ok i'm going to call to order the city council caucus for december twenty sixth two thousand and two how and the clerk will please read the agenda item number one an ordinance for final consideration an ordinance amending the city code relative to the calculation of the senior aged exemption three discussed in committee without objection disappear on the consent agenda item number two for original consideration in ordinance abandonment of portion of oregon ave person went to new york state law second class city section one zero on introduced only with a resolution calling for a public hearing on monday january fourteenth two thousand and thirteen at seven p m at council chambers room two zero zero nine schenectady city hall one zero five j street schenectady new york ok this is only calling for public hearing without objection on consent number three item number three a resolution approving and adopting the budget for the upper union street business improvement district you know i would ask that we do a  this only because the public hearing tonight our only public hearing is authorizing the approval of the budget so i'd like to hear from everyone anyone that would be in the audience as a result of this or any comments from the council so i would ask that number three be a rol if there's no objection to that ok number four item number four resolution calling for a public airing on monday january fourteenth two thousand and thirteen at seven p m at council chambers room two  city hall one o five j street schenectady new york for the house for the housing and community development needs for two thousand and thirteen consolidated plan citizens participation ok again only calling for a public hearing on usa for teeth that objection on consent number five item number five a resolution awarding community development resources al say a three year grant writing contract again discussed in committee without objection is full  here on the consent agenda number six item number six a resolution awarding cares and a consulting contract with the city of schenectady and discussed in committee without objection number six will appear on the consent agenda number seven item number seven a resolution authorizing the assessor of the city of schenectady to grant exemption from taxation to the calvary baptist church discussed in committee without objection on consent number appear on the consent agenda number eight item number eight a resolution authorizing the settlement of tax or surely concerning two forty five green street discussed in committee without objection on consent number nine item number into the city council meeting for december twenty sixth please rise for the pledge of allegiance is excused ms broker here ok i have no resolutions this evening out of order we have just the one public hearing i have one individual signed up for that and that's to do the things that we want to do that we're able to do and you know when it comes down to the budget where we're very proud to say that we try and do a lot with a little we cut costs in shift things around so that we're able to market and advertise the street keep the street clean and keep it running as smoothly as possible especially when the snow starts to fall it does get a little tricky but we were grateful for the cit s the mayor's office support the council member support the office of general services we wouldn't be able to do the things that we do without you and for that we're grateful seconded by council member browser so all those in favor i and if you have a cell phone that's out there reading that i can hear it could you please put it on vibrate thank you our communications and petitions communications presented to the city council for monday december twenty sixth two thousand and twelve under official there are none under general the bellevue pres preservations monthly meeting will be held thursday january tenth two thousand and thirteen seven p at seven p m at st paul's opus scoble church parish all nineteen eleven fairview avenue guest speaker will be the schenectady city school superintendent lawrence to spring the public is invited under petitions there are none ok thank you committee reports of the ready committee reports this evening is king we're about to start the consolidated plan process and applications will be available online on january seventh we have technical assistance meeting on january tenth january fourteenth is the public hearing here at city hall on housing in community development needs there's also want to january tenth that will be held at carver community center and applications will be done very one and then we have a whole process of review and public comment and we hope to approve the final consolidated plan by april twenty second something i just encourage organizations that are going to be applying to pay attention and follow every thing on line thanks ok thank you anyone else committee reports move to privilege of the floor on the legislative agenda now signed up for anything on the legislative agenda would you please read that piece of legislation item number three a resolution approving in adopting the budget for the upper union street business improvement district floors open for any discussion ok privilege of the floor now and city business being unfairly treated from a number of code enforcement officers in a plant different building code standards to homeowners of racial backgrounds and indeed frequent denial of rental certificates to guy  west indians we feel the court officers manipulate the codes to back up their unfair actions landlords from our community believe such actions result in the now hours of the rental certificate to the homeowners that complain units and our landlords who refuse rental inspections are trading with notices to vacate for unsafe conditions our landlords feel that flashing a badge does not make it legal to enter a property without a homeowner approval there are numerous complaints from danny's westerners about the unprofessional behavior by some code enforcement officers the guy needs us in a community strong support housing standards review board after hearing the concern over a community we hereby request the following and these are our suggestions code enforcement officers should be impartial when conducting inspections created housing standards review board to meet privately to further give you a good understanding of our grievances that time in more detail so please fill us in to your schedule my telephone number is eight five nine five three one good evening and following mr r june we want to say as members of schenectady landlords influencing change we continue our work with landlords tenants organizations and the city in hopes of producing positive change in our rental community recently through our networking networking and research we have learned of a similar rental scenario in the city of st paul minnesota and initially this city favored owner occupied housing over rental housing for the sake of the neighborhoods and toward that end the city raised inspection standards they were writing up everybody elation and in turn they helped raise an additional an additional five hundred thousand dollars to cover the cost of hiring additional inspectors landlords complained the city issued false housing code violations and punished property owners by not providing prior notification or adequate time to remedy said violations punishments included fines denial of rental certificates requiring a bun necessary permits and the financial burden of code compliance costs no negative side effect of this whole situation is not only on the landlords but their tenants as well here unfolds a two part dilemma on reasonable cost in repair demands leading to work not being affordable and thus not being done by the landlords this results in rundown became properties undesirable for tenant housing and a detriment to the city number two to offset the financial burden when mars resort to raising the rent discrimination might unfortunately come into play and create dissension with racial minority tenants circumstances in st paul led to legal actions and court proceedings after all the dust settled the federal circuit court of appeals recommended that the city reinstate its problem properties two thousand program featuring a less aggressive approach to code enforcement after much consideration of the similarities we find in our two cities rental system issues and the benefits this project seems to offer oregon ization of landlord landlords a proposes that's connecting the adopt it's own problem properties program modeled after that of st paul minnesota now more details are to follow thank you thank you to explain a little bit about the sample minnesota case the landlord a sample minnesota that chris just mentioned specifically complained that their city conducted proactive sweeps and also adapt a court to the max and heavy enforcement policies and landlord also complained that in a choir requiring code compliance certification of rental properties the city increase the business their business cost and decrease affordable  housing the court looked at this case and founded the city could have adapted a less less restrictive world turn out if to achieve achieving the same objectives the court said that the city heavy  to what happened in sample and the court recommended the court of appeals or commanded identify properties with history of all resolved repeat court violations number to meet with the problem property owners individually and set up efforts for improving their properties and the neighborhood they are in number three encourage the owner to take a more business like community mining approach to managing the property number for us consistent inspectors at each property to help maintain a better working relationship a line of communication number five keep close tabs on changes in ownership of the identified problem properties it is a flexible and cooperative approach to quarter foresman versus the rigid and aggressive enforcement of the city's housing cope it is our contention that the city is going if the city of connect the implements the problem the problem properties program it would stimulate a greater degree of land north compliant to benefit the city as a whole and i'll give you a case name it's called gallagher versus magner and it's the eighth circuit court of appeal and they actually try to appeal it to the supreme court which was denied thank you very much are you doing everybody just still the same issue with yet again another mechanism in schenectady that allows corruption the breathing persist is this issue with the minutes and i'll chime in like you know tell you guys i've been here so many times telling these guys about like what i'm going through and you know they just all tell me to sue sue sue sue when i got to sue to get justice and it takes tons of your tax money like tons of it i come here i ask for help and you know you know what you know what their excuses for not helping me corp council intervened yet another mechanism that they use within you know this whole like little machine of schenectady you know and they intervened with the internal affairs who were supposed to be looking at schenectady you know police department and they did it in such a way i have i have recordings that john van norden the man who entered he said that my behavior was frightening over at the freedom of information at a lot apartment because i was successfully get in footage of cops in me pepper spray me stripped me naked you name it and nobody's been women and i told you guys like that really just the files you know like america's most sacred virtues i'm telling you to deny me justice is insane mccarthy goes to the paper and says that i'm unwilling to share any of my evidence and that my and my ramblings are baseless that starts a plant that's a that's a flat out lie and i got the video to prove it because i had to go and spend the money to get you know february fourteenth some video and i got that and then i went ensued the city and you know how they were in my home like you know in case acquitted they got a dismissed on the grounds that i was soon for something that was beyond the statue of limitations which was clearly indicated in my action i mean it's not so so basically you've got you've got a whole mafia of just an army of lawyers that are really really surreptitiously weaving in all these little loopholes to get out of control in not be like to just xscape detection and it's all in the policy the police department and they'll come at you with no offer as a solution and really it's a piece of crap really fancy gift paper i'm telling you because like this oversight this jail  mean there's a bunch of inmates in there would stop them syndrome so i swear to god it's insane and if we got all the scarpetta novels that teach you how to run around in you know allude forensics and all that it's more like a training camp that's not a correctional facility could play chess read super explicit dirty magazines and work out and then network with a bunch of other gangsters all of it and then have the ceo's instigate people tween you and then people get shot and they wonder what there's so many unsolved murders here it's crazy you guys need to help me or you're guilty by collusion i'm going to sum it up because you can't have agreement you know of an administration is responsible to its members so you guys are aware and i only think that ricky is the variable think you could flabbergasts what i read it to be juice and brush i mean i've never heard of it but they said that it's cheaper it's better in some communities are have looked into it now are using it in a saving money i don't know if anyone has ever looked into that but i mean the use on the roads might get some animals there i don't know now what the snow coming and going to go at it again i hope when they all the neighborhood that came for the candlelight vision and i want to thank everybody for coming out thank you thank you i have no one else signed up for poorest of the floor section is close it's i just want a great e mail always happy to deliver some good news and we have so many wonderful in active neighborhood associations and also our schenectady united neighborhood association i want to thank them for holding a meet and greet for us recently it was it was wonderful to meet everyone and put a name with a face but i did get an e mail from someone the other day saying that just a good samaritan in their neighborhood and digraphs had cleaned up all of the debris behind one of the homes digraph street and this woman wanted to thank her publicly and i'm happy to carry the message and more and more we're hearing of people who are actually engaged in their neighborhood who are doing some of the cleanup for their neighborhood the city certainly is concerned with the litter but we can't be everywhere where we need many hands to help so i just wanted to say thank you to every that good samaritan was on digraph street i also want to talk just a moment about the assistant chief position that we have three added to the budget is i think we all worked really hard and had a lot of discussion about what they might look like but with a new chief coming in and with reports from the police department and some measurable goals that we put in place to go forward i think this is a good decision on our part to ensure that  we have proper administration and we continue go in a positive direction toward accreditation and in meeting our goals and and moving forward thank you anyone else thank you all first of all i'd like to say happy kwanzaa to everyone who celebrates days the first day and also i'd like to the clerk read the communication regarding the superintendent school district because of the connect with the that is in our school district so i encourage people to come to them to view the video and to try to work together as a community so we can try to go to the state and get some of the aid so that our children are able to  attend school and to do well and that our schools are comparable and aren't suffering in losing programs because of the lack of state aid that is that it comes to schenectady and the mayor was a part of that as well so again  to be on january tenth at bellevue i'm sorry well the preservation meeting at st paul's church i encourage people to attend and i'd also just like to say happy new year to everyone the next time we meet will be after the nowhere and to in our community so i'm looking forward to working with the community with the council with the mayor on those things as we move forward into two thousand and thirteen thank you thank you anyone else strictly for coming i'm sure that little bit of snow we had yesterday here believe it or not there was a guy writing his snowmobile up and down the street and he'll first park and fairview park just kind of boggles the mind there was like a half an inch of snow what he was doing for the turf there i can't imagine i had complaints from neighbors i heard it myself so we had to get the police involved but i don't know if people can be thanking god first of all i don't care if there's three feet of snow you can't write a snowmobile when our city parks around the city property or on private property it's illegal so i think we'll have to get the word out there that's that's not the thing that we should be doing but just seeing somebody on a little bit is someone guy had a sidewalk with shovels and he was going over the sidewalk to unbelievable but anyhow on a positive note last wednesday i attended the holiday tour of the whites which is the fourteenth annual and i'll tell you i was very impressed of it served two hundred twenty five seniors and had seven busses and a lot of free food so it was really a great event and my hat's off to the organizers and to the donors which operate really stepped up to the plate and donated like a hundred pounds of cookies for this thing so it was really it was really nice and everybody there was thrilled and people that were you know not ambulatory when it was very nice and heartwarming to see for the c's so i think that was a great  thing on another note to think something we have to look into next year is it's come to my attention that and some of the park rents jobs aren't being filled positions aren't being filled so there's apparently there's some extra money there and it's come to my attention that in one department there's a job as can be created for someone with a pretty hefty pay increase so if they can force is the case and there's extra money in budgets i think we should be looking maybe to ask department heads to to get some kind of idea what money they have in their departments how they're using it and maybe i spoke to was our finance chair mr erickson about this i think we should look to maybe encompass some of these spawns so account least come through to council and see all this money is going to be used because you know there is some one happy campers out there in the workforce in the bets who brought it to my attention so i think we should look into this and i'd like to see the finance department maybe put it up on the agenda so we could discuss this and then hopefully we'll come to a resolve at this that happy crohn's and happy new year to all and let's hope two unfortunately the american be here tonight but he wanted me to extend to you as best wishes for happy in a safe new year i had a couple other comments concerning the big juice in the brine tony  sin is aware of it and we will be taking a look at it it's got to be pretty messy but what take a look at and see what what it whether it's good or not what it's cost and you know take a good look at it  with regard to the snow i just a reminder we have snow emergency routes priority routes that after three inches of snow fall it's not supposed to park on the street until it's cleared from curb t curb and we're probably going to have more in three inches of snow based on the last forecast that i heard so just a reminder and help our our crews out it's very difficult when you're driving along with a plow to go in and out of parked cars so we have sixty priority routes and they're all marked so just a reminder to help us out in and take your cars away and put him in the driveway or some place at least