Paul Szmal: Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason joins us now to recap last night's City Council meeting. Chuck, good morning.
Guest: Hey, good morning, Paul.
Paul Szmal: And the meeting started off last night with a Pride Month proclamation.
Guest: That's right. June is Pride Month here in Auburn. Kate Grindstaff, the Visitor Experience Manager at the Equal Rights Heritage Center, was on hand to accept the Pride Month proclamation and she went over all of the events that are planned for tonight, first Friday in downtown Auburn, as a Pride Month theme, as well as there will be happenings at the Equal Rights Heritage Center and all of our historical and cultural sites. You can head over to the auburnnypride.com website to find out all the information and also at the Equal Rights Heritage Center website and there will be a ceremony tomorrow on the courtyard of the Equal Rights Heritage Center where we'll present that proclamation again to the public and happy Pride Month to everybody.
Paul Szmal: There was also a bond ordinance that was on the table and presented last night to finance some various capital projects around the city.
Guest: That's right. This was a first reading last night. It'll be back before the Council, before the end of the month, for the final vote. These projects come out of the Capital Improvement Program plan document, which was reviewed by the Council earlier this year in March and April. The $2.8 million allocated would handle HVAC systems in three municipal buildings, City Hall, the Police Department headquarters, and the Ambulance Department headquarters, which is the old fire station. There will be quite a bit of work that will happen under this. It'll also do a thorough kind of refresh on the geothermal systems that run the HVAC for all three of those buildings. So a lot of work ahead. It'll be a project that probably takes a couple years in its entirety but the next step in the process is for the Council to put the financing in place for that capital upgrade to these city buildings.
The geothermal systems in these three city buildings and the HVAC units are all getting to be about 25 years old now, so it's time for some updates and some maintenance. More on this topic, Paul, we'll probably see it in front of the Council a half dozen times over the next year and a half or so, but it'll be back before Council for a final vote decision by the end of the month.
Paul Szmal: Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason on board here on FLX Morning. The centerpiece of last night's meeting, Chuck, was the vote to formally adopt the Auburn City budget.
Guest: That's right, and after our thorough review during the months of April and May and now here at the beginning of June, the Council last night finally putting a final vote on the budget document. It started with the fee schedule. The fee schedule was adopted with a four to one vote. Mayor Genentino with Councilor Overstreet-Wilson, Cuddy and Clarke voting yes and Councilor Diego casting a no vote, but the fee schedule goes first because it puts a lot of the fees in place which actually will be depending on those fees to finance some of the things that are in the city's budget. And then the final budget document which has been thoroughly kind of vetted over the last two and a half months was passed last night with a three to two vote. Mayor Genentino, Councilor Cuddy and Councilor Clarke voting yes, Councilor Diego and Councilor Overstreet-Wilson voting no, but it just takes three votes to adopt the budget, so the budget is adopted.
Then we move on from here and I'll just remind everybody, Paul, that we do video record our Council meetings and they are available to be viewed on the city's website and anybody that wants to be able to see the full discussion and full debate about these votes and Council meetings can head over to auburnny.gov and go to the video on demand page of the website and you'll find all the meeting videos from city council and some of the other boards and commissions for the last several years and you can watch for yourself the debate that the council had. But it was a three two vote last night that passed the budget and so things are set in place now for July 1st and it was an eventful year as far as us taking a good close look at each department's budget and fortunately in the end with some additional assistance from the state of New York we were able to fund some last-minute things such as the Casey Park pool and that was the next resolution, Paul, on the agenda was the council accepted some generous donations from the local Auburn Wegmans as well as the local Auburn YMCA, $31,000 in donations of money as well as in-kind services for us to operate the pool and the council put a unanimous vote on that resolution so tentative start date for the Casey Park pool this summer will be July 10th. We got a couple weeks worth of concrete repair work to do to the pool over these next couple of weeks but we're shooting for July 10th for an opening date for the pool this season.
Paul Szmal: And there were also a couple of items on the agenda regarding the New York State Department of Transportation.
Guest: Yes, Scott McIntyre from our engineering department was on hand to do an overview of where things are at with our city road program and construction for the summer. Now that the state budget has been finalized and the numbers are defined for certain, the council last night approving that revenue into the city budget. The vote for the road money revenue was unanimous five nothing vote and there was some good news about an additional $70,000 in the CHIPS money. The CHIPS money is what the city gets to work on roads and stuff so there was a little bit extra in the state budget this year going towards roads.
But big projects coming up with Lake Ave Bridge going to be closing for a year beginning at the very end of this month on June 29th. We will also be repaving the second section of Lake Avenue from Swift Street all the way up to the city high school. That is basically four lanes divided highway up there. It's going to be a big project for the city this summer as well as many of the other streets that are on the annual program list. We'll be doing some microsurfacing some streets as well as some crack sealing of the asphalt on some of the streets. So all in all about three and a half million dollars worth of construction activity going to happen on our city streets and then that Lake Ave Bridge in itself is about a $9 million project. So lots of construction going to happen now that the state budget's been finalized and the city budget's been finalized. So get ready for some cones orange cones being out on the roads and please use caution when you're in these on these streets in Auburn where our city crews are out there with our contractors trying to repave the roads.
Paul Szmal: Indeed it is construction season especially on roadways. There is also a movement on a comprehensive strategic plan. Can you follow us in on that?
Guest: Sure this is a big undertaking and the last time the city updated its strategic plan was over 15 years ago and so we have funding in place. Funding has been provided by the New York State Department of State's Environmental Protection Fund for the smart growth comprehensive planning process. Highland Planning is the consultants that have been hired to facilitate this for the city and there will be lots of public outreach involved with this because it's really up to the people of Auburn to kind of you know if you've got thoughts or ideas about what you think should be happening in some of our neighborhoods and in some of our commercial areas or if you've got a thought or an idea that a certain area of town should be reformed for some certain purpose. No idea is off limits and the first public meeting to get the whole process started is going to be held at the end of the month on Monday June 29th 6 p.m to 8 p.m. The site of the meeting will be the Auburn Public Theater at 8 Exchange Street here in downtown Auburn and this workshop will kick things off for this public planning process.
Probably going to be a half dozen meetings over the next year and there is a steering committee that's been appointed for this and our Office of Planning and Economic Development will be working with the contractor to facilitate the whole entire process and then the comprehensive plan once it's adopted and finalized by city council probably about a year from now becomes one of the most important planning documents for the city as far as when we're out there applying for new grants and things in the future. So if you take a look at the last revised comprehensive plan from 15 years ago it's amazing some of the areas of town that have been redone or transformed that were kind of identified during that comprehensive planning process. So we invite the public, Mayor Genitino inviting the public to come on out participate in these meetings and the kickoff meeting again Paul will be held Monday June 29th 6 to 8 p.m at the Auburn Public Theater on 8 Exchange Street and we'll do all we can to promote that between now and the end of the month.
Paul Szmal: And our next city council meeting Chuck?
Guest: That's right we got two more to go during the month of June and then we'll be taking July 2nd off for the 4th of July holiday but next week on June 18th at 5 p.m right here at City Hall 24 South Street will be the next council meeting and taking a look ahead Paul there's quite a bit next week it looks like we get about 14 different resolutions that usually happens once once the city budget's adopted we usually got quite a bit of business that we take care of the following week to put some additional things in place for the pertaining on decisions that were made in the budget. So busy week coming up next week.
Paul Szmal: All right and we'll check in with you next Friday thank you sir.
Guest: Oh thank you very much have a great weekend everybody.
