This week, we covered the Finance, Legislation, and Community Development committees. ‘Council Member’ is abbreviated as CM; ‘Council President’ as CP; ‘President Pro Tempore’ as PT; and ‘Majority Leader’ as ML.
 
In the Finance committee, Investment and Debt Management Officer Gregg Szymanski and Sam Bruno from the Comptroller’s office spoke about some city departments’ failure to provide needed information for their financial audits. Sometimes, Bruno said, the departments are over a year late, which makes auditing difficult, in addition to violating charter requirements. “It speaks to transparency,” said PT Brian Bollman.
 
CM Rasheed Wyatt asked about a recent report that Seneca-Babcock community centers were temporarily closing down services because the city had not paid their utility bills.
 
In the Legislation Committee, CMs adopted a resolution establishing a charter review commission. Each member of the Common Council will be able to appoint one representative. The mayor’s departure mid-term has exposed some problems in the current charter, and CMs hope to address those. The biggest conundrum is that the council president will likely be filling in for the mayor and therefore leaving one district’s seat empty. In the meantime, CMs have decided that they must hold the seat for Chris Scanlon while he is interim mayor, but he will not be able to vote or participate in meetings as a CM. So, the South District will not have a regular representative.
 
The majority of the meeting was devoted to applications for short term rentals (e.g. Airbnbs), a topic that often stirs up disagreements among neighbors. Several council members took issue with the permitting process because many of the proposed properties had multiple open code violations. However, it’s not clear whether the CMs are prohibiting short-term rental permits for properties with active code violations or not.
 
In the Community Development committee, CM Wyatt a requested that all city boards and commissions submit their minutes and their annual reports to the mayor. This is already required by the City Charter, but it is not happening. Otherwise, he said, there is little accountability, and some commissions might not be filled, or ever meet. CM Wyatt’s resolution also asked the law department to draft an amendment that would require those reports to come to the Common Council too. ML Halton-Pope pointed out that it’s very difficult for CMs to even learn what commissions and boards exist, or whether they have enough members to convene. The committee recommended that the council adopt this resolution.