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Albany Common Council To Meet Remotely Monday Night

Corey Ellis
WAMC photo by Dave Lucas
Corey Ellis

The COVID-19 pandemic has sent local governments scrambling to conduct business online, and the Albany Common Council is no exception.
Under current New York State guidelines, regularly scheduled council meetings cannot be open to the public.

Albany Common Council President Corey Ellis says the council decided to conduct virtual meetings via the Zoom video app and livestream them on Facebook. Residents can still participate.

"What we're doing for public comments in the beginning of our meetings, we're having people email to our city clerk's office, go to the city website and click on our common council page, and people can email their public comments, which we'll share with our common council members and then we'll conduct our meeting."

Ellis says the remote meetings will help ensure city services continue. He is encouraged by the progress being made in the fight against COVID-19 while New York is on "pause" through at least mid-May.

"We really want people to adhere to the stay at home order and public distancing guidelines. That's the most important part of everything, to make sure people adhere to the guidleine so we can flatten this curve and hyou know, the governor and his team decide when things get lifted. That’s the most important thing at this point. As far as city services, city services continue to run, city employees continue to be paid, but people can't come to city hall, everything is by email and phone, so people have to go to our city website by appointment and by email to get information."

Ellis says councilors are grappling with financial issues. While Albany did get the $12 million dollar state aid package it requested this year, the city will not see revenue from parking meters, which has been suspended, and from canceled events like the Tulip Festival and the Freihofer's Run For Women.

"Council members, the finance committee, has asked for a quarterly report update based on things not happening, the shutdown, so we will be getting that very soon. We have asked for that information, because what we want to see is how does that play out as well. But we also must remember that we did get the %12 million to cover our budget but also the governor did put in the budget that that can be changed, so he does have the ability to change that based off of forecasting moving forward as to what the government can and cannot expect. We're very optimistic that that $12 million will stay, but we do understand as a body that that definitely can change."

As Ellis and the panel wait to hear back from the budget office, he's not ruling out hikes in taxes or fees for city services in the fall, when the pandemic could be behind us.

"The reson why the council wants the quarterly update on this is because we want to be able to see what next year's budget will look like because of the hits that we're taking. I don't want to speculate on what our future budget is going to look like and what monies we're not or will have because if Congress can pass another stimulus package and I know its geared toward cities that are dealing with COVID issues that can help save a lot and we won't have to think about raising taxes in our next budget and things of that nature, so everything is up in the air. We're all day to day with this pandemic ."

The council met in a virtual caucus last week to establish an agenda for tonight's meeting. Ellis says the Facebook session begins at 6:30. He is confident life will get better.

"We're resilient as a city. We're resilient as a state and we're resilient as a country. We will come out of this and we will be better for it. We will learn a lesson of things what to do and not to do because that's how we continue to drive as people on this planet."

Dave Lucas is WAMC’s Capital Region Bureau Chief. Born and raised in Albany, he’s been involved in nearly every aspect of local radio since 1981. Before joining WAMC, Dave was a reporter and anchor at WGY in Schenectady. Prior to that he hosted talk shows on WYJB and WROW, including the 1999 series of overnight radio broadcasts tracking the JonBenet Ramsey murder case with a cast of callers and characters from all over the world via the internet. In 2012, Dave received a Communicator Award of Distinction for his WAMC news story "Fail: The NYS Flood Panel," which explores whether the damage from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee could have been prevented or at least curbed. Dave began his radio career as a “morning personality” at WABY in Albany.
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