we did that the last meeting of last year so that will not be done to them at this time i'd like to call karl erickson and the honorable judge moore blanche will forward to  good morning i'm judge mark lance feel that it's my honor and privilege to swear in my my friend karl erickson here he is joined by his wife justin and i see there are some family members of theirs around here as well their children it is really  my honor and privilege to do this today for carl this is a day of of many firsts we have our first guy and he's american who was elected to the city council here in schenectady we have our first african american woman who was elected to the well particularly the north side so carl has deep roots in this community and we are just so proud of him and his achievements here so it is my honor to administer the oath if you would please raise your right hand plays your left hand on the bible karl erickson do sourly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of the schenectady city council member in for the city of schenectady  ccording to the best of my ability congratulations it's my honor to be here with marianne my friend and i swear her in to her position i know she's worked so hard and will work continuously for the residents of the city of schenectady and so glad i'm so glad to be here with her mom in a fletcher and this is really a historic occasion and i'm so proud that she asked me to be here and i want you and the rest of the city of schenectady to know that you have a partner in the state senate and whatever i can do to help the city move forward in a positive direction you can count on me so i'm so thrilled to be here so will you raise your right hand and place your left hand on the  there are other children around the city council chamber because when i was sitting in that seat over here my kids would sometimes be sitting in the front row so it is just wonderful and really my honor and privilege to john today john has been a bridge builder  this community for such a long time he's been a liaison to various components of our community over the past several years when i was on the city council when several of us were serving in various capacities john would always be there to help build bridges make connections with other people and he was always a tremendous voice of reason and i know he still will be a member of the city council so we're so proud of him and his family for supporting him throughout this  support the constitution of the united states the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office thank i want to thank my colleagues on the city council for that your support and certainly while times are challenging for all elected officials we've been able to move our city forward by working together with each other with metroplex the d s i c the chamber and others to create new jobs and investments in our city i just want to take a minute to highlight just a couple of our accomplishments this past year now and the mayor mccarthy will go into more detail in his state of the city address at our first first formal council meeting the kadian key to the city and the homes programs continue to be a great success getting owners into houses in our neighborhoods so far twenty one properties have been sold with forty one more listed with realtors the recent agreement with the county regarding the city paying county property taxes we have not collected is definitely a plus for the city and there are numerous other accomplishments as i said i'll let the mayor discuss i'm still excited by our downtown it's a place people want to be with a vibrant art seeing wonderful restaurants excellent services every boulevard with so much better and now the focus is on lower state street so there will be more improvements to come i look forward to continu address the issues we face including greater equity in the state aid we receive increased consolidation of services with the county the quality of life issues in our neighborhoods and the council members and i will continue to make teams of us available to attend neighborhood meetings when we're invited so while we face difficult times it's exciting to be directly involved in the good things that are happening and to take on the challenges of the problems that exist i look forward to working closely with mayor mccarthy with my council colleagues with our excellent city staff and with our neighborhood leaders to continue to move the city forward so thank you again for your support at this time i'll entertain a motion calling for the designation mr thorne as our city clerk for another term moves that second it's all in favor i  but thank you happy new year to everybody first i'd like to start off to thanking all the voters this year who came out to vote you know this is a government and government is one of the things that we all sit around with our friends we talk about complain about and you know discuss how things could be done better but a lot of people don't participate and so if you took the time this year to go to the polls and you took the time to vote then you've taken the the first step in making our government our community a better place so i really want to thank the voters for coming out let's thank my supporters running for city council is not a one person operation it takes a lot of people it takes a lot of help  from people who you know feel the same way that you do in and want to move the city in your community a better place and so without supporters i could not do it there's petitioning others going toward the door there's people creating literature and to do everything i do with integrity and honesty and for them that was the greatest lesson i could have taken and i do that every day that i come into this chamber and i work in city council so i think them very much for the most important lesson of my life  my in laws live in ron ron was my campaign finance person so being somebody who's done campaign finance in the past that's a tough job and so i thank you for for managing that for me and lastly  importantly my wife just jane and my two kids carla max council is sometimes very time consuming and finding that right balance between time with the family and the twenty four seven nature of city council is always difficult but without my wife accommodating me just about every day i wouldn't be able to find that balance and so i'm very grateful that i'm able to spend lots of time with my family and also serve the community and efficient manner so thank you just three years ago i was sworn in for the first time after winning election for  partial term and i talked about a lot of different things i talked about bold new ideas i told about talked about being in city council as a dare to be great moment is i think the term that i used and it absolutely is i've worked very hard of these last three years to make sure that we think outside the box that we think of how can we do things in our city better than my way we've done them before the question to ask lots of  questions many sometimes thank you committee meetings sometimes go a little long because i've got lots of questions but i ask lots of questions for two reasons one i'm not going to vote on something that i don't fully understand into sometimes we don't have the choice between a good option and a bad option we have the choice between a bad option and a less bad option and so the public when they see how things get done sometimes i get frustrated i think that asking these questions in public and having an opportunity for the people who are proposing them to explain them in a public forum they're able to understand why we make the decisions we make and why we vote the way we do with why we implement the things we implement and so i think asking these questions in public is critically important i will pledge to continue to do so i make the decisions and vote the way the best way i know how being on the council i've learned quite a few things of that over the last couple of years and you're never going to make everybody happy i was told by somebody beginning of this campaign that i wasn't going to win reelection they said karl you're pissing off the wrong people and i was person you know i felt had the finger in the pulse of the people and understood you know politics much better than i did turns out that year this porterfield good morning and happy new year and thank you all for being here it's a bit cold this morning we appreciate you being out i first of all like to thank god for the opportunity again once again to serve my community to serve all of you thank my family especially my family extremely supportive of my mother who was here with me today and held the bible is because of her she is who the woman that i am today so i really just want to say thank you to her and to all of my family for all of their support and i'd like to support other voters who voted for me people who you know when i came to knock on your door we had chance to talk and you had a chance to tell me the things that you'd like to see and i appreciate people that told me things that maybe we weren't doing well because we have an opportunity  do them better so every amount of input is really appreciated because it's what we can do to work together to make the city a better place for all of us to live one thing that i know is that the power behind me is greater than the task before me and the the council i know that from some perseverance internationally you can make it happen with a group of people working together for a common cause that we should also get work together for that common cause i encourage everyone to work with their  through neighborhood associations through based organizations in the school district to bring whatever school intel you have that we can all work together because the city belongs to all of us to work with the city council to come to our meetings  see what we're doing and give your input it's really important and i pledged i will work with my council members with the mayor with the staff of the city of schenectady to do the absolute best job that i can as i said my old to be your representative on the city council i'd like to hear from you on a regular basis not just when the election was going on not just you know way that city council i attend a lot of meetings i'll continue to do that because i'm interested in what it is that you have to say because my job is to be a public servant to you them something positive to talk about the things that we're doing downtown but things are going to do in the neighborhoods let's work together to make that happen thank you once again and god bless and the great people of this city who stood up and said they believe in my vision i humbly say tank you to my colleague thank you and i look forward to working with you to continue our success thanks to the democratic party the independent party conservative party and a working family party for your endorsement to my fallen tears i sincerely thank you for the time effort and dedication you put into my campaign i am blessed to have benefit from all your talent and experience i could not have done it without optimistic about our success as we provide the opportunity for everyone to realize their dreams let us focus on what we can do together i'm confident that we can stand together to continue things that move us forward let us work together