Paul Szmal: Good morning, it's 8.38, it's FLX Morning, it's the Friday extravaganza, it's also our guest-o-rama Friday, it's also brought to you by FLX Morning, it's brought to you by Enstech Automotive & Trailer, your go-to destination for hauling and vehicle services, 2567 Edwards Road, Waterloo, or online at enstechautomotive.com. Chuck Mason's either on his phone or his desktop computer, whichever one's hooking up. Good morning.
Chuck Mason: Hey, good morning, Ted. I'm just about, I'm on the phone at the moment, but my desktop is finally going to connect to you here in just a minute.
Paul Szmal: All right, there we go, that happens every once in a while. So one of the things the Council took up at the meeting last night is some changes to the Water and Sewer Revolving Loan Program. We talked about this with Sidewalks recently, so that homeowners aren't stuck with a big bill, they can receive a low-interest loan and then have that money billed to their taxes. So what the Council did was raise up the highest amount that could be charged, I'm sure just to reflect increasing costs.
Chuck Mason: That's correct, and what happened last night was the Council unanimously passed that resolution. You know, as time goes on here, you know, every few years you just got to make that adjustment for the benefit of the property owners. But on the back end, what will be required is we'll be taking a closer look at some of the itemized adjustments on the estimates that the people get. But this is a great program. If you're in that unfortunate situation where there's an emergency and you need to repair that line between the city's main and your house, this is a program that can be real handy in cases of emergency, as well as just if you're planning ahead and want to invest in this infrastructure for your residents. There's quite a bit of older housing stock in Auburn, and oftentimes what we find is however old the house may be, that might be how old the water line is going into the house, and people will be oftentimes surprised to discover that there's never been a new water line installed from the initial water line, but it goes with the territory when you're talking about infrastructure that's 50, 75, 100 years old. You do need to make those replacements.
The other thing that we're doing at the moment is, we've talked about this in previous weeks, Ted, is we're doing the lead water line inventory, so we're doing a lot of community outreach at the moment trying to communicate with 50% of the property owners in Auburn that we do not know what their water line intake service is made of, the type of pipe that it is. So if we find that your pipe has lead, or is a lead pipe, or is in need of replacement under that program, this would be an option that our residents would have to help finance that expense of replacing that water main or sewer main. So Ted, I'm going to be able to join you by the desktop now, so I'm going to make that switch right now.
Paul Szmal: Okay. The city is preparing to apply to Empire State Development for the next round of the Restore New York grant. This is for 18 Genesee Street, and I'm blanking out on which property that is. Remind us what that property is.
Chuck Mason: Yeah, 18 Genesee Street is the Hunter Diner Ent. And the great news is, there is a group of individuals interested in the potential restoration of the Hunter Diner Ent. property on site where it is. It would be a heck of a project, but the city has been asked to support a Restore New York grant application, which I believe the grant application would need to be successful if this project was to move forward. So the first step in that process is to public hearing. That public hearing will be in two weeks, Thursday night, December 5th at 5 p.m. at the city. And that night, there will be a brief presentation from the individuals that are interested in the restoration of that property, bring that diner back to useful purpose and back to life in the center of downtown. And we believe it would be a great project to help boost that center of the downtown area. There's been quite a void there the last couple of years without the diner in operation. So more to come on that, and we'll know more when we hear from the interested parties themselves on December 5th.
Paul Szmal: So going all the way back to 2016, Walgreens challenged its property assessment, and after seven tax years, a settlement's been reached.
Chuck Mason: That's right. And this is one of those things. We've often come up against this, as every other municipality and taxing entity probably does in all throughout New York, in which these larger corporations, these big box stores will often challenge their assessments. We've routinely come up against this with these big box drug store, pharmacy stores. And so this is a settlement that gets reached with the three local taxing entities, which is the city of Auburn, then the county of Cayuga, and then the Auburn and large city school district. It usually takes years to get these settlements in place. And in the long run, when you do the math on these things, it's in the best interest of the local taxpayers to take the settlement rather than try to fight it out in court over even an extended period of time and have a judge rule against you and probably cost you even more money. So at the recommendation of the three legal teams that are representing the taxpayers on this, the settlement is reached by the city, and this will get the approval of the Cuyuk County Legislature as well as the Auburn School Board. If it hasn't had that approval yet, I'll probably get their approval soon.
Paul Szmal: We have another settlement. In this case, the city will get more money instead of less, and that's with two opioid claims, more of these class action suits to which the city is a party. So how much money will the city get and how will they use it?
Chuck Mason: Yeah, it's not determined yet exactly how much the city would get. The first step in this process for this particular class action suit is for the city to agree to the terms, and then we'll know more about the funding that'll come in. But what the council has done in the past with these types of settlement funds is they've gotten them back out to the community as quickly as they can. Last year, or maybe it might have been earlier this calendar year, it was either that or late last year when they adopted a resolution to accept some of the funds from a different class action lawsuit. They were able to get that money right over to the next rides for friends. So once we know more about what the amount will be and what will actually be coming to the city, the council would then likely make some kind of determination as to how that money would be spent. But this was the first step in the process. More good news. Our corporation council's office has been working hard over the years on these many different suits that are out there against these big corporations to hold them accountable for their piece of the opioid epidemic that this whole entire country has been under.
Paul Szmal: Every five years, the city is required to prepare a plan for how to spend the Federal Community Development Block Grant funds. And if you go to the city website, auburnny.gov, there's a survey there for residents to take and some public input meetings are being set up.
Chuck Mason: Exactly. And this is a big year because not only are we going to do an annual action plan for 2025-2026, but we're going to time every five years, you need to kind of renew the bigger picture five year consolidated plan is what they call it. Community Development Block Grant funding has made many of the more visible positive infrastructure improvements to our city. One of the latest projects was skate park down at Casey Park. We did Brantford playground a couple of weeks ago. Every year we get into a neighborhood with trees and sidewalks. There's housing programs, there's support for human services. So there's a lot going on between now and the year to try to get citizen input on this. There is an online survey. You can find that survey at auburnny.gov slash CDBG survey. That'll get you right to the survey link. And then our first public meeting for this is coming up on Monday night, next week, Monday night, November 25th, 5.30 PM at the Booker T. Washington Community Center on 23 Chapman Ave. That'll be the first public meeting that we're having. So whether you can take the survey or attend one of these meetings, the bottom line is we really are looking for citizen input because the decisions that are made on how to spend this Community Development Block Grant money is very dependent on the feedback that we hear from the community itself. So this is really one of those opportunities that if you've ever thought that the city should do something with this particular neighborhood or this particular park, no idea is off the table really. As long as it's in the CDBG allowed area, eventually we might be able to make it happen. So it's worth putting your ideas out there for consideration and attending one of these public meetings or getting online and taking the 10 minute survey that we've got out there. And the survey is a little bit more extensive this year because it is the five year plan that's being considered as well. But it's really time well spent if you really want to see Auburn be able to make improvement out in the neighborhoods and parks.
Paul Szmal: Eight days away to the kickoff of the holiday season, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, next Saturday, November 30th, will be the parade, tree lighting, and holiday observance.
Chuck Mason: Yeah, and here we are. It's hard to believe we're just a week out from the holidays getting started with the Thanksgiving holiday. But on Saturday, November 30th, the Auburn Downtown Business Improvement District has really organized a great day to come out and kick off the holiday season in downtown Auburn. It starts in the afternoon with a lot of activities at the Equal Rights Heritage Center. There'll be the Princesses from the movie Frozen will be on hand to meet and greet with the children. There'll be music by Bob Bjorn Trio with Julie Howard. Jeff the Magic Man will be on hand and then the 4-H Club will be there with crafts. 5pm is the holiday parade this year. The parade starts at the top of East Hill, marches west down through downtown, turns on William Street, and ends over at the Heritage Center. And then immediately following the parade, probably the earliest start time, 545, will be the City Tree Lighting Ceremony, and we've built a lot of music into the Tree Lighting Ceremony this year. There's going to be three musical acts. First the Genesee Street Voices will be on hand for some caroling, then a performance by the Auburn High School Band, and then some songs from Connie Fredericks Malone. Everything will have a holiday theme to it. We'll have a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and they'll be hanging around so the children can pay a visit to them as well. And then the Mayor will do the countdown and we'll light the tree for the year. This year we're going to hold this ceremony on the courtyard of the Equal Rights Heritage Center, which is right across the street from where the Christmas tree is. But what we're trying to do is make it a safe environment. There's been some concerns the last couple years that the crowd is built up to the point that people were standing in the street and stuff, and we don't want that happening. So come on out, it's going to be a great day, and our thanks to our partners over at the Auburn Downtown Business Improvement District for getting this all organized for us.
Paul Szmal: And then just another reminder, Thanksgiving week trash pickup schedule change.
Chuck Mason: That's right. Next week, if you're a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday trash route in the City of Auburn, your trash will be picked up one day early next week because of the Thanksgiving holiday. There'll be no service out there on Thanksgiving, but Friday pickup people, you don't have to worry about anything next week, your Friday day will remain intact. But if you're a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday pickup person during Thanksgiving week, please get your refuse and recycling out one day early here within the City of Auburn.
Paul Szmal: All right, very good. Chuck Mason, Auburn City Clerk. Our weekly visit. We appreciate it as always.
Chuck Mason: Ted, thank you, and I apologize again for the technical difficulties.
