The Plattsburgh Common Council held its last meeting of the year with one of its six seats now vacant.
The Common Council holds a work session prior to its general meeting to review miscellaneous items or the regular session agenda.
Over the past month councilors have been reviewing the proposed 2025 budget, which must be approved by mid-January. Little was done during this latest meeting because only three councilors were in attendance. Ward 4 Democrat Jennifer Tallon asked Lieutenant Joshua Pond about a police department request for upgraded uniforms.
“It’s something that a lot of our officers feel very strongly about. They want a more functional uniform for when they’re out on the road, collecting evidence, attempting to make arrests of suspects, running after persons,” Pond said. “They just want a more comfortable uniform.”
“Activewear kind of?” Tallon asks.
“Yeah.” Replies Pond
Ward 6 Democrat Jeff Moore said the department’s request has not been done properly.
“It’s a contract change and it needed to be approved by the council,” notes Moore. “I’m not picking on your choice here or anything but I’m just saying it was not done properly and it’s going to have to be straightened out.”
During the work session, Lt. Pond also explained that the police department is attempting to get rid of machine guns it owns. He said there are 14 sub-machine guns from a former special response team that have not been used for at least five years.
“They’re not the best practice to put them in use for patrol because they are fully automatic machine guns. And it would also require additional training for us to be able to get our people up to a level of competency that I would be comfortable to deploy them in the community. However, I see them as not being the best practice for our officers to have full autos,” Pond explained. “It would be more beneficial to us and the community to have semi-automatic rifles that are precise and allow for better round accountability. Also we have a number of other firearms in our arms room that are not utilized. They’ve just been stored there for several years and I also want to clean out that inventory as well.”
Most of the councilors absent from the work session attended the regular meeting. Mayor Chris Rosenquest acknowledged an empty Ward 2 seat.
“I’ll note for the record that Councilor (Jacob) Avery submitted his resignation effective immediately on December 18, 2024 so there is a vacancy as you see for Ward 2.”
In a later interview with WAMC, Mayor Rosenquest said he will leave the future of the seat to Mayor-elect Wendell Hughes, a fellow Democrat.
“Wasting my time, wasting anybody’s time that is interested in that temporary appointment is not worth it, to be honest, asserted Rosenquest. “I’ll leave it to Wendell to make that special appointment leading into the next general election for a special election. And, yeah, I just wish him luck and I wish the council luck operating shorthanded for the time being.”
During the council’s regular session, Moore of Ward 6 was chastised by Mayor Rosenquest after saying he had not been given adequate time to review a grant authorization request.
“I just got that. Just saw it last night at 9:00. It’s 46 pages of text. I didn’t get a chance to review it. So I’m not going to vote for it,” stated Moor.
“Item carried. I’ll note that the opportunity to discuss the item is not during the vote but rather during the discussion period,” admonished Rosenquest. “We also had a work session that we had an opportunity to talk about this item and it was not talked about during the actual work session.”
Councilor Moore will be replaced in January by Democrat Amy Collin.
