Paul Szmal: Welcome back to FLX Morning. It's 839. We've actually dropped a degree down to 64. Feels weird to be saying 64 degrees in June, but there you go. And joining us now to recap last night's Auburn City Council meeting is Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason. Good morning, Chuck. How are you today?
Chuck Mason: Hey, good morning, Paul. I'm doing well. Yeah, 64 is a little bit different than 94.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, we started the week unbearably hot and we're ending the week unseasonably cool for this time of year. I guess that's part for the course in the Finger Lakes though, don't you think?
Chuck Mason: It seems to be this year, that's for sure. So yeah, it was either we had a great concert at Hoops Park on Tuesday night, but it was so hot that it definitely diminished the crowd. And then last night was the first concert up in Emerson Park and, you know, it probably would have been a much better crowd had there been better weather. But two opposite extremes, one way too hot and one unseasonably cool.
Paul Szmal: Well, hopefully we can land somewhere in the middle here for some of those activities that are coming up throughout the summer in and around the City of Auburn. Last night's City Council meeting opened up with the public hearing on the hotel occupancy tax.
Chuck Mason: Yes. And this is an issue that the Council has been working on for a few years now. And earlier this year, the Council reached out to our state representatives to once again ask them to reintroduce the home rule legislation that would allow the City of Auburn to institute its own hotel tax. So the local law puts the language into the City Code that sets up the occupancy tax program. The tax will be five percent on hotel and short-term rental rooms here in the City of Auburn as of July 1st, which is next week. The Senator May in Albany was able to help us get this to the finish line in Albany. It was introduced as part of the state budget because the City of Buffalo had made a request that their hotel tax be introduced in the state budget as well. So Senator May was able to get that done for us. And the Governor, you know, when the Governor signed off on the budget, it received the state approval that it needed. And therefore, putting it on the books locally here in Auburn in the City Code is the last step in the process. So the Council last night unanimously adopting the local law after the public hearing. There was actually no speakers at the public hearing, I forgot to mention that part. That's kind of a key part. But this has been well debated over the last three years here at the Council.
We started looking into this back in about three years ago when the town and village of Skinny Atlas and the village of Weedsport, neighboring communities to Auburn, they established occupancy taxes for their municipalities. That's when the City of Auburn started looking into it. And more and more cities, we figure that we're about the 75th municipality in the state of New York to introduce its own occupancy tax on top of what are traditionally county taxes of occupancy tax. Here in Kew County, our county has a five percent occupancy tax. But if you go north of Auburn to the village of Weedsport, east of Auburn to the village and town of Skinny Atlas, south of Auburn to the City of Ithaca, and then over your way, Paul, in the cities of Geneva and Canandaigua, each one of those cities has municipal occupancy taxes on top of the county occupancy taxes. So we are just kind of joining the fray here.
And it's really intended to offset the burden on local property taxpayers, the revenue that will be received for this will be used in the city. It's written into the code language for not only tourism promotion, but promotion of the events and things that happen in our city parks, helping with the maintenance of our city facilities. One significant facility that we're seeing a lot of travel through is Falcon Park, with many, many teams that come in from the outside. We just had a very successful NJCAA College World Series there last month. And so the money that will be generated from this bed tax is really intended to help out our city's general fund to support all these programs that we are doing that contribute towards the tourism economy. And it's done in a way to provide some relief and less burden on the local property taxpayers. So that was approved last night by the City Council unanimously and it takes effect starting next week.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason recapping last night's City Council meeting here on FLX Morning. There were also a couple of grant resolutions to accept some grant and sponsorship contributions for some of the summer programs that happen in the City of Auburn.
Chuck Mason: That's right. And this is really incredible, Paul. Last night we had Brian Rhodes and Meg Grimley. They coordinate the summer rec program for us here in the City of Auburn. And then that's the summer rec program for kids. And then Kim Basso is the person at our City Parks Department that coordinates the fundraising for the summer concerts and movies. And we've had incredible success this year. We raised close to $60,000 in cash sponsorships and then several in-kind sponsorships from organizations that will be coming and providing services to the kids during summer rec. So it's really been an incredible show of support from our local community that they really and it shows that the community really values these programs out in our city parks.
The list of sponsors includes foundations, not-for-profit organizations, businesses, as well as other government entities that will be coming in and helping with the summer rec program this year. So it's a very, very long list. Probably longer for me to read than the time that we have here, Paul. But we will be publicizing the list on our city websites and social media pages all summer long because we really want to thank and recognize all of our sponsors for summer rec and for the summer concerts and movies that happen here in the City of Auburn. And without their support, we wouldn't be able to make some of these great things happen. And like I said, we were able to raise over close to $60,000 in cash sponsorships towards these programs this summer.
Now as far as our summer rec program goes, Paul, the schools are out now and it's time to get serious about summer rec. And we will be starting next week out in our city parks. We'll basically be out there for the next six weeks. But the schedule for summer rec will be Tuesdays at Lincoln Park, Wednesdays at Clifford Park, Thursdays at Casey Park. And we will be set up for summer rec from 1 to 4 p.m. each afternoon. You can check the city's social media pages and the city website for the weekly schedule. However, we already have a major event schedule, special activities calendars posted for some of the bigger things that are happening. And it starts out next week, July 1st. There'll be a presentation from the Most Museum coming over from Syracuse to do some stuff with the kids. On July 2nd, there's going to be a giant water slide set up at Clifford Park as part of summer rec. And then the culinary program will be on site July 3rd when the program is down at Casey Park. So next week, summer rec kicks off.
Now there's also, Paul, there's a number for people that are interested. If you want to be able to get daily text updates from summer rec with announcements about the day's programs, you would text the word JOIN, that's J-O-I-N, text JOIN to the number 315-238-9600. So we have a texting program to keep parents in the loop this year for summer rec. And also, new this summer, there will not be any rain outs for summer rec. So what we are going to do is if it's raining for summer rec on any particular day, the program will automatically relocate to the Casey Park ice rink. We'll be inside for the day if it's a rainy day. So to get that information, to receive that notification, you would want to be on that text number because we would text that information out a couple hours before summer rec starts if there's going to be a change in location due to the rain.
So that text number, again, you would text the word JOIN, J-O-I-N, text it to the number 315-238-9600.
Paul Szmal: And a couple of more things that we want to cover here. The bid was awarded for the Burgess Street culvert replacement last night.
Chuck Mason: That's right. Another important public works project that'll be happening later this year or early next spring. Scott McIntyre from the engineering department was on hand. We received a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant which became available after the hurricanes came through in 2019 where we had some major flooding issues on that section of town. So this infrastructure is going to greatly improve things under Burgess Street where there's a culvert that runs under the street. Burgess Street is on the southwest side of the city and this work will be done later this fall. Scott from our engineering department explained to the council last night that the prefabricated culvert itself could take possibly six months before it comes in. It's got a six-month lead time. So now that this contract is approved, that can be ordered. If it's here in time for installation in September, October, it'll be installed this fall. But if it takes longer to the six-month part of the process, it'll probably be a project that happens first thing next spring. But the good news is the funding's in place and we're off to get that construction done in the foreseeable future.
Paul Szmal: Pretty much 90 percent grant funded, $900,000 contract awarded last night being funded 90 percent by this FEMA grant and 10 percent by the local match here at the City of Auburn.
Chuck Mason: And finally, we wanted to cover the authorizing of an application for a grant program for the Auburn Police Department.
Paul Szmal: That's right. Chief Androsco was on hand last night. He is going to be submitting a United States Department of Justice COPS grant to help offset some community policing in the future. It was explained last night that this is just a grant application, so we're just at the beginning of the process. And it's totally unknown whether or not we would or would not receive the grant. So the decision last night by the council to apply for this grant does not affect the budget year that we just adopted a budget on. It would not have anything to do with the 2025-26 budget. If awarded this grant in the future, it would impact the future budgets, the 26, 27, 27, 28 budgets of the city. So the council putting its staff approval on applying for that grant, it would bring in some federal monies to help offset some new positions for community policing. But still a lot of unknowns. The council will budget these things accordingly in the 26, 27, 27, 28 budgets if the grant is awarded. But still a lot more to come on this, but the first step of the process is to submit the grant application and the council unanimously approving that last night for the Auburn Police Department.
Paul Szmal: And as always, Chuck, we appreciate the information. We're going to be off next Friday, the 4th of July, so we'll catch back up with you the week after.
Chuck Mason: That's right, Paul, and have a good holiday week, everybody. And real quick at the end here, Paul. One day early, one day early pickup next week for people in the City of Auburn if you're on the City of Auburn's pickup program due to the 4th of July holiday. So please, you should have received your streamlined calendars in the mail here in Auburn for your trash and recycling schedule. But next week we are on a one day early schedule throughout the entire city due to that 4th of July holiday. So thanks, Paul, and have a great week.
Paul Szmal: All right, thank you, Chuck. As always, it is 8 53 on FLX Morning.
