Paul Szmal: Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason joins us now as we recap last night's city council meeting. Good morning, sir. How are you?
Guest: Good morning, Paul. And being that this was the last city council meeting before the Fourth of July holiday break, appropriately enough, the meeting opened up with a proclamation celebrating the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Paul Szmal: That is correct. And a couple weeks or 10 days out still, but last council meeting before the Fourth, as you said, and so we read the proclamation. Mayor Genentino discussed some of the plans to, we will be out there next week decorating City Hall with the large flag and with some patriotic bunting and also putting a lot of United States flags around the campus of City Hall and the Equal Rights Heritage Center. The city will also be planting a freedom tree. A new tree will be going in on the corner of Lincoln and South Street on the side of the Equal Rights Heritage Center. And a plaque will be installed that the tree has been planted on the anniversary of the 250th of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So we wish everybody a happy and healthy Fourth of July. It'll be a milestone for our country. And most importantly, Paul, I hate to segue it this way, but it puts us in here in Auburn on a special trash schedule next week because Friday, July 3rd is the recognized holiday and our workers will be off. So trash pickup in Auburn will be one day early across the board next week. So whatever your trash day is next week in Auburn for curbside pickup, you are one day early. So hate to segue like that, but help me get a vital public announcement in for everybody so that they can get their trash out on time next week.
Guest: Of course. Just a couple of resolutions on last night's agenda. One was the acceptance of funding from the New York State Governor's Traffic Safety Committee.
Paul Szmal: That's right. And this is a kind of a standard grant that the police department is able to take advantage of every year. But the additional funds that come in will be put to use on the roads. Officers will be out there for some extra shifts, looking for things like the use of the mobile phones, the lack of use of seat belts, things like that. And it gives a little boost to the area, especially in the summertime. Put some extra street patrols out there to be checking for some of these rules of the road that we're hoping everybody follows. And council last night unanimously putting its stamp of approval on this resolution. Appropriate time to mention as well as seat belts and cell phone use. If you're going to have a drink or two on the 4th of July, let somebody else have the keys and do the driving. We're with Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason here on FLX Morning on Finger Lakes Newsradio. The only other resolution on last night's agenda was adopting a standard workday and reporting resolution. This is for elected and appointed officials.
Guest: That's right. And this is standard procedure outlined by the office of the New York State Comptroller. And it'll be a resolution that we usually do every two years for the members of council that participate in the retirement system. And that adopts that resolution last night being adopted unanimously by the council as well. So just a couple of procedural resolutions, but there were a couple of important presentations as part of last night's city council meeting, including one from the Department of Parks and Recreation.
Paul Szmal: That's right. Now, it was a big night for Department of Public Works and our Department of Parks and Recreation as their superintendent, Mike Talbot, who has served our city here for the last 27 years and at least half that time as our superintendent of public works. Mike will be retiring next week on June 30th. So as part of this summer rec and summer music and concert presentation last night, we snuck in there a presentation to our superintendent of public works, Mike Talbot, Mayor Genentino, and the members of council last night, presenting Mike with a key to the city as he retires after his 27 years of service with us here at the city. And Mike spoke last night to the council after he received that key to the city. And we wish Mike well in his retirement and thank him for his many years of service. He's always been given some of the best presentations at council on an annual basis. We always look forward to Mike giving the annual snowplow presentation, which is a very thorough presentation he gives annually, but he's done a great job for the city and we thank him for his service. And then Brian Rhodes is actually next week on July 1st becomes the new superintendent of public works. Now Brian is currently our director of recreation and Brian was on hand last night with Meg Gremley, who's the director of our summer rec program for the season. And Brian and Meg went through all the activities that are happening with summer rec this summer. The summer rec program starts next week on Tuesday, June 30th. It'll run for six weeks. It's designed for young children between the ages of five and 13, 14 years old. We also have a lot of 14, 15, 16 year olds that will participate as junior counselors in through the middle school program. But this year we are asking that everybody preregister children. We're already know we're already up to about 250 children that are preregistered. We know there's probably at least a hundred or 150 more out there that are going to be coming next week that do need to get registered by their parents. So the deadline for registration is Monday, June 29th, and you can register in person here at city hall, either by stopping by the recreation office in the basement or the city clerk's office on the first floor. But the registration is required this year. And then the program runs three days a week. Tuesdays we'll be over at Lincoln Park between one and four in the afternoon. On Wednesdays we're at Clifford Park between one and four in the afternoon. And on Thursdays we're down at Casey Park between one and four in the afternoon. And all kinds of activities. Everything will be listed this morning on the city's website under the Parks and Rec page. But the water slides will be back this year. They were so popular last year that we have programmed water slides once a week this year. So one day each week we'll have a set of three water slides at one of the parks. Daily activities such as the arts and crafts and the playground and the gaga ball. But then a lot of the annual things that they do as well. And a huge shout out, we have received over $60,000 in sponsorships from local corporations, businesses, and foundations. And we wouldn't be able to present this program to the kids of the community without those sponsorships. So too many sponsors for me to go through here, Paul. But we thank them all and for their generosity and for making this program a success for us here in Auburn. The other presentation on last night's agenda involved a preliminary engineering report for the Franklin Street reservoir as well as some transmission main projects.
Guest: That's right. And you know, what we're up against here in Auburn is that our water filtration plant and our water infrastructure, it's all about 105 years old now. And we've done a lot of work over the last five years up at the water filtration plant, upgrading that facility. And there's always more work to do. But equally as old in the system as far as the age of the facility and the pipes and everything is the reservoir that's out on Franklin Street Road, which is a vital part of our city's water system. And we a year ago detected that we do have a leak out of the main line that comes out of the reservoir and feeds into the city system. And so we conducted an RFP earlier this year to get an engineering firm to help with the design of solution to this project. And the firm was on hand last night, GHD Consulting with our director of municipal utilities, Seth Jensen, to take a first look at what they have come up with and what they've identified as the future of what it would take to solve the leak and do some necessary repair work to the reservoir building itself. And this structure, like I said, Paul, being about over 100 years old for us out there on Franklin Street Road. So Seth last night kind of going through things and basically putting the council on a path of getting some work done in the month of July so that we would be prepared to apply for a New York State water infrastructure grant by the end of July. We'd be looking at applying for about a $5 million grant to tackle this project. Three different scenarios were outlined ranging from $9 million up to $23 million depending on how extensive we wanted to go with a repair as well as rehabilitation of the building as well as the possibility of installing a second water tower that could provide some redundancy for the system for when the reservoir is down. It seems like the mid-range alternative which came in at $12,650,000 is what the staff and the council is taking a look at. So we'll learn more about this project. It's going to be back on the agenda a couple times during the month of July and council will be asked to make some decisions about putting the financing in place for this. However, Seth Jensen, our Director of Municipal Utilities last night saying that at this point in time we've done the work to take a look at what the solutions are and now it's time to go out and see if we can't get some grant funding and we wouldn't need to necessarily take any additional steps before the end of the year until we find out whether or not we're going to receive the grant funding. If we receive the grant funding it'll probably be full steam ahead. If we don't it might be back to the drawing board to look for some other potential solutions. But it is a situation that we are looking to address in the relative short term of the next one or two years. It'll take some time for construction to happen but it is an essential part of our water delivery system and more to come on this, Paul, but another glimpse at a major infrastructure project on the horizon for us here in Auburn.
