Paul Szmal: 839 on FLX Morning here on Finger Lakes News Radio. Let's bring in Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason on Zoom this morning. Good morning, Chuck. How are you?
Chuck Mason: Good morning, Paul. Good. How are you doing today?
Paul Szmal: Good. There was a boatload of activity at last night's City Council meeting, so let's dive right in, starting with the resolution which amended the City of Auburn's 2025 procurement and surplus policy. What was that about?
Chuck Mason: Yes, Paul. Thank you. Last week, you'll recall at the Council meeting, the Council received its independent audit report from the independent auditor for the fiscal year 2023-24, which ended on June 30th, 2024. And out of the work that our City Comptroller did with our auditing firm this year, they made a recommendation that we would create a change order policy for City projects, capital projects in particular, when circumstances arise where you need to perhaps spend something that wasn't pre-planned or the budget is going to go over budget. So what the course of action was that our City Comptroller and City Manager decided to take was to add a chapter on change orders for construction projects to our City procurement and surplus policy. So the Council last night unanimously approving this change, and it'll just bring a little bit more transparency to changes in projects. It'll need to be required that the City Council is not only updated but the City Council would need to approve such change orders.
And this was just kind of routine, you know, we've been dealing with change orders, you deal with change orders on every project, and we've done them for years, and sometimes if they are a larger amount, they will get brought before the City Council. But this recommendation now is saying that any change order on a project would be brought before the City Council. So again, the procurement and surplus policy is a policy that the Council reviews annually, and we had just reviewed this back in January, but now a couple months later into the new year, with the work that our City Comptroller did with the independent auditing firm for the year, this recommendation came forward. And so now there's a new part of our procurement policy, and City staff will be following accordingly on projects that come up in the future.
Paul Szmal: And along those lines Chuck, there was also a resolution for budget transfers for the fiscal year. Do we classify that as something routine as well?
Chuck Mason: That is routine, however there is a story behind this particular change order, and that was some of the emergency events that we've had this winter out in the community. We've experienced a couple of fires this year, and unfortunately a couple months ago we did have a fire in town which had fatalities at it. And we budget over time for our Police Department and Fire Department pretty tight, and when there is a unique set of circumstances, such as you know a couple of large fires that we had this winter, we'll have to go back to the Council to make an adjustment to the budget for some of those overtime costs.
So when you have some of these larger structure fires, you know the Chief will budget for so many incidents over the course of the year, but then when you get something that's a little bit more significant like the unfortunate fire that we had a couple months ago in town where there was a couple fatalities, the project becomes much bigger and the expenses of fighting those fires and taking care of all the business required gets larger. So last night the Council putting its stamp of approval on these change orders. We thank our members of Public Safety, both or all three Police, Fire and Ambulance. When these incidents occur, oftentimes they're working multiple shifts and even overtime to take care of these larger incidents that occur, and they do a great job for us. We thank them for their service.
Paul Szmal: Joined by Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason here on FLX Morning, the next resolution that was brought forward was a grant application from the county to the county's infrastructure grant program. That's correct. Now this is a new program that's being rolled out by New York State, and it'll be administered through the New York State Empire State Development, and it has to the counties in New York State are eligible to apply for this grant. However, if the county is applying on behalf of a municipality, once the county receives the grant they are allowed to basically re-grant it to the municipality.
Chuck Mason: So the City of Auburn has been working with our planning department, has been working with the Cuyahoga County Planning Department on this grant application. This has already been reviewed at one of the county legislature committees, and it'll be scheduled for next week's Cuyahoga County Legislature meeting for approval. So the City Council last night with a resolution putting its stamp of approval on this.
Now this is an amazing opportunity that's come up for the City of Auburn and for Cuyahoga County, in that we have for the first time in a long time we have a developer that's interested in some city-owned land that's located down on the west end of Auburn, kind of in the area behind the Topps grocery store and next to the Bluefield Manor residential property that's down there. And the developer would put 70 market-rate housing units into this area, and there's a full drawing of what the plan would look like on the City's website that goes along with this resolution. And it would be market-rate housing, so their target market is working households that are making about $100,000 or more per year of annual income.
And we do know in preparing for Micron that's coming to North Syracuse in a few years, and we do know with all the work that our mayor and planning department does with communicating with local businesses and some of the bigger businesses in town in particular, they've let us know that housing for their employees, especially new employees that they're trying to recruit, is essential and needed in the Auburn area. So this will be a great project for us, it will be a $23 million total project. The developer, we are very familiar with this developer because this is the same developer that just did the same contractor that just did the new Cancer Center and Auburn Community Hospital, and they did a great job with the building of that new facility. It looks great up there on North Street, and they took an interest in Auburn, New York when they were building that facility, and they've done these projects in other areas of upstate New York, and they are very interested in bringing this housing.
So this is really kind of the first step in what will be a process over the next couple years to bring this to fruition, but if we are able to get this grant with the partnership and help of Cuyahoga County from the state of New York, it'll really get this project rolling along. So we are really excited, Mayor Genentino last night talking about the great opportunity that this is for the city and the county to add to the tax base and bring some much-needed market rate housing to the Auburn area.
Paul Szmal: A couple of more resolutions we want to talk about here as we're recapping the Auburn City Council meeting from the other night. One was a community garden perhaps in Miles Park. That's right, and this is a project that started last year. The council gave approval to a community group down on the west end of Auburn at the Miles and Lepic Park. Anna Ritter is the community member that heads the organization up. She was in attendance at council meeting again last night, and last year they built out a community garden which had about 10 raised beds, and this year they want to take that from 10 to 20.
Chuck Mason: They had a lot of success last year, minus a couple of nights that deer broke in and helped themselves to some of the vegetables, but they'll be taking more precautions this year to try to build the fencing around the area and double the size of this community garden down on the west end of town, and we appreciate their work, and the council enthusiastically last night putting a stamp of approval to allow this community garden to continue. It's off to a great start, and it started with a grant from the Cayuga Community Foundation, which was obtained in partnership with the Auburn Beautification Commission, and 2024 was the first year of the garden, and we wish them great success in the future years as well.
Paul Szmal: And then the final resolution that we wanted to cover here, or the final two resolutions because they're kind of linked, have to do with what's called the Statewide Targeted Reductions and Intimate Partner Violence, or the STRIVE initiative. That's right, and this is a new public safety grant opportunity that the City of Auburn has been selected for, and Chief Androsco was on hand last week and again this week to discuss this. This is a partnership grant in which the Auburn Police Department will be working with the Kew County District Attorney's Office, the Cayuga Seneca Community Action Program, and it's targeted towards reducing domestic violence in the community.
Chuck Mason: So not only did the council last night unanimously approve accepting of the grant from the State of New York Criminal Justice Services Division, but the council also unanimously approved establishing a Memorandum of Understanding between the agencies of Auburn Police Department, Kew County District Attorney's Office, and Cayuga Seneca Community Action Programs. They will oversee the program. There will also be involvement with the Kew County Sheriff's Office and additional service providers as needed. Also Kew County Probation will be involved from time to time. So this is really a multi-agency effort and it's a great opportunity with grant money coming in from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services.
So Chief Androsco thoroughly explaining the program. We've had success with other state-funded grant programs such as the GIVE program in the last couple years, and this new STRIVE program is targeted to try to reduce domestic violence in the community.
Paul Szmal: And the next council meeting coming up, Chuck?
Chuck Mason: Yeah, we'll be back in action next week on Thursday night, 5 p.m. I believe next week is Thursday the 26th or 27th.
Paul Szmal: 27th, yep.
Chuck Mason: Yep, and so the council will be back in action next week at its usual Thursday evening time at 5 p.m. here at City Hall in Auburn.
Paul Szmal: All right, Chuck, thanks so much for filling us in. Much appreciated as always.
Chuck Mason: Paul, thank you. Have a great weekend, everybody. It's 8 51 on FLX morning.
