Paul Szmal: And welcome back to FLX Morning here on Finger Lakes News Radio. It is 837 and joining us to recap last night's Auburn City Council meeting and more is City Clerk Chuck Mason. Chuck, good morning. How are you this morning?
Chuck Mason: Good morning, Paul. Good. How are you doing today?
Paul Szmal: Doing well as always. It's Friday. So yesterday at the council meeting it was phase two of the budget presentations.
Chuck Mason: That's right. During the month of April here at each council meeting we'll be taking a look at various departments within the city. Mayor and City Council last night getting to hear from pretty much the entire public safety component of our city budget.
Things started out last night with a presentation from Police Chief Matt Androsco. Chief and all I will say from the at the beginning here each one of these presentations was a was a pretty detailed presentation of what the departments do. Some of the most recent statistics of each department. A closer look at the actual amount of staffing in particular to the Fire Department. A little bit of discussion about some of the vacancies that occur and the reasons why the department might be so many positions down due to injuries and and other reasons for officers being out of work. A closer look at really what it is that the Auburn Police Department does is and how it organizes itself. And then of course being that it's a budget presentation a look at expenditures.
So the Police Department's overall budget as proposed as presented is nine point eight million dollars with about seven points seven point eight million dollars of that being salary wages and employee benefits. So you know it's really a people-driven process like any any local government service. We often find that there's overwhelming majority of these budgets going to the actual staff employees salaries and benefits and not much else.
So one thing about the Police Department is they do a lot of work with grants that they receive and different programs that are offered by usually the state of New York. Things like Stop DWI, the Governor's Traffic Council. We've we've had some good experience in the last couple of years with what's called the Give Grant which is money that goes directly towards helping them fight crime right on the streets. So the total grant reimbursements that the department receives is 1.2 million dollars actually a little bit over 1.2 million and that revenue that comes in actually offsets quite a bit of the overtime that's budgeted because a lot of these special details are done on overtime.
So the chief wrapped things up with his goals for the new year. He is a relatively new police chief, been about three months that he's been on the job. But then we turned to Auburn Fire Department. Chief Mark Fritz was on hand last night and the same thing from Chief Fritz. A detailed look and walk through the Auburn Fire Department. What they do, how they organize themselves, staffing levels. We had just experienced quite a large house fire in Auburn earlier this week. So it really very gets you focused on why it is that we have a police department and the great work that they do and the various things that they do for the community.
Fire prevention is a big part of of what our Auburn Fire Department works on on a daily and weekly basis. A lot of proactive things that they do as well as they have a complete fire inspection Bureau that will be out there on the on the streets inspecting over 300 properties. Mainly retail businesses and things like that on an annual basis to make sure everybody's up to fire code.
Now of course we get down to the once we've reviewed the entire department we get down to the budget requests and for the fire department this year it's an 8.6 million dollar request as well as it being overwhelmingly for the salary wages benefits of our firefighters. So both those presentations were very well received by council. However we are in a tight budget year so work will continue on trying to figure out how to work on those budgets.
The third department presentation we heard from last night was the Auburn City Ambulance because Ziya Sullivan the ambulance director was on hand and for the ambulance it's still considered maybe a new department for the City of Auburn that the City of Auburn has been running an ambulance department which just started about three years ago.
Paul Szmal: Right. So this year's presentation was really full of a lot of facts being able to take a good look at the previous three years as far as the statistics and being able to analyze their calls for service and things like that.
Chuck Mason: So it was a very thorough presentation and the thing that makes the Auburn Ambulance a little bit different is there is a billing component to ambulance service so when it came time to look at the budget situation not only do you have the expense of of the department which is again mostly very heavy on the salary and wages you do actually have a significant revenue component that goes along with the ambulance department and the ambulance department is on track this year with projected revenue to cover the cost so 3.8 million dollars of projected revenue coming in from the billing that's done for ambulance calls total expenses of the ambulance department budget about 3.3 million and again those those expenses being very much the salary wages and benefits of of our ambulance paramedics and EMTs.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason here on FLX morning going over last night's Auburn City Council meeting. Much in the way that the ambulance service has a revenue stream that comes in there's also revenue from parking that comes in correct?
Chuck Mason: That's right and part of last night's police department budget presentation took a look at parking and made some recommendations for the new year we've for the new budget year anyways we've done a lot over the last five six years to work with our downtown community using some of the American Rescue Plan Act funding there was a period of time that we were able to offer two-hour free parking downtown we also instituted a courtesy ticket program and a lot of that what was put out there was to help our businesses and help bring people back to downtown following the 2020 COVID pandemic and so what we we reinstituted pay to park over the last year and a half so it is required to pay to park on street now in the city of Auburn it is required to pay to park again now at the parking garage so now that everything's back online one of the proposals for this year is to scale back the courtesy ticket program a little bit we do offer one courtesy ticket per quarter but what we found is that out of the 6,000 plus tickets that are written about 4,000 of those are courtesy tickets so it's really a little bit self-defeating and it's a lot of repeat people that are getting the four courtesy tickets each year.
So the courtesy ticket was really intended to be there to help people that maybe are not familiar with the downtown area the first time that they're coming to town and if they accidentally make a mistake with their with paying for their parking there would be a courtesy ticket rather than a full-blown ticket so the council will be considering scaling back the courtesy ticket program to one ticket per year there's also some proposals to perhaps raise the on-street rate from a dollar to two dollar maybe make some decisions to change some of the equipment that's down there but those those parts of the proposal are probably going to have a lot more discussion before they come to any kind of reality.
So the the parking is basically a department of our police department and sergeant Greg Gilfuss was on hand last night to talk about the parking so more to come on that as well you know there I tell you something there's a lot there's a lot to be talked about of our city budget our entire world and sometimes it feels as though the only thing we talked about is parking and it's always a hot topic people love to talk about everybody's got an opinion about it but the bottom line is the city simply has a responsibility in the downtown area to manage the parking logistics of it to keep their there being a churn of customers throughout the day to help our downtown businesses and it's there is an expense that goes along with that though it is quite an expensive program and we're not necessarily the City of Auburn is not trying to pay but more more in line with offsetting that expense with our with our parking fees so more to come on that but parking is a decision every year that's part of the budget.
Paul Szmal: Yeah absolutely it is and there's also I believe a public meeting coming up that we wanted to mention Chuck.
Chuck Mason: That's right thank you Paul the City of Auburn has been working with the New York State Department of Transportation for the last couple years the New York State DOT is getting ready to do a major significant repave project of route 5 and 20 arterial and a portion of Grand Avenue so this is it's going to be a big project that's forecasted for the 2026 and 2027 construction seasons however the project is in design at the moment and there is going to be a public meeting in Auburn on Wednesday April 30th at the end of this month 5 to 7 p.m. that meeting will be held at the Auburn Fire Station number one located at 31 Seminary Street there will be a quick presentation from DOT at the beginning of the meeting and then the rest of the night till 7 o'clock will be kind of an open house style so people can just stop in to learn more about the project.
It is a significant project is a 2.67 mile stretch of the divided highway as it goes through Auburn on the west end it's at the basically at the border of the town of Aurelius and on the east end of the project it'll be the intersection of Standard Avenue and Grand Avenue and as everybody is well aware that travels through Auburn you know the arterial is a big route most heavily traveled route and especially when you get into the center of downtown the intersection of route 5 and 20 and the intersection of route 34 5 and 20 that heads east-west 34 that heads north-south those are some of the busiest intersections in town so this is going to be quite a project and if you want to learn more and have anything to say about the design of this project you're going to have that opportunity on Wednesday April 30th here in Auburn at the Auburn Fire Station number 131 Seminary Street the meeting that night will be between 5 and 7 p.m.
Paul Szmal: All right as always we appreciate the information Chuck and we'll check in with you next week after the next City Council meeting coming up this coming Thursday thanks a lot Paul have a great weekend everybody.
Chuck Mason: All right that is Chuck Mason Auburn City Clerk joining us here on FLX morning it's 850.
