if the clerk would read item number one item number one under original consideration an ordinance accepting the proposed two thousand and fourteen operating and capital budget introduced only with a resolution calling for a public hearing on the above propose ordinance on october fifteenth two thousand and thirteen this was discussed in committee without objection on consent item number two i'm number two a resolution accepting the transfer of title to property is located at eighteen also discussed in committee without objection on consent item number four item number four a resolution accepting a grant from the department of homeland security discussed in public safety committee without objection on consent i remember a resolution approving the sale of city signs to the downtown schenectady improvement corporation this was discussed in committee without objection on consent item number seven i don't number seven a resolution authorizing the settlement of a claim by lindsay mckern discussed in the claims committee without objection on consent item number eight item number eight a resolution authorizing the settlement of a lawsuit concerning two nineteen front street also discussed in claims claims without objection i consent item number ten i don't number ten a resolution authorizing the settlement of a claim by mildred white also discussed in claims committee without objection on consent item number eleven don't number eleven a resolution authorizing the settlement of attacks concerning several properties owned by broadway associate broadview associates also discussed in claims without objection on consent item number twelve i don't number twelve a resolution settling a claim by nicole wood again discussed in claims committee without objection on consent item number thirteen i don't number thirteen resolution settling a claim by friend seen flame again discussed in claims committee without objection on consent item number fourteen i don't number fourteen a resolution settling a claim by weiss at all also discussed in claims without objection on consent item d i don't know or sixteen we are to hold holding for two weeks and then we have one new item item number seventeen resolution authorizing the transfer of title of a parcel of real property and its property is a ten seventeen strong st this was discussed in claims committee earlier this evening without objection on consent is there anything else to come before the city council c right i will now call the city council meeting to order for september twenty third twenty thirteen and ask that everyone rise to the invocation by reverend allen kenny from eastern parkway united methodist church i asked first that we all wish for a moment of remembrance for the victims the families the navy yard and also for the victims the families of those in robey and also for those suffering from mental illness who have struggled to get help but have such difficulty let us be together in a time of silence creator of all who is called by so many different names be it a low beam way or god we come before you this evening we ask your blessings to god the works of this city that they may be pleasing to you god our thoughts my we know that united doesn't mean we always agree but that we struggle together for truth for what is best for all that i'm going to call on best serve an act from new york state taxation and finance one of our guests tonight to lead us in the pledge of allegiance  beth then her friend from the new york state taxation and finance talking about the star program and getting us up to date on all the changes and that so folks i'll turn four over to you good evening i want to thank the councils for letting us speak today on our presentation today with my name is a knack my colleagues name is allison julie and we're both from the division of property tax services of the department of taxation and finance new york state we have a brief presentation hopefully about ten minutes to introduce you to the new basic star registration initiative that the department of taxation finance is implementing this year for school tax star a benefit for the twenty fourteen school taxes which will be next fall  t n five you got to go back to ok so just to give you and i'm sorry that i have to kind of like try to see if i turn my back to you i'm very sorry but just to give you an over view of the of the program there was new legislation enacted as part of real property tax law for twenty five which requires all homeowners who are presently receiving a basic star exemption to register with the department of tax and finance in order to receive the exemption in the years twenty fourteen and going forward so this is something new what we're doing is we're taking the two point six million current recent b n c of the basic star off of the tax office the assessment rolls and we're sending letters choose those people reaching out statewide and asking them to register their star exemption with that with the department of tax and finance so again two point six million people are currently receiving the basic mouth the third bill is very important in that if you're receiving a senior citizens enhanced star exemption which means you're over sixty five years and of age and making less than eighty one thousand nine hundred dollars a year your process will not change you are not going to be part of this registration process it's only holders of the basic exemption so that the enhanced our people the seniors are content going to continue with the process that they're doing now they're going to be registering or they're going to be applying every year with the assess r as you normally do ok so there's a bullet there that says any questions you have you're going to see this number times there is a call center set up at tax and finance it's  by about one hundred fifty employees that are sorely charged with answering questions for people who want to call in with any questions they have about the program right you're fired you're going down ok so the purpose of this registration process would be is to ensure that the benefits provided by the state paying the star amounts which is two point six billion dollars annually that they go to only qualified homeowners and then we are intending to eliminate either intentional fraud or unintentional duplicate exemptions being passed out so there was not really any kind of auditing process the program has been in in effect for about fifteen years and there was really no audit process before so we're just trying to make sure that the people that are entitled to the exemption get the exemption and that people that are getting a double benefit or a fraudulent benefit that is going to be corrected so again we take the twenty thirteen assessment rules and anyone having a current basic exemption we generate a letter with just a unique star code on it and we mail those statewide in  batch i believe the western part of the stay in the central part of the state got their letters first in the capital district i think the letters went out the week before labor day so everyone in schenectady county should have received their letter ok again that's started in mid august the letter gives you a unique start code and explains how you know you are to register it is our hope that the vast majority of people will go on line to get to the tax and finance web page and register over the internet we've been getting some feedback that that process is pretty simple people are able to do it and  they are not having too many difficulties again but there is that call center line that you can call if you have any questions or if you need help registering you can call and say i need help registering with and if you have your letter in your information someone on the that's where you would go in to register it does have a lot of information on that page there's an overview page there's pamphlets there's a fact sheet of information just a whole bunch of information that you can glean off of that website to help you understand the process once you're in the actual registration you would just enter your star code and the website to displays your property address information for you to confirm what you need to register is all of the owner names on the deed to the property with their social security numbers and any and all spouses of those owners so you are going to have ahead of time all the names of the owners there so security numbers and their spouses information or to register once you enter the owner information you're going to be asked a few simple questions is the property their primary residence for each person what primary residence is defined as where you live for the majority of the year and each person can only have one primary residence they're going to ask if any of these individual people are receiving a residency based benefit in another state such as florida also has a similar homestead exemption so if you're receiving the homestead exemption in florida you're indicating that is your primary residence and you would not qualify for a basic in new york state primary residence you can only have one so if you do say you have another florida exemption they're going to ask you to provide the address that goes along with that then we have to confirm because there is an income limit of five hundred thousand dollars of household income to qualify for basic we're going to ask you to affirm that the combined two thousand and twelve federal adjusted grow income of all resident owners and their spouses is not more than five hundred thousand dollars then we should provide some contact information just your name and a telephone number or an e mail address so that if there is a problem with the registration we can give you a call and then they say you certify that the information is true and accurate and that's that's it that's that's the whole process right there so our schedule has been since the mid august again we sent out the letters and we've been sending them out by counties and so now you have your letters  that that process ends in the beginning of october then anyone who has not registered by december first we're going to out we should those people again and send them a reminder letter you need to register you have to end of the month of december to register so we're going to send out reminders once all the registrations have been completed we comply all that information and anyone who has not applied by the deadline the assessors are going to get a list of people  who either didn't register or just don't qualify any longer for the basic exemption and they're going to get a list to take off the rolls those exemptions of people that don't either don't are not eligible or have not registered there will be an appeals process if you're if you're exemption is removed we will send you a notice and you can appeal to the department of tax and fine we'll make a determination and if you don't like that decision there's another appeal process that you can go before the real property tax the board the board of the local board of assessment reviews in the towns or city they're not going to be involved with the appeals process there's also a look up feature so if you've lost your leg or with your star code a near in a panic there is a look up feature you just have to put in your unisa palette your name information and address and it'll try to look up the information so if you do lose it it will try to provide you  quote we have trying to do a very rigorous communication and slash public relations outreach program alison not and i are here tonight not only to give you this overview presentation but to once we are done we're going to go out to the co with two laptop computers and anybody who's wants face to face assistance with registering we will do that for you tonight you just need to have either your letter or if you have your letter you'll have your code you can either do that or look you up and then if you have the social security numbers and names of all owners and spouses we can regist ok anyone who is the new owner of a property so you purchased a property after taxable status date which in most places is march first so you are new to the star program you still have to apply with the assess fill out an application give the information the assessor goes through the process of putting you on the system and getting you affirmed that you are going to get a new basic exemption  so that once those new owners are on the rolls for two thousand and fourteen they'll be another sub process we're going to take those new owners and we're going to send them a notice so they get registered for next  knit so there's several ways you can get help and information can thank you very much and just remind everyone that if anyone has questions or needs assistance the un allisat will be out in the area right outside here and be glad to help anyone and we really appreciate you taking the time to come over here thank you for having some thank you very much we're going to this minutes while they get their computers switched around and then we'll continue on with our out of order resolution raising awareness of the need for health care facilities to be accessible for individuals with disabilities i move the resolution right second wentworth and the executive director and we have a number of consumers who have joined me tonight thank you so much for this resolution and for helping us to bring awareness to the citizens of schenectady about bifida and prevention and services that are available support services so we very much appreciate it i brought some information that i'm going to leave with you that would you know perhaps help to know more what our organization is about thank you so are there any committee reports no are right i have no one signed up for the floor related to the legislative agenda i will entertain a motion to approve the legislative agenda local evening councilman i'm up here because i want to talk about how it's hard for people in the community of schenectady to get the jobs here is connectivity to be able to qualify for jobs and be able to work on jobs and to keep jobs and maintain jobs oftentimes there's a lot of out source of people come from other communities other counties jobs if they have this ability or certain criteria of the been incarcerated so we often have to go with we're told to go outside of our county to try to get jobs which helps limits people that don't have transportation to do that or they can't afford to do that so i just suggest that we need to do work harder hoping these people to be able to feed their families thank you thank you good evening mayor city council members i want to say that i attended a meeting on the poverty in which was very unfortunate if one of the facts that was brought out is the welfare for the rich i wonder how is there probably a program around because the poor are treated unfairly if the poor try to better themselves they are cut off immediately from social services and or toll they have to file an article seventy eight when they protest and or a glee at the fact that they've been shut out of whatever the system is that they feel that they were supposed to be kidding no one understands how to file an article seventy eight there are no lawyers who will file for free this needs to be addressed i also want to mention the fact that the meeting for the stamp program was well attended the discussions of was the was the landlord's lease where our group wasn't invited to help make any decisions that included both tenets and landlords we hope this will change because tenants have a state in the housing because of their payments for the rent one of the members as do all members have a problem with being axed about credit  card what a lot of the issues that that the landlords had on their lease that i have put in the newspaper they were talking about getting these people's getting tenants to give them their credit card information  saying that if anything if anybody damaged their properties that they would have this information i think is very unfair to its tenets i think the barbecue issue that they also addressed was very unfair to the tenets i think the fact that if the them that the apartment would be ready on the first they say you're not going to get your money back because you made agree with the landlord and the landlord doesn't have the property ready so they're not going to give you money back i don't think that's fair and it's a lot of things that the landlords are talking about in the paper that are very unfair like the barbecuing i for instance i think that if you're going to have by the queue we should be able to talk to the fire marshal and find out exactly how much foot it should be away from the house so that these people can also enjoy the property that they're helping the landlord to pay for that they should be allowed to have  property but at a at a distance that would not harm the property i agree that the that that they should not be able to harm the property i'm not an anybody harming anything but they should be able to enjoy where they live and they had several other issues that they addressed they didn't invite me and i could have helped to shine some light on what they were saying i could have helped them to recognize the tenets perspective and if we're going to work together which i was hoping we were we need to talk we need to come together i would like to see that happen and thank you thank you  and nobody told us about this war that's going to be put into bread park you just can't come when you need us you you come to us and when you don't need us you don't care about this you don't care about  park or put in by the courthouse in the park there but bread because we do not count you will do not count us if you had come to the neighborhood association and talked to us we could  could avoid this but nobody think that we are you know you could come and talk to us but you come and talk to us mean you want to vote and we accept you and now you want to put up something in our neighborhood twenty i was mulling over seems like there are just a few people that come up people on the other side over here think that we're always complaining i mean i don't complain a lot but i of us here that are considered bad guys but when i want to complain about tonight i'm sorry you people say things are happening good schenectady fine but  when you read the paper that people are losing their homes or paying their taxes or losing their homes people or you want to give a race to someone qualified i mean i feel from people outside the city i don't understand it a two weeks ago at the meeting here i talked to weaver street notice neville it's a disgrace for the city or any other city already because the property anyplace and nothing happens what do we come down here and talk to people for you don't listen you don't get any response it's a waste of time except that we get a law for chest i don't understand how you can pay people twenty thousand ten thousand certified where do you get this you're supposed to be intelligent people link that city and you're a big let down it's a disgrace in plain english we've got a couple people on the council that i have little common sense and where the rest of you people are i really don't know to be honest i mean seriously get down to business and do the job you were elected for for their tax payers not the employees they get taken care of through their unions and everything else the salaries they're making it's all rage it's the way they drive our city vehicles it's a disgrace i found the city truck the sporty and i'd hate to tell you he would never drive his own vehicle the way he drove a six eight city vehicles the mirror doesn't have the authority to tell him to walk from the parking lot or he doesn't carry doesn't do anything about it what's wrong on here let's go not come clean with us stop taking care of friends and  green ups connecting dot org the letter probably is an answer to calls for the heavy enforcement of the recycling law as the only way to increase recycling is connected the mission of the group as i read it from the website the committee is to improve the recycling rate of the city of schenectady through public education incentives multimedia outreach to community organization and schools and through working with the city neighborhood revitalization slash waste collection staff and other concerned residents while this group is using words like research education cooperation partnership and incentives to accomplish their mission group should really be commended for its approach in attempting to a publish their goal is scarce me however how some people think that heavy handed in forstmann is the only way to solve any problems what's not helping the cause is describing some city residents  violators scofflaws and advocating that crackdown is the only way to solve the problem the city is working hard to recruit people to move in and make schenectady their new home the last thing we want is a bunch of new officers opening garbage bags writing tickets we're not recycling metal containers into americans the group is looking for volunteer speakers community organizations to help accomplish their mission in the mount pleasant neighborhood association would be more than happy to help them accomplish your goal please give us a call and before i go i also agree with marva that no one comes to the neighborhood association wonders a project going on and drag our opinion on our power input as we don't exist thank you thank you good evening miriam city council i'm here to address the graffiti wall i don't think that's a positive thing for hamilton now for several reasons you have gangs up there who's going to claim territory and this  wall then they'll be fights about the wall people be writing stuff that doesn't need to be there it's going to promote fights i just think there's so many other things that hamilton hill needs gerri prell park needs and needs more pleasing so that people can really go in the par good evening mr mayor and city council members my name is dawn resource i live on page three i have been born and raised on page three and it sadly troubles me that the violen drug activity that is going on in our neighborhood you can go on schenectady street at five in the morning or at five in the evening there are people selling drugs there are people rolling dice in the middle of the street i've talked to a bunch of community leaders that said to me that mr carney doesn't really want anything to do with it because you know they're just selling marijuana or a weed it's not big enough it's not you know on his scale but if it was in his neighborhood it would be a priority if i won one of them over he would prosecute me because i'm tired at the end of a work day i work hard i pay my taxes i own two houses on a street my family owns multiple houses on page three is it fair that i have to come home and look at that every day is that fair that these kids in the community go into the store and on the top shelf i guess or whatever their bones to smoke weed out that's real nice how many corner stores do we need in our community these people aren't being fine you can walk into their establishment in these people are asking you are you a straight need south the very educated and i'm assuming that means smoking weed anything it's absolutely out of control they have moved basically from one end of schenectady street from van boast too strong they have a little section now they have set up shop not only at the corner store but now they are on annabel and banding building somebody's property where they're skids playing there's all kinds of stuff these people go to work every day is i don't get it i don't see a cop car there until somebody gets killed somebody is going to get killed before two thousand and thirteen is over just because of the activity over there nobody's paying attention i hope you figure out that we're paying attention because elections are soon that is something that we haven't and i think the whoever has decided to have this wall needs to think about what they're doing and get in touch with the community and have what's in the hill we are striving to better our community and we need your help thank you thank you good evening i want to say thank you to who ever cut the weeds that were grow woon on the deli store property located on the corner of not street and then rank an avenue this past july new side walt and raised beds were installed on the property but the tall weeds around the light pole were left on cut i'd pay a diverse a to the store operator involuntary or to remove the weeds the clerk refused my offer and told the store owner would do it broadway another main city street will have been four feet high high weeds are unsafe breeding places  nothing to one neighborhoods beautification goals lastly in this room council votes to spend taxpayers money in this room council voted to pay tax rates to american tax funding consequent clete citizens are losing their homes in this room council voted for an eight year county contract with which means reduced revenue for the city door and the life of the contract in this room council voted to give a half million dollars to a private developer for his feet dumb and return and entrusting the whole building will been destroyed has anyone noticed the interesting details about each window of that structure in this room council voted to give the new assistant fire chief a one hundred thirty pattern in this room well to lower taxes and do less spending thank you thank you that i'm president city council members good evening i am reverend diana fracture i'm a homeowner in the city of schenectady for forty three years and i pay my taxes i'm here tonight to say car on any of the location in my neighborhood were free to comes in various style we do not want it were free the board you know a neighborhood i said no to so so to whoever like where feeble words from walt i say take it closer to home we do not want an inscription or drawing made on some public surface in our neighborhood rather it be iraq or it be on the wall again i give you three fold note note no to the does not fit me don't need any negativity thank you that in looking at the that are placed in the four different districts one stands out clearly and strongly and unfortunately that's the hamilton hill area and i'll get back to that in a minute so the city  work program with our county and also using youth that are on probation for various offenses and using people that are in our alternative to incarceration program along with some funding from the city and generous donations of both volunteer time and supplies from home depot we will be sending out twenty to twenty four  u for every saturday in october to cover and remove graffiti through all of our neighborhoods this program has taken about six months to research in a tremendous amount of meeting time and effort has gone into creating a program that has absolutely no impact on our taxpayers and and also doesn't have impact on the bottom line of our businesses and our nonprofits well also taking care of many of the foreclosed homes that now are boarded up in the city that the city owns and hopefully will be making a connection between some of the use that maybe doing some of this tagging which we do not wish to encourage back but i do have to face this way feedback is very important and i welcome it and i welcome it any time my cell phone is on the website my email is on the website become a news privilege of the floor but i want to make something very very very very clear this was a good thing not a bad thing now that being said if the neighborhood does not want it that's fine we can find another place however i feel that it's unfortunate that we're wondering about the what ifs and not the actuality of what this board might do and that we're reducing the chance to actually have a positive experience and yes it's only a removeable board and yes we have a group to whitewash and watch the board and make sure when there's something inappropriate up there that it gets painted over so i many years ago when woodlawn pool i have to say come up and take a look at it because the transformation is is really just beautiful and i think it's a great example of what some other things can be done  other parks that have started to deteriorate and what can be done with with the community volunteers the upcoming groundbreaking and dedication ceremony to unveil the park's new area of reflection the space will feature a cherry tree which is donated by retrieve schenectady in four beautiful custom made benches which will encircled the new tree materials for the benches have been partially donated by schenectady home depot in each pen day as we celebrate the park's renaissance and certainly those who have contributed greatly to the community so please try and make it sunday september twenty ninth after church at eleven thirty love to see  their thank you thank you miss porterfield because there have been a lot of requests from hamilton hill we can go back as far as two thousand and five but you know i did so there were a lot of things that were doing and requests that people were making about programs and things that were needed in the neighborhood at one time when i was on that side of the rail we came with a number of resolutions about jobs about different things that were needed in in the neighborhood about most recently we've been asking for we met with the city at our neighborhood association meeting with different department had to say we would want to garbage can so we could clean up the corridor on the street there was recently a petition from emmett street about sidewalks so there have been requests from the neighborhoods and we're currently working on a litter program about things that  needed because we understand that certain things on our neighborhood that don't happen in other neighborhoods or people feel that they can come to the neighborhood and do things that aren't acceptable in other neighborhoods so the feeling is to have something that would invite people to do that would just add to that we've heard people say either people have either sent e mails or have sent letters to the city council regarding the activity that already takes place in the park so this just seems like another activity that people don't want and and as you heard people say no when asked so that's the question was asked me well why wasn't why won't why weren't we asked so people just folks are just saying we just like to be included in the process when we came parks in different areas we you know it comes to the city council we discussed it so the entire graffiti removal program is an excellent idea and one that is absolutely positively needed without question the only part of the program that folks are saying that  so you know people are just voicing their opinions and they're very very strong feelings about things because we're really we need to do some positive things and we are doing some positive things in our neighborhood and we want to continue to do that so i received a number of phone calls emails and have lots of conversations with people so i just needed to so i thought things we're doing there's things that we have asked for and this particular thing is things that particular is something that people don't feel would be beneficial to the people that live in and around park in the neighborhood or overall the only and then i'd also just like to say congratulations to the y w c a for one hundred twenty five years that they had their there ribbon cutting today and also i'd like to invite everyone to the day of the girl march in celebration which is going to be held friday october eleventh from four to five p m girls incorporated the sponsoring this and they'll be from south to city hall to the steps of city hall and they'll be speaking out about gender bias shattering stereotypes in ending injustice and demanding equality so everyone's invited from four to five p m on friday october eleventh to the datagram march and celebration thank you thank you people here some people think we don't listen we don't listen so you come here bring your problems here that's a good thing for us to hear he that we can hear through phone calls through e mails through coming to the rail they're all good venues for you to tell us what  problems are which would like to see the fixes to be so i think it's a good thing about darryl park and the problem not about the graffiti on not going to get into this but about brawl park i've been talking about pearl park for quite a while in that we need  smith there and i had the police chief in a committee meeting and i basically you know grilled him on parole park and how we need more enforcement of the law there the stuff that's going on in there at night is shouldn't be allowed it is a park a park is for people to enjoy themselves and not for anything else so i still feel that way i'd like to see some more police presence there when it's possible i know they're doing the best they can but i think we need a maybe a concerted effort maybe with the state police and maybe with the sheriff's department and get something going their program to clean that place up once and for all because the neighbors there do not deserve that fat to happen in their neighborhood anyhow at october third three forty to six thirty they moved it up a half hour because you know it's getting dark a little earlier and october third is can be closing day with a fall festival painting an entertainment by droll sinatra maybe i'll bring this cousin frank with them too i'm not sure if your neighborhood garage sale october fifth nine a m to five p m that's a saturday applications can be picked up at the bellevue farmer's market the next two thursdays bellevue branch of the key were three four six zero four three for information applications need to be in by september twenty sixth that's a pretty successful neighborhood garage sale so that it but it's got stuff to sell the place to go and the open to the public so that will be a question answer kind of forum not quite at the bait forum but just a question answered with certain questions and answers and it's something that's because there's only a couple of those that go on during the election season so it's a good thing to hear what your candidates have to say so you can make a conscious decision when it comes time to vote so i would advise you please anybody in schenectady to go to the association meeting on october tenth st paul's church at seven m thank you thank you wall up in jerry borough park well it's creating this level of controversy having said that i would ask people to look at the positive aspects of it in to help work together as we bring the  partners not only in hamilton hill but throughout the community together where we're eliminating this area of what i call irritation blight and i look at some of the graffiti there some that are clearly  malicious they go out there soley geared to deface things in downgrade things there are other ones who are quite artistic have a lot of talent in are just misapplied in we don't really want either we want people to respect other individuals property we want to do things that increase value in the community in council or profit was again put together a broad based group of partners so that we can deal with this in a comprehensive manner in a couple months the other activities that we're doing this weekend habitat for humanity was out again staffing the goal of  corporation ellis medicine union college students some of the areas of target a little bit in the north and working to fix up properties clean them up we did our second annual housing fair here at city hall and sunday brought in over twenty vendors from realtors bankers housing counselors other entities who provide information and support for the housing market we want to do those positive things and again we all know we have a lot of problems we want to work at them in an incremental manner we're trying to do that try to do it since i've held this office through our code enforcement through our lot apartment where we're trying to improve things we want to work with people who want to try and make things better in just and the other side were say those positive things we want to work with people some people still put their interests above everybody else we had a decision today in city court where one of the individuals on a swan street property would comply would take it to court most tried in the judge lance field issued a sentence today were actually put individual in jail for seven days in fined him fifty thousand dollars and so that's part of the message i want to get out we want to work with people we want people to come here we want people to take pride in their property but homeownership there's a responsibility with it and people have to live up to that thank everyone for coming down tonight we're not looking to do things that divide the community or polarize things we want to work together in that build on the strengths of each of the neighborhoods in look forward to that continued relationship with all the i think she's come up with a very nice comprehensive way to address some of the concerns also reminder that this saturday is the stockade walkabout the walkabout which is a house tour in the stockade was actually discontinued for the last couple of years so they finally reinstated it and if the weather as it looks right now is is as good as it is is just a wonderful way to walk around the old historic part of the city and enjoy some of the homes so i encourage any of you who are interested to come on down and with that i will entertain a motion to a