Paul Szmal: Joined now by Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason to talk about the happenings of last night's city council meeting. Good to talk to you again, sir. How are you?
Guest: Hey, good morning, Paul. And the first thing that came up on the agenda last night was an ordinance that authorized the issuance of just to take over 13 million in what are called serial bonds. This is a step in the planned improvements to the city's water system.
Paul Szmal: That's right.
Guest: We had a presentation a couple of weeks ago, Paul, for the improvements that will be made out at the city's reservoir. There's a water main out there that has been leaking and we are aware that it's leaking and it definitely is in need of repair. But also the reservoir itself is over 100 years old. So this bond, which was just read into the record for the first time last night, it'll be acted on by the city council at next week's meeting. This bond would set up the financing for that project. However, as we will see also at next week's meeting, the city will be applying for some state grants in hopes of offsetting the project, the cost of the project. However, to get the project started and to be able to start some of the construction engineering and things like that, the city will put the financing in place to get things going here. So this will be back before the council next week for a vote. Last night was just the first reading.
So next week we'll see a couple of resolutions. We'll see a seeker resolution and then a grant resolution that ties in with this project as well. So more to come on this next week, Paul, but pretty much one of the next major infrastructure upgrades to our water system. When your water system is over 100 years old, such as Auburn's, you're constantly coming up with projects that replace very old pipes, very old pumps. And this one, in fact, for rehabilitation of the reservoir itself as well. More to come next week, Paul.
As far as resolutions go, there were a few on the agenda last night. There was an amended employment contract with the city manager.
Paul Szmal: That's correct.
Guest: The employment contract with the city manager, city manager Jenny Haynes, she's been city manager for about a year and a half. She was assistant city manager for the six-month period before then. The contract with her was put in place in October of 2025, was amended slightly when she first became city manager just to change the start date because she actually started 30 days earlier than originally anticipated. And this change to her contract lines her health insurance benefits up with others in the organization.
So what is happening with this contract is the city manager will actually be contributing higher amounts over the next three years into her health insurance up until the point of reaching 25% contribution into her health insurance, up the cost of her health insurance plans. Now, it also has in there that her annual increase would be 2%. Mayor Genitino last night discussing the fact that with the budget situation that we were in and everything, the city manager herself stepped forward earlier this year back in January and did not take an increase in her pay this year. But the contract now changes the language so that her future increases would be 2% annually.
Now, this was not a unanimous vote of council. It was a four to one vote of council. Mayor Genitino, Councilor Overstreet-Wilson, Councilor Cuddy, and Councilor Clarko voted in favor. Councilor Diego voted no. I would encourage anybody that wants to hear the debate that happened over the city manager's contract can tune into auburnny.gov's website where we have the meeting videos in on the website and you can see the debate yourself. I'm not even going to try to uh paraphrase what the members of council were saying on such an important topic. If the public would like to hear that, they can check out our website and hear it from themselves by watching the meeting video. And I just wanted to make sure the public was aware it was a four to one vote.
We're with Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason here on FLX Morning. There was also an adoption of a senior management personnel policy last night.
Paul Szmal: That's correct and the same thing was basically proposed by the city manager for the senior management personnel policy of changing it so that the annual cost of living adjustments would be 2% and that the senior management personnel would contribute in phases over the next three years increases to their health insurance contributions up to 25% in three years from now. So the same kind of the same theme of changes that were made to the city manager's contract were proposed for the senior management personnel policy. The council had a very similar level of discussion about this resolution last night Paul and the vote went down in the same way it was a four to one vote and anybody looking to tune in to to see the specifics of that discussion like I said earlier the videos are contained on our city's website auburnny.gov but this last night was also a four one vote.
A couple of procedural resolutions on the agenda there was the adoption of a collective bargaining agreement between the city of Auburn and the professional emergency medical technicians of Auburn City Ambulance.
Guest: That's right our ambulance department this will be their I think it's the first renewal of their contract. This is the brand new as of about three four years ago ambulance department and their first ever contract expired here on June 30th. So this is basically their second contract that the city's had with them I believe and the council last night having some discussion as well it did end up being a four to one vote with Mayor Genentino, Councilor Overstreet-Wilson, Councilor Cuddy and Councilor Clarke voting yes, Councilor Diego voting no. However members of council very appreciative with the fact that they were able to wrap up these discussions but for the full debate Paul I'll again refer everybody to the city's website to watch the video but I know that we appreciate everything that our EMTs and paramedics are doing out there for us on a daily basis and it's good to see that a final contract was able to be reached and we can move things forward and we appreciate their their work out on the streets every day.
There was also an amendment to the purchase offer and sale contracts for a few pieces of property.
Paul Szmal: That's right now these properties there's already purchase contracts in place for all four of these properties. However the organization that is looking to purchase these properties Housing Visions is their name and they applied for state funding this past year and were not successful with obtaining the state funding. However they've been successful on many projects before they will be applying in the next round of state funding. We anticipate that they would have some success in the next round of state funding. So what this resolution did last night was basically rewrite those purchase contracts to extend them to allow for the time needed for this next round of of state funding to go through the process. If they get the state funding then they would there's a timeline in place that they would get the work done so that this work was would all be completed on the renovation of these four properties by December of 2029. So the council this was a unanimous vote of the council last night and it's about three years in the making here. There was a lot of presentations about this to the council about three years ago because of the fact that they didn't get the state funding in the latest round of this of these grants. That kind of slowed things down a little bit but they are going to apply again. Hopefully if they're successful this time the project will pick right back up and move along. But all four properties are down on the west end of Auburn and it'll be a huge boost if we're able to follow through and put these all back to productive use for housing in these neighborhoods. More to come on this as we hear about the council last night voting unanimously Paul to change these purchase orders to allow the time for housing visions to go through the next round of grant funding potential for the state of New York and hopefully we'll have some good news next year on these on these properties.
There was one presentation from a friend of the show and that would be the president of the Awaska Lake Watershed Management Association Dr. Adam Effler.
Guest: That's right Dr. Effler was in for his annual presentation. We usually see Dr. Effler in the spring but we had a very busy spring of meetings this year kind of had to delay his presentation to July but always very timely to be able to talk about water issues pertaining to Awaska Lake in the spring in the summertime. And Dr. Effler went through a very thorough presentation about what it is that the work of the management council the work that they do funded by the city of Auburn water rate payers and the town of Awaska water rate payers and contributions from some of the member towns of towns that are within the watershed. The work is very important the watershed inspector was also on hand last night and he gave a portion of the presentation showed some of the projects that they were working on showed some of the you know I'll call it bad activity or bad practices that were happening out in the watershed that they came upon and corrected and it's a constant battle and it's a battle that we face with all the watersheds in the Finger Lakes but it's reassuring to know that the Awaska Lake Watershed Association is hard at work they're out there working with all the partners in the lake the other organizations such as OWLA and the other towns that are out in the watershed really to try to raise the awareness of the importance of watershed protection and of course here in the city of Auburn our water supply public water supply is sourced from Awaska Lake so the healthier we are the healthier Awaska Lake is the better off it is for our production of water.
We are you know starting to hear the stories and getting back into what is kind of known as the algal bloom season in the Finger Lakes area so there's a heightened sense of awareness now I know that our county health department over here just put out their annual kind of notice of you know it's time to start being aware of algal blooms out there on our water bodies but I know that the Awaska Lake Watershed is doing all they can out there to try to mitigate the situation and bring awareness to the importance of protection of our water supply so it was a great presentation by Dr. Effler last night and anybody wanting to see it like I said the videos are on city's website auburnny.gov and we thank Dr. Effler for taking the time to come last night and check us out.
And of course city council will meet again at their usual time next Thursday at City Hall.
Paul Szmal: That's right we have one more meeting this month Paul and then the last Thursday of July is the fifth Thursday so there will not be a meeting we'll take a little break before we're back in August.
Guest: All right so we'll talk to you next Friday to recap next week's meeting thank you sir.
Paul Szmal: Sounds good Paul have a great weekend everybody.
