A Regular Meeting of the Common Council Council Chambers Tonawanda, New York September 7, 2010 Present: Council President Zeisz Present Councilmembers: Gilbert, Boyle, Slisz, Poole Pledge of Allegiance led by Council President Zeisz Prayer led by Council President Zeisz PUBLIC HEARING Central Business District Overlay and Spaulding Commerce Park COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE MAYOR A letters to previous Mayors Jack Gallagher and Alice Roth, and Common Council members dated August 19, 2010, inviting them to an event, taking place at the Spaulding Fibre site on August 25, 2010. A letter from the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets dated August 16, 2010, regarding the fact that municipalities currently issuing dog licenses will fully assume these functions on January 1, 2011. A letter to the Director of the City of Tonawanda Library dated August 18, 2010, regarding Library Construction Grant Bathrooms. A letter from the Twin Cities Community Outreach, Inc., stamped August 18, 2010, regarding a Theme Basket Event. A letter from Pigasus Roasters, Inc., dated August 17, 2010, regarding the Smokin Eagles BBQ Championship held for the first time ever at Gateway Harbor. A letter from the Girls and Boys Club of the Tonawandas, dated July 29, 2010, announcing the introduction of Lynn Shiesley into its Hall of Fame. A letter to the New York State Library Division of Library Development dated August 26, 2010, approving the City of Tonawanda Library application to the New York State Library Construction Grant Program. A letter from the Superintendent of Schools for the City of Tonawanda dated August 25, 2010, announcing the closing of Highland Playground. A news release dated August 26, 2010, stating that the EPA has issued an order to Tonawanda Coke for Clean Water Act Violations. Ordered filed COMMUNICATION FROM CITY OFFICIALS AND CORRESPONDENCE The following monthly reports were received by the City Clerk: July Activity Report of the Fire Department July minutes of the Waterfront Revitalization Board August minutes of the Board of Appeals August minutes of the Traffic and Safety Advisory Board Referred to the Committee of the Whole Ordered filed 225
A letter from James Penberthy, 268 Adam Street, dated August 25, 2010 regarding sidewalks in front of his home. Referred to the Committee of the Whole Ordered filed COMMENTS BY THE PUBLIC ON RESOLUTIONS Peter Deeb As far as number three, because of where I live and stuff, you know we always had a field in the back and so on and my boys, I m just wondering if this actually says that you can t shoot an air gun in your backyard. Council President Zeisz That s what it says, anywhere in the City. Peter Deeb - For what it is worth, my comment is, that s childhood, are we that far removed from it and I ll leave it at that. MOTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS 229. By Councilmember Gilbert seconded by Council President Zeisz Resolved that the reading of the following resolution be waived. 230. By the Council seconded by the Council Whereas, the City of Tonawanda did establish a Deferred Compensation Plan for employees and Whereas, the Deferred Compensation Committee did accept and review proposals for the administration of the Deferred Compensation Plan for a five-year renewal contract period as stipulated in Section 9003.1 and Whereas, the Deferred Compensation Committee does recommend the award of such contract to The Hartford as Administrative Services Agency and Financial Organization after publishing in the New York State Register and local papers Whereas, the Deferred Compensation Committee does recommend that Reliance Trust Company act as trustee, now, therefore be it Resolved, that City Treasurer Joseph M. Hogenkamp is hereby directed to execute all necessary documents to contract the The Hartford and the Reliance Trust Company for administrative, financial and trustee services for the City of Tonawanda Deferred Compensation Plan for the next five years. Richard Slisz - How much is in fund. City Treasurer Hogenkamp Right now, about $5 million dollars. It s all City employee money. 231. By Council President Zeisz seconded by Councilmember Gilbert Resolved, that the reading of the next five resolutions be waived. 226
232. By the Council seconded by the Council Resolved, on the recommendation of the Chief of Police, John Ivancic, that the listed reproducing records fee as described in the City of Tonawanda Code, Chapter 30, Article 2, Section 30-31(a) be amended to include a new subsection to charge a $1.00 per page fee for photograph reproductions and/or $1.00 fee per compact disk reproduction. 233. By the Council seconded by the Council Whereas, the title of this resolution/ordinance has been published at least once in a newspaper of general circulation, more specifically, The Tonawanda News, in accordance with Section 2.047 of the City Charter, now, therefore be it Resolved, that Chapter 38 of the Code of the City of Tonawanda entitled Offenses and Miscellaneous Provisions, Article 1 In General, Section 38-3 Throwing missile or shooting weapon in public place, which now reads as follows: No person shall throw or cast any stone or other missile or thing and no person shall shoot with or use any air gun, BB gun, bow and arrow or sling in, from or to any street, lane, alley or public place with the City. Shall be amended to read as follows: Sec. 38-3 Throwing missile or discharging weapon within City limits. No person shall shoot, cast or throw any stone, pellet, arrow, missile or projectile of any kind, or discharge any air gun or BB gun or discharge any firearm, rifle or shotgun, as defined in Article 265 of the New York State Penal Law, within City limits, unless authorized by law. And be it further Resolved, that the above amendment shall take effect upon publication in an official newspaper of the City of Tonawanda. 234. By the Council seconded by the Council Resolved, that permission be granted to St. Francis of Assisi Church to close Adam Street between Seymour and Clinton Streets to vehicular traffic on Saturday, October 2, 2010 from 12:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M. to hold an outdoor parish celebration and be it further Resolved, that ingress and egress be provided for emergency vehicles and local traffic. 235. By the Council seconded by the Council Resolved, that the Common Council authorizes and approves the sales from the public/on line auction of unused/surplus vehicles and equipment conducted by Auctions International, Inc. as per the schedule attached hereto and made a part hereof. 227
236. By the Council seconded by the Council Resolved, that the Common Council authorizes a public/on line auction of unused/surplus skate park equipment to be conducted by Auctions International, Inc. The bidding shall be open until approximately September 17 th, 2010 and all final sales must be formally approved by Common Council resolution. Councilmember Boyle How much is available, what is available? City Treasurer Joe Hogenkamp - I think there re about three ramps that Linda wants to get rid of. Councilmember Boyle - Are they being used right now? City Treasurer Hogenkamp I don t think so. It s three things she wants to get rid of. Auctions International, the first one we just concluded, was for other equipment and vehicles that we ve replaced, but this is something that Linda s determined to be scrap, unusable, and probably working in conjunction with the future plans for the skate park that hasn t even been built yet. I think it s only like about three things. It s on line right now. Councilmember Boyle This was bought by the City for the skate park and now they don t want it and now they re gonna auction it off and take a loss on it. City Treasurer Hogenkamp - It s scrap. You re either gonna sell it or you re gonna throw it out. Councilmember Gilbert - Was it used at one time? City Treasurer Hogenkamp - Yes. Councilmember Boyle Okay, all right. COMMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC AFTER RESOLUTIONS Michael Mercio, 186 William Street I thought I brought the right minutes, but it happened a couple of meetings back and I know you brought it up a few times and it has to do with the S.S.O. we have in the City, the sanitary sewer overflow. You brought it up a couple of times that this is gonna cost the homeowners a lot of money. Has the City got a plan in place with this or is there some type of a thing that s gonna go on or, I mean, right now you ve got, you brought it up a few times and it s kind of a thing that s sitting funny with me because it sounds like something that s serious and I don t think people in the City realize how serious it is. Council President Zeisz Well I ll make a couple comments and then I ll let the Mayor comment. Just briefly, right now what s happening is the City Engineer is trying to work out an agreement and our proposed original of twenty years didn t really fly, that basically got chopped down to ten, but the answer to your question is yes, but I ll let the Mayor comment further. Mayor Pilozzi Our City Engineer proposed a plan to New York State DEC, I believe about a year ago, and we waited and waited and that plan is basically a twenty year plan to attack the S.S.O. in our City. The DEC finally came back and said, that s not acceptable, it s gotta be a ten year plan and obviously, when you compress the timeframe of these big ticket items, if you re allowed to tackle, it increases the cost because instead of a twenty year write-off, you re writing it off in a ten year time. That being said, obviously those aren t things you put in the General Fund Budget, you re usually bonding for those, so to pick up on what Council President Zeisz has said on more than one occasion, we could be in a situation where our cost that we have to pass on to the user, 228
you, could skyrocket but we re trying to avoid that. We ve been working very closely with the City of Buffalo, the Town of Tonawanda, we had a shared municipal incentive grant going on with North Tonawanda, but once the engineering data was extracted we found out that they could not handle what we wanted to send them during heavy flow days, and we were looking at sending it over there just on exceptionally rainy days, so we thought that could take care of our problem. Everywhere we looked, it s a little difficult, but I can leave it at this, we re working diligently to try and make sure that we come up with solutions, along with DEC, at the least cost to the taxpayers in the City of Tonawanda. Michael Mercio - I talked to Councilman Boyle. I went on a website, it s the EPA website and apparently it s not just in our area, it s the whole country is like this. Mayor Pilozzi - And you mentioned something that s very germane to the subject. It s coming from the Federal government, not the State. They re the enforcers for the EPA. Michael Mercio - I don t know, it seems like I m concerned but I don t think too many people in the City are down here discussing it because you re talking big sewer bills possibly for every homeowner. Council President Zeisz Well, if you re talking about adding approximately $2,000,000 in debt for ten straight years, it doesn t take a lot to figure out the math that people who have $300 sewer bills are probably gonna have triple that. Michael Mercio And as a landlord, I already talked to my tenant and she couldn t afford to split this cost with the other tenants, I would lose my tenants, they said they would move out of my house. So that is something that I think a lot of people in this community need to take a close look at. Council President Zeisz - But just so that people understand, this is something that they re not gonna be able to get away from. The Town and their plan is massive. Michael Mercio I m not putting the burden on the City here, I know it s not your fault, it s just that, in my opinion and I m gonna do it, but I think we should start writing your congressman, your senator, try to get some type of grant money in here to offset this so it s not such a hard burden on the taxpayers in the City. One of the things I talked to Mr. Boyle about, I found a site that recommended ten different types of bonds that you could possibly get, and I don t know if we have a bond writer, someone told me Jan Bodie used to do the grant writing or something like that. There s a couple of things, there s different types of loans. The EPA recommended different types of ways, bonds, loans, and grants and other funding opportunities. Council President Zeisz - The grants, we have a grant writer and the bonds are done with our City Treasurer, we have a bond attorney, those are all handled through the treasurer. Michael Mercio I m hoping that the City is doing everything they can to try and find funding for this to help us out. Council President Zeisz Absolutely. We re also trying to find all the ways we can to work this into a more reasonable solution. Part of the big problem with this is the homeowners, but the problem is, how do you go to a homeowner and say oh, by the way, dig up your front of your house and out to the street and fix your line that s you know, we got water pouring all over the place into that line that shouldn t be in that line, and then it gets into the main line and we end up treating clean water when gets up to the plant. It was different when we needed to deal with sump pumps. Even that was difficult, but this is a huge problem. Schumer spoke to this over two years ago, it s a huge problem in the northeast because of the age of all the communities. Michael Mercio - I talk to people in the City and they know nothing about it. It s amazing that people aren t interested in what s going on here and the reason I m getting up here is I m hoping that people will read this in the paper or read this in the minutes 229
when they go on line and hopefully light a fire under some people, try to get them in here and involved and try to help the City resolve this. Council President Zeisz - We certainly tried to share the information. Michael Mercio Oh, I know you guys. I just happened to miss one of the meetings where you talked about it in more length. Dawn Cain, 121 Wheeler I own a house at the corner of Morgan and Bouck. The curb on the curved part is pretty much non-existent at ground level. We ve owned this property for fifteen to twenty years, we filled it in once with dirt and we planted it, we filled it in again with dirt and planted it, we filled it in with stones and it s still sinking, I put a metal post there and they ran that over. That little bit of curb needs to be replaced because the grass now is so high, the slant is like this into the hole and it s dangerous for my husband to cut the grass. Council President Zeisz Did you ever notify DPW? Dawn Cain No, I m here. It s just gotten worse because it s sinking so much. We re guessing that the school buses are cutting the curb too close and when they repaved Bouck two years ago, they were doing other curbs, I asked if they could do that and of course, it s not on the list. If you could look into that please. Council President Zeisz The Mayor handles the day-to-day operations and he s gonna take it to the DPW Superintendent. COMMENTS FROM THE COUNCILMEMBERS AFTER RESOLUTIONS Councilmember Gilbert None at this time. Councilmember Boyle I just want to apologize to Mr. Slisz about my statement. I was wrong, I apologize, I apologize Dick, all right? Councilmember Slisz The only comment I have to make is that the homes on Niagara Shore have been rocking and rocking today, they ve been rocking and rocking for the last two weeks, other than before that and I ll be glad when it s finished, but there s gonna be some complaints today, believe me, there should be a lot of them because I was sitting on the john and was rocking, laying on the couch and rocking, so there s been a lot of rocking. I don t know if this is out of the ordinary, but earlier it wasn t as bad. Seems like when they got to this end, it got worse as they went along and I think somebody should be checking whatever checkpoints they have because I think there is something wrong there. Councilmember Zeisz - Thank you Mr. Slisz, and I would like to file a complaint that you were trying to lay on the couch, I have been going since 7:30 this morning and you have time to fall asleep on the couch. Councilmember Slisz I m retired! Councilmember Poole There was a comment made earlier about the fact that the City owns the land that was in discussion and, of course, the City does, and I just want to emphasize the fact that the City is composed of the residents, so the residents own the land and it s under legal title of the City and under the power of this Council, but we must remember that the City are the residents out there and always respond to their concerns. Thank you. Mayor Pilozzi A couple real quick ones, one on rodent control. I don t know if anybody s been picking this up in the paper, but areas that seem to have had that problem, all of a sudden are coming up with more and more rodent complaints. We have a Code Enforcement guy that goes out pretty much on a daily basis and looks at those issues and I can tell you, and our City Attorney can tell you, that several if not many residents, have been brought to this chamber on a Friday, standing before a judge because 230
they re not holding up their end of the bargain. At any rate, if you would make sure that you take care of any issues that would allow a rodent, better known as a rat, to exist. There are some hints, some recommendations that our City Building Inspector has if anybody wants to make himself available to him. Also, last week we initiated the www.renewtonawanda.org. You can see it on the big plaque there outside in the foyer, basically it s an energy savings website, if you have a computer, please take the time to go on it, it has the potential of saving you some dough when it comes to energy uses. And just a comment on tonight s activity, it was long but a lot of good comments, a lot of good concerns, and as the Mayor I have to be concerned about the tax base, I have to be concerned about development, I have to be concerned about the future of Tonawanda when Ron Pilozzi is long gone, along with many people up here. So there s going to be some very important decisions to be made, as we re in a land-lock situation, we have forty-seven acres at Spaulding Fibre and we have a few acres around here and the decisions that we make, we being this Council are going to be holding the future of the City of Tonawanda in their hands. So hopefully we ll make the right ones. Council President Zeisz I thank you for coming tonight, drive home safely, have a great night and God bless. ADJOURNMENT 237. By Councilmember Gilbert seconded by Councilmember Slisz Resolved, that this Common Council adjourn until, September 21, 2010. PUBLIC HEARING Central Business District Overlay and Spaulding Commerce Park??? I have about a 15 minute presentation and I m??? Wendel Consultants and we were hired back in 2008 to work on this project and I m going to go through and explain this project. I first want to go over the project background. The most important thing we re talking about here tonight, on the impact to this community itself, is the City had adopted a Comprehensive Plan in 2002. A Comprehensive Plan is a great document. If you re going to zone and tell people what you can and cannot do with your property, you must have a Comprehensive Plan, it s State law, most of the States have that, so you must have a good Comprehensive Plan, they have a very good Comprehensive Plan, but obviously over the last five, at least over 2007, there are a lot of changes happening in the City, one being what was going on at the Spaulding Fiber site and other changes in the community, so they wanted to make changes to the Comprehensive Plan so they can make some other changes in the zoning, so in 2007, with the clean-up and other things going on, they wanted to update the Comprehensive Plan. In 2008, working in conjunction with Erie County, they hired a consultant to help them do that, and that was our firm, it was a bid process, other consultants bid on it and basically wanted to help the City accomplish this. Over the period of 2008/2009 Wendel, myself, worked with the Spaulding Fibre Committee that s been around for a very long time and then also with the committee formed that represented the business community, the central business district and we ll 231
talk about that in a little bit. So we worked on that over 2008/2009. Early 2010, we brought these matters to the City Council, the City Council reviewed them, had some really great questions, some of the committees had some other changes to the changes over the next few months. Then, we called a public hearing, starting the SEQR process. One of the most important parts of that process is getting information out to the public, my understanding is this information is on the City s website, and we re having a public hearing tonight. We also sent it to involve interested agencies, like the County and others to get their comment. If this goes well, obviously, the City Council is going to take the input and decide whether any other changes need to be made and then proceed with what they call the SEQR decision and then decide whether they re going to adopt these changes and there s three changes we re going to talk about. Let s talk about the three changes. The first thing we had to do was look at the comprehensive plan, what things were affecting change and basically we focused on two areas which is the Spaulding Fiber site, which the committee in the City s been working for years, and we focused on the central business district site. So we looked at the comprehensive plan and how to make changes to that. There s a specific handout beginning on page two of the handout I gave which explains what was back of page one, it explains the comprehensive plan changes. Comprehensive plan changes were not that drastic. The Introduction Section of the comprehensive plan document which is law in the City, that what you base your decisions on when it comes to zoning, basically change the introduction to talk about these changes that occurred on what we were focusing on. The Community Background can change, the City is still the City, a lot of these statistics in there are still correct, we made minor changes also to the Inventory and Evaluation of Community Resources. Again the community has a lot that has stayed the same, but there s been some changes. The biggest changes were in Section 4.0 which is Goals & Objectives. We added some things about what the City s trying to accomplish with Spaulding Fibre, what issues are coming up in the central business district, and some of the waterfront work that is being done, so there were changes in the Goals & Objectives, just slight changes. The overall goals and objectives to the community are still the same, we just made some modifications to it s????. Section 5.0 which included the Land Use Alternatives & Future Land Map, obviously that one s changed and that s the first discussion we re going to talk about when we get to it, is this map here is an important map in the comprehensive plan. Usually referred to as a future land use map, they use all different terminology, but we re referring to it as a future land use map. One of the biggest changes we made to this map, and it s a fault I think of old comprehensive plans, is this map was supposed to, in years past when I did comprehensive planning 20, 25 years ago, this map was supposed to represent all the zoning that the City should have in the future. It can t be that way. As we know the world changes too quickly, so the biggest change we made to the future land use map, some of the tweeks to it were, that this map doesn t represent zoning. Nobody should look at this map and say this is where all the zoning of the City should be. What should be done, it s what modern comprehensive planning is, when the City Council gets projects for areas that they need to rezone, they need to refer to this document and look at what the City is trying to accomplish. There s no way I would tell communities that you can produce a map that s gonna tell you, the City Council or Town Council what every property in the town should be zoned for the next ten years; otherwise, the comprehensive plan will become outdated all the time. In fact, if you ve read about the Town of Amherst, one of the problems they have is they have a comprehensive plan that???? being sued because they had a map that supposedly represented where all the zoning should be in the community, a physical impossibility. So, we changed that and made some specific changes to the map and they re only minor in nature. And then, Section 6.0 Economic Development Activities, obviously we???? it and we re going to talk about central district and Spaulding Fibre over???, the new Spaulding Fibre district because it s about economic development, economic development is about your downtown, it s about areas like Spaulding Fibre. And the last part, Plan Implementation talks about when the City should consider doing stuff, we added new things to that list. The City, they just love having additional things to do, but we added additional things to that list at implementation??? time. That s my twominute summary of what s in the changes to the Comprehensive Plan. For those who are really, really interested, and I only made ten copies, I have ten copies but it s already on the City s website, I have the actual changes to the Comprehensive Plan, the actual zoning documents here. I only have ten copies but for groups, organizations that want it, 232
I ll give those copies out tonight. Okay, so the next part of the agenda is talking about the Comprehensive Plan Update. 233