why we have these public forums to try to be as transparent as possible and answer any questions that you may have.

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Thank you.

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Okay. Moving on to the consent agenda.

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This point I will move to accept the consent agenda as listed and described as there is second.

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Second.

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Any discussion?

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I want to point out that the September 14th, the second warrant is again, unusually large, $680,000 is the third county sewer payment.

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2,300,000 is the 3rd county tax payment and 540,000 is in capital projects to the county.

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No, not to the county, just capital project payments and 3,500,000 is what that total,

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so I just wanted to point that out why they were so large.

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Thank you.

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Any questions or discussion?

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All those in favor say aye.

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Aye.

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Any opposed?

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Abstentions?

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No matter passes.

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Thank you.