A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, August 14, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.
President Brian S. McCarthy presided; Deputy City Clerk Judith Boileau recorded.
Prayer was offered by Deputy City Clerk Judith Boileau; Alderman Jette led in the Pledge to the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 14 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja
was recorded absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
REMARKS BY THE MAYOR
Mayor Donchess
First | wanted to mention a few items that are on the agenda and a couple that are not. On the first page is
the paving contract for the major streets in the City, those being Amherst Street, Somerset Parkway, Broad
Street and Kinsley. This is repurposed money from the Broad Street Parkway as a result of some things
that occurred with respect to the Federal Highway. We need it here to comply with a lot of different federal
regulations; this is why this contract is coming forward only now as opposed to earlier in the spring when the
contract regarding all of the City paving was brought to you and you approved it.
Once this is approved, we expect to be able to pave and crack seal, which is a small portion of the total, but
over 50 miles of streets. This is compared to about 5 or 6 miles that we were doing several years ago and |
think if you, especially if you were in the south end where most of the work has been done so far, you will
see some major impact. They are going to be moving north for the remainder of the season so you will see
some significant improvements in the condition of the streets this year. Of course we have got a number of
years of the paving plan action to go.
Secondly, Mr. President, | wanted to mention the escrows. | won’t go through the details of that but this is
the allocation of previously appropriated money. This is unexpended money this year or this prior year,
Fiscal 18. We are proposing a number of uses, this money, unexpended, be put to a number of uses, the
main one being the CERF or the Capital Equipment Reserve Fund which has to buy equipment. The budget
which we passed a month or two ago didn’t put a whole lot of money, | think it was $1 million dollars to
CERF and this would allocate another $1.3 million dollars to CERF to help us maintain the quality of our
fleet. | assume this will get referred to the Budget Committee and | will be glad to come and discuss the
details of all of us at that time.
There are two items related to our major employer BAE. One would enable the reconfiguration of one of the
downtown bus routes to better serve the public in general and to enable BAE employees to use the public
bus to ride from the parking garages here to their facility on Canal Street as well as the Park & Ride over on
Crown Street. So any BAE or anybody else parking in any of those locations would use this new service to
go to BAE or anywhere else in the downtown. | think it will serve everyone well. BAE has agreed to
contribute $260,000.00 a year to this reconfiguration so they have been an important partner in this. We are
glad to be working with them to improve service for everyone in the downtown.
Also there is another BAE contract where we would agree to lease spaces in the Park & Ride to BAE for the
use of their employees. People who then could use the system to the reconfigured route to get from the
Crown Street Park & Ride to Canal Street.
The EPA was in town a couple of weeks ago putting forth their proposals and ideas, taking testimony and
thoughts regarding the Mohawk Tannery. They will be meeting with neighbors, people from the
neighborhood this coming Thursday, not two days from now, but a week and two days, nine days from now
in which they will discuss with the neighbors the different alternatives and their thoughts regarding the most
cost effective in their view approach towards a Mohawk Tannery clean-up and will be presenting ideas as to
how that could be paid for.
