Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues at 8.38. It is Friday morning so that means that we are joined by Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason to review last night's City Council meeting. Chuck, good morning. How are you, sir?
Chuck Mason: Good morning, Paul. I'm good. Thank you.
Paul Szmal: And the centerpiece of yesterday's City Council meeting was the public hearing on the proposed tax levy and the city budget.
Chuck Mason: That's right and last night meeting was well attended and we did hear from some people of the City of Auburn Council holding both those public hearings and some discussion about a couple of the particular fees that are in the proposed budget. One being the fee for large item pickups as far as trash goes. Another being for a new fee within the fire department's budget for them responding to nursing facilities and stuff for the providing assistance to resident pickups.
So some probably some education to do over the next couple of weeks to more better identify specifically what those fees are about and what those fees go into. City Manager Digert last night saying that he and the staff will work over the next couple of weeks on better defining what the intent is behind the behind the fees and the reason why we need to be charging the money that we need.
For the most part there was also some discussion about the about the tax cap under the local law number one and there was kind of mixed messages. There was a resident there that said that we should do what's fiscally correct for the city and raise the taxes to what they need to be made and there was another resident that said there's only so much that the community can afford. So we did hear from the public last night and when it time came the council voted on local law number one.
The council with with a three to one vote defeated local law number one. Councilor Overstreet-Wilson was excused from the meeting last night. Councilor Terry Cuddy, Councilor Calarco and Mayor Genentino voted not to adopt local law number one which would allow the city to exceed the tax cap in this next budget. Councilor Kent voted against that. She wanted to leave the option open until the end of the budget process but the local law number one was defeated so now the final task for the council and the staff over the next couple of weeks is to put the final pieces of the budget in place that will adopt the City of Auburn budget for the next fiscal year that stays within the allowable property tax cap according to New York State.
So local law number one was defeated last night by the council and we've still got a couple weeks actually three weeks. June 13th is the evening that the council is scheduled to vote on a final budget so the council and staff will continue its work over the next couple of weeks to put the finishing pieces in place on this budget but we are very close. The comptroller provided an update to the council last week you know we've got this thing down to within a few hundred thousand dollars it's just a matter of making some of the final decisions to get this budget to the finish line.
Paul Szmal: Yeah I was going to ask how much number crunching was going to have to be done it doesn't sound like there's a lot that needs to be done to close things up.
Chuck Mason: It's all within about a half million dollars and there will be probably some adjustments made on the revenue side as well as some adjustments made on the expense side but more to come. We'll probably have a final budget presentation at the June 5th council meeting and then the council will be asked to vote on it on June 13th or June 12th I think it is whatever that Thursday is that week.
Paul Szmal: Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason joining us here on FLX morning I believe it's the 12th because I think we get a Friday the 13th in June if memory serves.
Chuck Mason: There we go yeah so Friday the 12th there I mean Thursday the 12th is when they're scheduled to vote I'm sorry for misspeaking there.
Paul Szmal: No that's fine that's fine trying to think that out that far ahead with everything that's going on I could totally understand.
There was also an agreement resolution on an intermunicipal agreement between the City of Auburn and the Town of Awasco for provision of ambulance services can you expand on that for us Chuck?
Chuck Mason: Yes and this is actually it was actually a renewal agreement we've had this arrangement in place the City of Auburn has been providing ambulance service to the Town of Awasco and we actually house one of our ambulances at the Awasco Fire Department the main fire department in Awasco and it's been underway for a year now and so this is a renewal agreement and it's worked out really well the Town of Awasco Supervisor Ed Wagner and got together with City Manager Dygert a couple years ago and and identified this as a real need for the Town of Awasco and it's a great show of some intermunicipal cooperation happening and it's helping the towns that rely on volunteers for their service to provide extra coverage there's extremely dedicated volunteers in all of the towns in Cuyahoga County but from time to time throughout the day there may be that extra need for coverage so this special arrangement and contract with the Town of Awasco will provide with the partner with the Auburn City Ambulance to provide that coverage and it's off to a great start in the first year and council last night unanimously approving allowing it for to happen here for a second year.
There was a related amendment that came along with that for the building space for the Auburn City Ambulance and that's what it that's what it is it's a it allows for the ambulance to be hot one of the city's fleet of ambulances is actually housed out in Awasco so that second contract was the technicality needed for the actually being able to house the ambulance out there.
There was also an authorization of the acceptance of New York State DOT annual transportation funding allocations which sounds like a lot but is probably a pretty simple thing yes it's just there's a lot of different programs now that we have a final state budget and know what those final numbers is that resolution last night was the council putting its stamp of approval on the fact that we know the funding that's coming in it's over three million dollars worth of road funding coming in for the city of Auburn with a huge chunk of that going to the New York State touring route money we thank our state representative Senator Rachel May she's really spearheaded that money being in the budget for us and the state legislature across the board is pretty much supported that new pro relatively new program and so what this will do is this kind of the approval of that resolution last night puts in place all of the road plans we have for this summer and heading into even the following construction season of 2026 and the only thing we need now is for it to stop raining so that we can get going on some of these road construction projects.
Paul Szmal: Yeah I'm hoping it stops raining for all the Memorial Day activities that are happening in the city of Auburn as well that's right and we thanks for segwaying there because I'll take a quick minute to plug Memorial Day unfortunately we did cancel tonight's first summer concert music on the mall and downtown Auburn has been postponed to we're actually going to redo this concert in September at the end of summer but the concert for tonight has been postponed with the cold weather and the rain even if we even if we were to try to pull the concert off we didn't really think there would be too many people looking to be out and about on a night like this so we've postponed that to the end of summer but Memorial Day activities are on in downtown Auburn it does look like we will catch a halfway decent day on Memorial Day in the weather forecast.
Chuck Mason: The parade in downtown Auburn starts at 11 a.m. it starts on the top of East Hill and on the east side of downtown Auburn the parade on March down Genesee Street all the way through downtown Auburn and end at Veterans Memorial Park on the west end of our downtown next to the county office building immediately following the parade there's a quick memorial service reclaiming service at Veterans Memorial Park led by the mayor and then following those activities the downtown bid has this food truck rodeo down at the Marcus Street Park area which is tied in with the annual duck derby the annual duck derby is still going on and tickets are still being sold however the decision did have to be made that the Ducks will not float this year due to the high levels of flow that we're experiencing in the Awaska River with all this all this rain that's been happening in the rain that's going to continue to come right today and tomorrow so the duck derby is still happening it's just that the Ducks it'll be more of a raffle this year than a than a duck derby but Memorial Day events in Auburn still going on and we encourage everybody to come on out and observe Memorial Day and remember those that have fought and served for our country and paid the ultimate sacrifice.
Going back to the agenda here there was one final item it was authorizing the mayor to enter into an agreement with Keuka County for the provision of IT managed services that's correct we've had a job vacancy at the City of Auburn for about three months now and so we're gonna give this a try we've we've worked with Keuka County our two IT departments will coordinate oftentimes on on several things and mainly for just guidance and advice sometimes troubleshooting and so what we're going to do is we're going to enter into a basically a 13-month contract or a one-year contract with Keuka County IT department and the Keuka County IT department would provide some of the you know some of the help desk support that our secondary position at City Hall would supply so we'll give this a shot for a year and see how it works out and and take it from there so the council last night unanimously approving the staff's recommendation that we give this a try for the next year where our City IT department will work through this contract with the Keuka County IT department.
Paul Szmal: All right thank you as always Chuck and let's hope everything dries out for Memorial Day thanks Paul have a great weekend everybody it is 849 on FLX morning
