Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues, it is 8.39, clouds and maybe a little drizzle or light rain where you are. Temperature at 46. It is a Friday morning, so that means that Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason is joining us to recap last night's City Council meeting. Chuck, good morning. How are you?
Chuck Mason: Good morning, Paul. I'm good. How are you doing today?
Paul Szmal: Good. It's Friday, so the weekend is almost here.
Chuck Mason: That's right. All right. Just a couple of items from last night's City Council meeting to go over. The first one was a professional services contract for what's called Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Services.
Paul Szmal: That's right, and the acronym there is SCADA, and this is a request for proposals that was submitted by our Municipal Utilities Department out to the public for some technical expertise to help with different systems and pumps and control mechanisms that exist within our water filtration facilities and wastewater treatment plant. From time to time, the city might need some expertise that is above and beyond what is within our existing city staff. For the most part, our city staff will troubleshoot the stuff as it comes up, but every once in a while, you need to call on somebody for some expertise, so we basically, this request for a proposal will award a contract to Odyssey Controls, Incorporated of Byron, New York, and they'll basically be the firm that's on retainer for the next two years for the city to use their expertise if needed for some of the more complicated equipment that we have at our wastewater treatment facility. For the most part, our staff will do the day-in and day-out routines, but every once in a while, you come across something where you need that extra special technical expertise, and this will be the firm that we turn to under this contract for the next couple of years.
Paul Szmal: This is almost like having an IT service available.
Chuck Mason: Exactly. That's a very good way to put it, Paul. We all jump on our computers, and we're all happy when everything is working, and then when you need some expertise, you really got to call, usually call that IT guy, and it's kind of exactly the same kind of setup.
Paul Szmal: The other item on the agenda last night was a resolution to settle some pending opioid claims. Is this another case where there's settlement money here that has been brought in that needs to be dispersed?
Chuck Mason: That is correct. What this will do is, this resolution last night approves the City of Auburn agreeing with a settlement that the state class action lawsuit has come up with, with eight different smaller pharmaceutical companies. The city, upon accepting this, will be eligible for funds that will be forthcoming. With all members of the class action lawsuit in, it's a total settlement amount of $1.1 billion. Usually, the City of Auburn's piece of that ends up being a few thousand dollars. We'll see what comes of this, but once the award is actually sent to the City of Auburn, probably in a few months, the Council will make a decision about where they would allocate the extra funding that would come in from this. We've had great success with these settlement agreements that have happened in the past here and it's brought revenue that we've been able to get over to programs in the community such as Nick's Ride for Friends in the past. It could be determined how these new funds would be expended, but we'll have to wait to see what the actual dollar amount is, probably in a few months once we hear more. This resolution last night, adopted unanimously by the Council, allows us to participate in this part of the settlement.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason here on FLX Morning and there's some good news about a major road construction project.
Chuck Mason: That's right, the City's been hard at work out there this year on a lot of road construction around the city and we have a significant project at the intersection of Standard Avenue and North Street, which just reopened a couple of days ago. Paul, I know that's going to make a lot of people happy. It's definitely probably one of our top ten busiest traveled intersections here in the City of Auburn. What we did was using some New York State touring route money, which we've been able to be successful with through the New York State budgets in recent years, thanks to the efforts of our local state representatives, we widened that intersection. It's a very, very busy intersection and it was a very narrow intersection and it really was causing a lot of traffic problems over there, especially if there were central buses or larger trucks. It's not a truck route, but if there was like maybe a U-Haul truck or something going through. So what has happened is the intersection has been widened for more appropriate turn radiuses for larger vehicles. There's been some pedestrian enhancements made to the intersection, more proper for pedestrians crossing the roadway. New curbs, new sidewalks, things look really good over there. We did have to close that intersection for the past six weeks to get this work done and the project actually started six weeks ago with NYSEG replacing all the gas line equipment that's under that intersection as well. So we got a lot of work done over there in a very short amount of time and I think the traveling public out on the north side of town will be very happy with the fact that this intersection has reopened.
Paul Szmal: And it was like the last piece of the puzzle of the reconstruction, the repaving of North Street this year, which the city got done and we were able to do all this work with the New York State Touring Route money, Mayor Genitino and the members of City Council working with our state representatives to get that money into the state budget and we've really benefited from it here in Auburn. And I know that people are very happy with how North Street has turned out and now they'll be happy about this intersection as well.
Chuck Mason: And coming up next Saturday, a community tree planting day and I know you're looking for volunteers.
Paul Szmal: That's right. We are looking to this fall, the city will probably be planting about 150 brand new trees and we're going to try to get half of them planted on community tree planting day, which is Saturday, November 1st. Great volunteer opportunity. We usually get about anywhere from 30 to 40 people that do come out. The meeting point this year has changed from where it's been the past previous couple of years. This year we'll be meeting down at Casey Park, 8am on Saturday, November 1st, we'll be meeting down near the tennis courts. We will do a demonstration on what people need to know about planting the trees and then we'll disperse volunteers throughout the city where they'll, when they arrive on site, the trees will already be there and volunteers will plant these trees. We're usually able to get about anywhere from 50 to 75 trees planted on tree planting day with the volunteers. We work with Dr. Walt Aikman from Grow Auburn's Trees Program and the members of the Auburn Beautification Commission this year. We're out there in the late summer, walking some of our neighborhoods, dropping information off to people and found a lot of great locations where people do want these trees. So any help that we can get will be appreciated. And again, that's Saturday, November 1st, 8am. The meeting spot at 8am is Casey Park near the tennis courts.
Chuck Mason: And there are city community development block grant meetings that are coming up here in November.
Paul Szmal: That's right, it's that time of year again. We talk a lot about CDBG, Community Development Block Grant, here at the City of Auburn. We are an entitlement community that benefits greatly from these federal funds that come in and there's always public meetings to start the process out annually and those meetings are usually held in the fall. So this year the planning department here at the City of Auburn has put out a notice that there will be a public meeting on Monday, November 10th at 5pm at the Seymour Public Library, 176 Genesee Street. So people looking to contribute their ideas for how they think we should be spending some of this federal money that can be spent in low income areas of our city. The public meetings are a great time to learn more about the program and provide your input for how you think the city should be spending this money. You know, we're able to do a lot of things, neighborhood improvements, sidewalk improvements, park improvements. One thing that we're finishing up here this fall, Paul, is the second phase of the Wall Street Playground. That's an example of a project that comes out of these meetings, these public meetings that are held for the CDBG. That playground is being redone completely with the Community Development Block Grant federal funding. So then, following the public meeting on November 10th, there will then be a public hearing on Wednesday, November 19th at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and that public hearing will be held here at Council Chambers here at Memorial City Hall, 24 South Street. So we'll be spreading the word about these public meetings to the community. There's always a lot of interest in these and this is a great program for the city. The input will be put into the annual action plan which will go in front of the City Council usually in February of next year.
Chuck Mason: And I do want to mention that because next week is the fifth Thursday of the month, there is no City Council meeting.
Paul Szmal: That's right and it's Halloween Eve as well, so Happy Halloween next week to everybody. We hope that everybody has a happy and safe Halloween out there, trick-or-treating. And we'll see you in a couple weeks, Paul.
Chuck Mason: Yes, thank you, Chuck.
Paul Szmal: My pleasure.
As always, it is 8.50 on FLX Morning.
