Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues. It's 8.38. Friday morning means that we catch up with Chuck Mason to recap last night's Auburn City Council meeting after a week off last week. Chuck, good morning. How are you, sir?
Chuck Mason: Good morning, Paul. Good. Thank you. How are you?
Paul Szmal: Doing fine. Doing fine on this Friday.
So things opened up last night. There was an authorization of what's called an inter-municipal agreement between the City of Auburn and the Town of Awaska for the provision of ambulance services. I know this is something that we've covered before. I take it this was just the the formal acceptance of the agreement?
Chuck Mason: Yes, this is the final piece of the puzzle for the next year and you are correct. It's been on council agendas back in the month of May, but this is the final piece the council needed to take care of and Councilor Terry Cuddy last night just speaking about the fact that our new ambulance department here in Auburn has really stepped up and they are definitely an essential service and serve not only Auburn but the greater Auburn area and the Town of Awaska, Town Supervisor Ed Wagner and his town board coming to the understanding a couple years ago that they needed some support on the ambulance end of things out in their town and this arrangement that's been in place for a year has worked really well and it will continue here for another year. So the City Council unanimously last night putting those final touches on the process to formalize that agreement for another year.
Paul Szmal: And the next item was a resolution authorizing the City Manager to adopt an amended City of Auburn land sale policy. I think this is something that we may have lightly touched base on before but can you give us a refresher on that Chuck?
Chuck Mason: Yes, as you know the last couple of years we've had a lot of success with using a realtor here in Auburn to sell the property that the City becomes in possession of mostly through tax foreclosures from previous years and the original land sale policy that we've used was originally adopted back in the 90s. It's been edited a couple times and changed a couple times over the years but the current version of the land sale policy enhances the procedures related to the sale of the property in the arrangement that we have with this realtor. So it's intended to kind of streamline some things and increase transparency for the public as well as the Council and it's just I think we kind of tested the model out but now that we know that the model works we just put some more formal language into our policy so that it lines up exactly with this new way of doing things. So the Council last night unanimously putting its staff approval on these kind of minor changes to our internal policy here but an important policy because we've been having quite a bit of success over the last couple years with moving out some of these properties in the neighborhood so that they are returned to useful purpose for the neighborhood with owner-occupied homeowners that'll you know really be happy to be part of those neighborhoods moving forward.
Paul Szmal: Yeah this was sort of just a formal putting it on the book so to speak.
Chuck Mason: Exactly.
Paul Szmal: Chuck Mason joins us the Auburn City Clerk we're recapping some of the items from last week's Auburn City Council meeting here on FLX Morning and speaking of property there was the sale of some property on Garrow Street that was approved last night.
Chuck Mason: That's correct 72 to 74 Garrow Street this is just vacant land however a new home will be placed on this land so this is a sale another positive sale in the right direction and the city sold this property for $16,500 and we wish the new property owners well and their intent is to build a new home on this property so another great example of us getting some unused property that's out and about in the city and getting it back onto the tax rolls and contributing positively to a neighborhood and the council last night unanimously supporting this land sale as well.
Paul Szmal: And then the next resolution is setting a public hearing for the City of Auburn occupancy tax that was included in the state budget for this year.
Chuck Mason: That's right Senator Rachel May has been working all year with us on the implementation of a hotel occupancy tax for the City of Auburn. These taxes have popped up in our neighboring communities Ithaca established theirs in 2021, Skinny Atlas established theirs a couple of years ago along with the village of Weedsport and in the news you hear where Auburn is going to become about the 75th municipality around the state in addition to counties to implement these hotel occupancy taxes. So what's required now on our end is to put this through local law put it out to our city code and we'll be ready to go for the establishment of this tax in the month of July of this year and it's really intended to provide some relief to the burden of the property taxpayer with an increase of some revenues for the City of Auburn that can be used in our general fund to offset some of the expenses that go with supporting the tourism economy that we're currently living, you know maintenance of our downtown area, the running of the heritage center, some of the you know administrative work that'll go behind operating the hotel tax as well as the fact that you know our public safety is impacted as well. You know there's calls that are made to the area establishments and so the municipalities across the state are turning to these hotel taxes as a way to increase revenues in the city or in the state budget this year. Rachel May our senator was able to get this in for Auburn. The state also did it for the City of Buffalo and these things are you're finding that these hotel taxes to become more and more common. So the council will go through this process during the month of June. The public hearing is scheduled for June 26 5 p.m in front of the council at the regular meeting and that night as well as when they would be expected to vote on it.
Paul Szmal: And Chuck do we know the percentage point for that hotel occupancy tax?
Chuck Mason: Five percent.
Paul Szmal: Ah okay okay and also there was the acceptance of the Equal Rights Heritage Center's operational funds from our friends at the Auburn bid.
Chuck Mason: That's right and this is just a was kind of a technical thing that we needed to do. The bid operates the heritage center for us and we and we the City of Auburn provides through an agreement with the bid the the funding that goes towards paying for the operation of the building. However the city also owns everything that's within the building. So the original exhibition which is you know over six years old now is in need of new iPads. The the iPads that run the exhibition but the City of Auburn has a very exclusive contract with the Apple company for the purchase of any Apple products. So those those iPads because that exhibition in the building is owned by the city and we maintain those exhibitions those iPads need to be bought through our city account. So this resolution last night simply accepting some of those funds back from the bid so that the city can make the purchase and get those pieces of equipment replaced over at the heritage center. So a little inside baseball here that required some council action but this was money that was that's coming out of the previous year's operating budget as we're ending you know the current year actually that we're about to end in June 30th. We just held out as long as we could during the budget year before we purchased these new pieces of equipment but basically the old tablets the old iPads that were used over there are older versions that no longer keep up with the technology that's required to run those apps that are running those exhibitions in the heritage center.
Paul Szmal: Yeah we all know how fast technology moves nowadays.
Chuck Mason: Yeah exactly.
Paul Szmal: And you had a vendor a staff vendor presentation last night from the folks of the biosolid and wastewater treatment plant talking about the updated progress on their upgrades.
Chuck Mason: That's right and a significant amount of work being done. The pictures of this are some pictures of the site are included in the presentation that was on the council agenda last night. You can really they've got some great drone photos to give you a shot of the 90 million dollars worth of work that's happening down there. This is the project that we were extremely successful a few years ago with obtaining bipartisan infrastructure law funding from the federal government as well as various state grant programs. We got some grants from the bipartisan infrastructure law bill as well as some zero interest financing. So this has been a ton of work going on and one of the final pieces of the puzzle that's going to happen down there is a rehabilitation of the 100 year old building which is the overflow retention facility at the filtration plant. So the the overflow retention facility design was kind of held out to see how the progress of the building or the progress of this overall project would be budgetary wise and a couple years ago when we figured that we would be able to fit this project in the council decided to go ahead with design. So design has been done now and now it's time to put the final stamp of approval on the funding of the actual construction and rehabilitation of the overflow retention facility. So our Director of Municipal Utilities Seth Jensen was on hand last night with Matt Marco who works for the contractor and the contractor went through things with us and the council will probably be asked over the next few weeks to take action through some council resolutions on putting the final pieces of the funding in place to make this happen but an amazing amount of work that's happened down there Paul and I do know that this summer either in July or August one of our council meetings is going to be scheduled so that the mayor and the council and anybody interested from the public we're going to actually going to take a field trip at the end of one of the council meetings to get down there and take a look at this project and we're you know we're getting to the you know 80 completion mark so the the finish line is near and the council will travel down this summer to take a closer look at the work that's been done down there.
Paul Szmal: And of course the next council meeting is coming up a week from yesterday.
Chuck Mason: That's right we'll be back in action next week Thursday on June 12th five o'clock here at City Hall and as always you can find our agendas auburnny.gov agenda we post everything the Friday before the Thursday so.
Paul Szmal: All right as always we appreciate it Chuck thank you so much.
Chuck Mason: Paul thank you have a great weekend.
Paul Szmal: All right it is 8 51 on FLX morning.
