for this is connection filling in for Ivan Dawson.

I'm Gino Fanelli.

Today's connection was made last Tuesday.

That was the day the city's new budget went into effect.

The budget is the last of Mayor Malik Obama's first term in office, and has dubbed his prosperity budget.

And it's a relatively measured financial document.

There's no massive new initiatives.

The property tax levy is held flat and marks a $27 million dropped from last year's budget.

So we're here to talk about the budget.

Today I'm joined by Mayor Malik Evans.

Mayor, thanks for being here.

Good to be here.

City council president Miguel Melendez.

Miguel, thanks for being here.

Of course.

Thank you.

And city council member Mitch Gruber.

And we're going to start talking about the budget.

But first, we got to talk about the news of the day and have the mayor comment on the potential mountain lion.

Tiger, big cat, whatever it may be, that was caught on a ring camera on Grand Avenue.

Just let me say, I just gave an update to a bunch of folks on this.

I got off the phone with Deputy Chief Courier a little while ago.

So far we have not seen any evidence of any mountain lion.

Tiger.

Sable.

Two tiger roaming in northeast Rochester.

We followed up on the ring camera footage.

We have actually even put up drones, in the air.

We've alerted the DC that there might be some type of animal, but the most important thing we want to, tell, Rochester Marines is, is that if you see, and I'm also, by the way, all the animals at the Seneca Park Zoo are accounted for.

But we want to tell Rochester is that if you see any wild animal, tiger, lion, bear, whatever it is, make sure you call 911.

Shelter in place.

But more importantly, don't approach the animal.

Right now, we have not seen any evidence of, any wild animal being on the loose in northeast Rochester.

It's a weird story.

Yes, you can read it.

I, just published a story at five news that org.

It's, weird video.

You're going to see a lot of hoaxes on social media over the next few days.

This video itself might be a hoax, but it's a pretty good one if it is one.

So, weird stuff.

But, we're here to talk about the budget.

And, to start, let's I want to go broad strokes, overhead view of what are the highlights to you all in this year's budget.

And then we can go into some more granular details here.

But, mayor, I'll start with you.

This budget you dubbed the quote prosperity, budget.

What are some of the highlights that stand out to you?

Yeah, I mean, some of the highlights are, first off, you know, you said not really new initiative.

Actually, what it is, is a continuation of huge initiatives that we started off, early in the year and we're able to sustain them.

The one highlight is, is that we, unlike other cities, we were able to maintain any programs that we started with Arpa.

We were able to still maintain all those programs through our through our budget.

We were able to keep the property tax levy flat and also not cut, cut any, any, any programs.

And I think that those are, very, very high level, updates that you can get to.

And as you get granular, we still were able to have strong public safety programs.

Our piece collective, which is 23 plus organizations, that's still continuing the expansion of our tree beautification program.

That's that's, that's still continuing.

Office of Financial Empowerment is still, fully funded up and operational.

That's, that that's still, fully funded.

So those are all, amazing programs and projects, rec center, our still, still functioning, having, socio emotional support in all of our, our centers.

We started it as a pilot that's now basically, almost permanent in our, in our programing, summer job programs are job programs for 12 to 14 year olds.

So all those things are still, in this current budget.

And that is despite us having, having one time shots with Arpa no longer having that and still being able to maintain those services.

Remember, we were spending $27 million less than we did than we did the year before, but no services are cut in taxes when we're not raised.

There are very few cities across the country that can say that.

Oh, and by the way, our bond outlook is is stable.

And that's why you can't really, play politics with with finances and budget.

And that's why I'm glad that, I'm glad City Council, has really work with me closely on this, because at the end of this, with the public needs to understand is, is that the budget also ties to our bond rating and the overall financial health of the city.

And that's boring stuff.

People don't like talking about it, but you can't do any of the stuff that we just mentioned.

If you don't have a strong, stable financial, financial picture.

And that's what we have.

This year.

So we're very, very excited about that.

And then some newer initiatives, our action team, we funded it in last year's budget.

We're funding it again in this year's budget.

That's that's over ten positions of new people that will be going out in the community to work on nonviolent community safety things is a huge undertaking.

That's that that's, that that's funded in this, in this budget.

So we've been able to, juvenile justice, pilot that we have in our program to deal with young people who have more of a propensity to get in trouble through our Department of Recreation, Human Services, another newer program that is, that that is funded in this budget.

So lots of, initiatives that we will be able to continue, but also a couple of new things that are also encapsulated in this budget.

There's a few things I want to build on there, but before that, I want to, turn to Miguel and Mitch.

Miguel, I'll start with you.

I mean, where are some of the stand out here?

The highlights of this year's budget?

Yeah.

I mean, I think the mayor talked about the things that are not as as critically.

We'll say not as sexy, if you will, but it's important to note that before the budget came to council, the mayor actually closed a $97.5 million gap.

So, you know, first and foremost, this budget really does support our employees.

We had no layoffs, despite the economic upheaval nationally and all the things going on.

I think it's smart about how we've, looked at and used our fund balance and maintained our reserves.

But in terms of programs and services, the Nia program continues, which is something we just started.

I was heavily part of that team to help develop the concept with the mayor's support.

And we were able to, continue that program as well as enhance staffing for it by adding four positions in our neighborhood service center.

So we have one in each quad of the city that really helps cultivate community activity citywide.

Our code enforcement is intact.

You're not cut any positions there.

I think the next steps there, and this is something we've all been talking about, is how do we make sure that we're providing, support and efficiency in our code enforcement, continue continuous training and development so that our staff continues to improve our code enforcement citywide.

We also have some very high profile and, wonderful opportunities for more affordable housing in our city that's funded in this budget.

Fernwood apartments, Lowes Lumber, Yanez, and Gardner Lofts are our three critical projects that that their seed funds that are included in this budget.

The mayor mentioned the action team.

I would also add that in addition to the action team, we have to recruit recruit classes for our PD that are budgeted in in this in this, upcoming budget and the question is, can we fill those positions?

But we do have the, emphasis and the support for that.

And then I guess for now, the last thing I'll highlight is, as we're investing in youth in many different ways, but one of the ways is the at the Trenton and Pamela, our Jackson, our center, we have, a new esports, gaming lounge that's going to be developed as part of this.

So there's a lot of exciting stuff, that are coming down the pipe through this process.

And I think this year, we really have a lot of emphasis on, public projects, public art and, and creating amenities for our young people.

Mitch, any, any highlights there that you want to mention?

Yeah, I want to I want to build upon what, the mayor was talking about and just just kind of pull back a little bit for, for listeners out there.

So you hear the the acronym Arpa a lot.

The American Recovery Plan Act, which feels like forever ago, was an infusion of $210 million into the city of Rochester.

It's actually it was actually very rare.

I'm not sure ever before.

There's been so much direct money from the federal government directly to municipalities.

And it wasn't just us, it was every municipality.

Monroe County got, what, a 100 plus million?

The Rochester City school districts got a ton of Arpa dollars in every municipality around the country.

Got some, but just here in the city.

Right.

So we got 210 million.

And so you may ask, where did all that money go?

Not all of it has been spent yet, but all of it has been, appropriated and promised.

And if you want to know what the single biggest expense of, of Arpa that we use was to replace over 80% of, of lead service lines in Rochester.

So the, the issue that so many cities are facing now, and frankly, many of them close to us, is that when you get an infusion of $210 million into your budget and it was formula based, so every city got a different amount when you get that much money infused at once, it is very hard to wean yourself off.

Imagine your household budget if all of a sudden you got this big giant influx and you started to develop a different kind of lifestyle and and pay it higher for XYZ thing, and then the money went away.

It's a challenge and many cities have struggled with that.

I will tell you that just to our West, the city of Buffalo, was basically on a fiscal cliff because they had so much additional money into their city and they had so many issues with their, with their fiscal practices that they had to actually go above the tax cap and raise taxes substantially for people, several times, I believe, over the last couple years.

But certainly last year was the big one.

This budget, despite what some people, particularly on the campaign trail, like to talk about, this budget is not a reduction in services for the city of Rochester.

We have a $27 million, $27 million less than last year's annual budget.

But the vast majority of that is capital projects like the lead service lines that we brought into the city did.

And they're gone now.

Where do this budget the number one highlight is that we are not cutting any major services when if you look at New York City, they're trying to cut library hours year after year.

You don't see cut library hours in Rochester.

That's critically important.

And the last thing I'll say about Arpa is that what makes what what makes what we did, particularly I think, stand out, is that we we created programs that then we leveraged for additional dollars and they continue to live.

So I'll give you two examples.

One, the tree canopy we made a commitment to to grow to plant 6000 new trees.

We use Arpa dollars to literally and figuratively seed that.

And then we leverage it for additional dollars from the federal government.

And now we have money that's not Arpa money that's going to go towards that.

Our Vision Zero commitment, which I've been on the show to talk about many times, which is about, eliminating traffic and traffic fatalities for bikers, pedestrians, drivers, bus riders, whomever, everyone that was started with Arpa dollars.

And we leverage that to 23 million federal dollars to do pedestrian safety measure or measures across the city that will be implemented.

That's in the capital, budget of of that we just passed.

So that is what a good smart city does, is you take money, you don't put yourself on a fiscal cliff where you have to go, then raise taxes dramatically, and you leverage it for new programs that can either be done like the lead service on replacements or that can be turned into new funding sources like Vision Zero and Tree Canopy.

We did that successfully.

Effectively in every one of this community is going to benefit from it.

Yeah.

Mayor, I think we have talked about that before, that Rochester position with the Arpa dollars was it wasn't used to fill in budget gaps.

So much of it was for there was quite a few pilot programs.

Gvi was one of the guarantee basic income was one of them, by the block.

The first phase was funded through Arpa dollars.

So, this one, if you had anything to add from what the comments were.

Yeah, I think one of the things I did was, was I did an analysis of, if these are if the if we ended up having a program that was successful and we and we liked the program or we liked the initiative that we were doing, if we want it to be able to continue to continue it.

My question to all of my department heads were, how would we be able to do it when Arpa went away?

And that's why you see the continuation of socio emotional support.

It's why you see the continuation of my, my, my quest to be the Johnny Appleseed of mayors in terms of planning 6000 trees, which, by the way, we're going to actually exceed 6000.

And we were able to, as Council Member Gruber said, get get other dollars there.

So I think for us, we are I'm also always concerned about the future fiscal health of Rochester, because we see across the country right now cities that are in dire fiscal straits.

That can happen to any of us.

And by the way, the whole time we were composing this budget, we had all the nonsense that's happening at the federal government going on in the back of our in the back of our mind.

And we still have that going on in the back of our mind.

And we are prepared for.

I talked about on this show, a couple, a couple of months ago, I think it was last month or a month before about what we will do if we have those cuts from the federal government, and it won't be pretty, but we are prepared to, to hit the handbrake when we did that.

But we we wanted to be clear that in order for Rochester to have a strong fiscal house, which is something that a lot of people don't understand and don't realize how important it is, it was critical that we not try to use temporary money or a sugar high, as I call it, to try to plug holes that we know, would not be fiscally prudent or responsible, because at the end of the day, we wanted to make sure that we were not going to go back on any of our promises.

Too many times we've seen in government where people start a program, and then and then they pull back once the money's going away and they can't be able to continue it.

So Peace Collective, almost all that was Arpa, but we are now prepared in our planning to make sure that the Peace Collective continues onward.

The dollar amount might not be as large, but the concept will be able to still continue to be able to move forward.

And then we kept some programs that don't get a lot of attention.

We actually expanded our, and this program for example, our composting program, that is one of our that is one of the most popular programs we have in the city.

But it doesn't get a lot of attention.

But in this budget, we actually, we actually expanded that.

Another thing that didn't get attention in the budget.

We didn't call it out.

I called it out in the press release or something.

I know Councilmember Gruber is very interested in is the public market in this budget.

We fund it.

We are funding a study, for the public market because we want to take the our public market to the next level.

We have one of the best public markets in the country.

I would say top five.

I would argue with anybody.

I'd say top Mitch.

I would say top five is number one.

Yeah.

Mitch says number one.

Detroit's good, Cleveland's good.

But, you know, we're you know, we have the we have money in the budget that we were able to do that again.

And then, we also did not stop our roof repair and vacant.

Vacant, vacant, vacant lot, vacant housing dollars as well.

We use that.

We use Arpa dollars for that, but we also are using local money for that.

And then we also leveraged tip dollars from New York State as well.

So that's all for us.

It's all about how you can how you can have a continuation of, programs that work, scaling up to try to meet more people and then also continue to do some, newer initiatives that might make sense as well.

So just to contextualize this, I mean, when I mentioned the $27 million drop from last year's budget, most of that is accounted for by Arpa.

It's about 20 million of the other.

That's right.

So I look at the kind of situation we're in in the city that you just kind of alluded to, where there's a two fold thing happening.

One is the end of the Arpa dollars.

They ought to be encumbered or spent at this point.

And then there is the threat from the federal government, two of the people that are being sued by the federal government over the sanctuary city policy are sitting in this room right now, Miguel.

And, you, mayor, are both named in that lawsuit.

Now, the pulling of the funding, called for by the Trump administration against sanctuary cities have been blocked by the courts for now.

You know, who knows what happens next.

But I was wondering if you could give us some context here of if it were to happen, what would the result be?

I mean, what will we actually see happen in the city?

Well.

Oh, well, first off, it first off would be disastrous if we got any federal funding pulling, pulling and and let me just say that these are taxpayer dollars that New York sends to DC.

We there's only been in the last ten years, last 20 years, two years in which we've gotten more money back from the federal government than we spent.

And that was the one Arpa in the CARES act.

Dollars we spend.

We send more money to DC than we get back.

So these dollars that you're talking about pulling, it's like somebody coming into your house and saying, hey, how you doing?

You want to buy a pizza?

I want to buy you a pizza.

But then they're using your money.

So they are using our money.

This is our money that we have that we are fighting against.

So but if they try to pull any of our money back, it would be disastrous.

It would mean that we would not be able to do some of the programs that we do, or we'd have to scale them back, such as roof repair.

For seniors such as housing, people with Aids, it would be disastrous for our city.

We we we don't think that that will happen because we know we are on the right side of history.

We think that the lawsuit is frivolous and really what this gets down to is the basic 10th amendment, which says that the federal government cannot allow the cannot have us use our resources to do their job, just like how we don't ask them to do our job for them.

And it's as simple as that.

So they're suing us, but we are also suing them.

We just joined the lawsuit, a couple of weeks ago, Trump versus San Francisco.

We are now a part a part of that lawsuit.

And then the week before that, we just filed a lawsuit, for them trying to take appropriated EPA funding.

So we hope that the courts, will continue to use good judgment here and that they will continue to follow the rule of law.

But this budget will always have over its head the possibility of, the federal government trying to pull that public money back.

But we are not going to, make any cuts or changes until we know that that will be for sure, because we are going to continue to litigate these things, through the court.

So it's a to be determined, on, on these, on these, and these court cases that are happening and they continue to go on and we've, we've got a lot of them and we're probably going to have a lot more that we'll be filing as well.

It also doesn't just it just answer your question in a different way.

It doesn't happen in one chunk.

Right?

Like we don't get a huge amount of federal dollars as a city, in, in one distinct category.

So as the mayor talked about the EPA funds, largely these things are going to come in piece by piece, bit by bit, in terms of challenges from the Trump administration.

And so we can't really have, a contingency budget that says, what happens if this happens?

Because this could be 700 different things.

I also just want to draw people's attention not just to the reality of cuts of particular programs.

But let's be very clear that the the Republican led federal government is leading us directly into a recession as we speak.

And sales tax is a significant way cities fund themselves.

So we have to be prepared and thoughtful about what are we going to do as a city, as we see sales tax numbers, which have been which were very good under the Biden administration, by the way, and continue to rise as people had money to spend in their pockets.

What are we going to do if that number decreases?

We have to accept the fact that, unfortunately, the Republican House majority and Senate majority just voted for a bill that's going to cut the social safety net out from beneath people in the form of Snap and Medicaid.

That is not going to have an impact on the city's budget that you're talking about today, but it's going to have an impact on people's needs in Rochester.

And so but these these things are so kind of, amorphous that you can't just have a backup budget that says, okay, if this happens, we'll do this.

They are all piece by piece.

And we need to be thoughtful, strategic and constantly figuring out, how to stay one step ahead.

Yeah.

I think what I will add is two things.

One, the there was also a motion to intervene on the lawsuit by NYC crew with, two nonprofits and two faith based organizations.

So I think there's a lot of support for standing up our existing sanctuary city policy, and we'll continue to stand on that.

But the other part of this is, you know, there's there's also recourse legislatively that I think others are talking about.

So not locally, but in the states, delegation, there's conversations about the Recourse Act, which is something that's relatively new in concept, but basically it's talking about the resources that we do send to the federal government.

Should we have an issue in any particular municipality or in the state?

Could the state withhold funds from being sent to the federal government and in absence of, getting a cut?

So there's a lot of conversations that are happening from a legislative perspective to protect cities and cities, counties in New York state.

But I do think that what we what we can do and what we can plan for is to be nimble.

We already, in our last budget, we we had some resources through council under runs where we allocated $1 million to a reserve, for Cdbg related, activities.

So should that be something that is considered as a future cut?

We do have $1 million in the bank right now per se, to be able to allocate towards those needs.

But frankly, it is certainly, a time that we did not anticipate, just a year ago.

But we're here and we're going to figure it out.

And the other thing I'll say to that, that is just as, a concern as much as the, the those, those cuts that are trying to make sanctuary cities is this upcoming, federal budget, remember?

So Rochester's budget starts July 1st, Monroe County budget ends, is is on a calendar year, and then the federal government.

Guess what?

They gotta come up with a new budget by October 1st.

The current skinny budget that is proposed from the federal government right now zeroes out Cdbg dollars.

Yep, that's over $10 million to the city of Rochester.

That would be devastating.

The, the sequestration budget.

Well, bill policy that just just happened that didn't require 60 votes, right?

That just cut Medicaid, Medicare, Medicaid, Medicaid, Medicaid, in a major way where millions of New Yorkers are going to be thrown off, going to be thrown off Medicaid.

I don't think people realize that yet because it because it's not happening immediately.

It's something that's going to happen down the line.

So that that is going to be, that's going to have a major impact on any of the fiscal things that we talk about.

So it's amazing, how everything that we're talking about here, related to a budget, how Washington is now intruding and playing such a larger than life role in our fiscal matters.

And that has never happened before.

I've worked for city council, I've been on city council.

I've been in the mayor's office for, almost four years, and we never had to worry about, oh, we're doing our we're doing our budget.

Let's see what the federal government is doing.

This is the first time ever where I've crafted a budget in four years as mayor, and as years as being city council, being a city councilman, being chair of finance and city council, where we've had to have in the back of our mind what's happening at the federal level and how it's affecting our budget.

And it's really, unfortunate.

And I hope we can go back to the days when we used to not used to not have to worry about that.

So I want to take a comment from, Jason, who's watching on YouTube.

The kind touch of that is something I wanted to ask as well.

So, he's asking you, can they talk about what goes into deciding to keep the tax levy the same?

I worry that without annual increases, our revenue won't keep up with inflation, and we limit that.

We can what?

We can fund in the future.

And, Yeah, I mean, given it a little bit, I mean, the tax levy did remain the same.

We had a reassessment last year that saw property values go way, way up.

So I would like to know a little bit about balancing that.

Yeah.

Well I mean look we can't you can't to be good fiscal stewards.

You can't keep the you can't keep the tax levy.

You can't, you cannot not you cannot raise the tax levy.

You can't keep it the same forever.

Right.

But you do have to look at macroeconomic factors that are happening.

So this year I did not bring a tax levy increase to city council simply because I continue to look at the rate of inflation.

And then I continue to look at if we were still able to perform the services that we could without raising, the levy.

Right.

But if we want to continue to maintain services, there will come a time when we will have to look at reassessing if we, if we, if we if we raise if we raise the levy, I try to do everything I could to not have to do that.

But if, for example, if, if, if we would have had to close a rec center, right, we want to close a rec center or do you want to raise the levy.

So there a trade off that you have to be able to look at this year we were blessed in that I wasn't presented with that type of dilemma.

But that is not to say that in the future, we won't be presented with that type of dilemma and it will make sense for us to raise the levy.

So he he asked a very, very, good and important question.

And from a fiscal standpoint, even even our rating agencies will look at, how often we raise our levy when we should raise our levy, because we want to make sure that we do is fiscally prudent.

But at the same time, we want to also balance the needs and the needs of taxpayers.

But inflation, is still too high.

People are still, trying to keep up with, with prices that the president said would come down on January 1st, which they have not.

So I took all of that into consideration when I proposed the budget to City council in terms of keeping, the levy, the levy flat.

And so we got all that much, we'll go that way.

Okay.

So, yeah, I mean, I think the reality is we might be looking at that in, in the next two years or so, depending what happens with the federal budget and what cuts are coming our way.

I mean, certainly Cdbg all the dollars that go into our home repair programs, our roof repair programs, funds about 50 staff members in the city and city government should that be cut and zeroed out as as the mayor was alluding to, that's something that might trigger us having to, look at raising the levy in the upcoming budget.

So, again, this is where I said earlier, we have to remain nimble and flexible, but I think that we're entering times where this is something that we really have to consider.

Yeah, I appreciate the question.

I'm so happy that this program is talking about the actual like, mechanics of, of the budget versus just talking about kind of, you know, pie in the sky, programmatic ideas, because the mechanics of the budget are that we have a three legged stool.

The vast majority of funding for the city of Rochester comes from three sources property tax, sales tax, and state aid.

You could actually call it state and federal, but pass through some other governments.

Right.

And the reality is, for the last several years, sales tax has been really, really good.

If you looked at a chart of sales tax in the city of Rochester and, and the county of Monroe, it has continued to climb every year as people, particularly since, since the pandemic, since the worst part of the pandemic have had more money to spend in their pocket.

The economy has largely been, you know, it hasn't been necessarily good for every individual person.

But spending has been up, right.

There's there's almost no, no doubt about that from, from a sales tax perspective.

So it's probably not the right time to increase property taxes when sales tax is doing well.

If we get into a position now where, as I said, it feels like the Republican administration in Washington is trying to lead us into a recession.

It feels like that's what they're actually trying to do.

They may say differently, but that's not what it appears like.

If if recession hits and sales tax comes down, we have to figure out how to continue services from a from a different leg of the stool.

And also remember state aid getting funding from New York State when when things are better, we get more money from New York State.

So there's a correlation between sales tax being higher and state aid being a little bit higher.

And if those things begin to dip or stagnate, then we have to make the smart decision and look at property taxes.

But thank goodness we haven't had to for a while.

And again, we have not seen services cut.

In fact, let's talk about a particular service for a second.

And this is the first time knock on this table.

This is the first time in a long time that we've had every single pool open by July 4th in the city of Rochester, staffed with and with enough lifeguards where everybody can go swim at Gvp, people can swim on the beach.

We have the pools over at, at Lightfoot and that, Avenue D, we have more and more services that are being offered now that years ago we actually couldn't because of a stack staffing crunch year in.

So we don't we didn't need to talk about, property taxes the last couple of years, but we may need to in the future.

And the other thing that's very important to point out, this is the first time in Rochester's history that sales tax has outpaced property tax as our major source of revenue in the budget.

So property tax is now second to sales tax.

So sales tax is our number one revenue source now.

So that's why when people say why do you talk so much about making sure that we diversify our income.

This is why.

Because we know that we derive a lot of revenue now from, from from sales tax.

So we have to make sure that we do things to get people to continue to spend money that can support our overall, our overall budget.

So, it's a it's a, it's definitely, an art and not a science.

But I appreciate the question because it's a good one.

And I'm glad that there's, listeners out there that are thinking about this stuff as much as I am.

Yeah.

And this kind of dovetails with another question.

I mean, sales tax outpacing property tax to me indicates that our homeownership rate is not going up very much.

People are spending more money, outside of the rather than.

No, not no not necessarily it just, it just it just remember we have a huge taxable base.

We did a huge assessment.

Remember.

Yes.

Because the homes are still own.

Yeah.

They still own this I mean people still.

And remember we also get taxes from people who own it's just the fact that sales tax was doing so well.

That's why it went up.

So it's not there's no correlation between obviously we want to increase the home ownership rate.

Right.

But if someone is, you know, I'm sure you know, this, that if someone is renting that property is owned by someone and we're getting property taxes fair.

Yeah.

Okay.

You understand?

I mean, yeah, I do understand it here, but yeah.

So so there's no correlation between that and mortgage ownership.

Now we want to increase, the number of people who own homes if that's if that's what they desire to do.

Yes, we want to do that.

But there's but but the reason why you're seeing the property tax, the sales tax go up is because across the country, because of the infusion of federal money that got stimulus checks and all those other things that increase the number of sales tax.

So, yeah, but there's no correlation between property taxes.

The state is going to be a static number.

Right.

So so so so if I rent from you I'm still getting property tax.

Not from you, but I'm getting from the owner that you're, that you're living in, right.

Yeah.

Up to that point though, how do you increase that homeownership rate by the black.

It's still funded.

Yeah.

And it's budget.

Yep.

And we just built some more, some more homes.

You got to do innovative and creative things.

We just announced, in the Northeast district that we are, that we are going to build a bunch of homes on, on city vacant lots.

That private industry, will be rebuilding.

They will be buying a lot from the city.

And what you gotta do is you got to build, build, build.

You got you got to be able to make more opportunities.

Rochester, by the way, people forget that.

You know, sometimes I have to remind people, you know, nationally and statewide, you know, what city people are looking at as it relates to home ownership as well as building affordable home homes.

Rochester, New York.

Rochester, New York, which is featured in a video, and homes and Community renewal for our by the black program.

The state has model a program after Rochester called Black by Black, which we're going to which which we're also going to take advantage of.

So, this administration has taken the, the creative and bold step to build baby build.

We just we just cut the ribbon.

I think you were with me two weeks ago.

Mr. President?

Yeah, we, we we started in the northeast, and we were in the southwest.

We are superior.

Superior.

We are superior Street.

And we and we cut the ribbon on some new homes that were built there.

And then the RFP is due, I think, in another week for, for the new homes that will be built over in, the South Street neighborhood on vacant lots that are there.

So the strategy is you have to build as much as you can.

But the other thing is you have to create the capacity for people to be able to become home owners if they decide to.

And I also want to say we should not look down upon renters.

I remember there were some people saying we got too many people rent.

Well, some people choose the rent if that's what they want to do.

Damn it, this is democracy.

They can choose the rent.

Not everyone has to own.

But if they want to own, we need to make sure that we create the conditions for for them to be able to do that.

And how you do that is by partnering with others who can build as many single family homes or condos or other think that those are other things that we are looking at co-ops, those are other things that we are looking at to, to to make the supply better.

The problem that you have in New York City, in some of these other places, is they have not created the supply.

And when you add it's basic economics, when you don't have a supply and you have a higher demand, that means that you can charge, you can charge more number one and number two, it also means that you don't have as many choices for people to be able to choose from.

So our, our, our goal has been, is to build as many new housing units be to be the rental or or for homeownership through partnerships as much as possible.

And I think that that's how you increase the homeownership rate.

Mitchell, go to you first.

Yeah.

Two things I want to add first, the the the first step in really doing the and really being able to facilitate the build baby build concept is, finalizing our new zoning code, which needs to happen yesterday, and I'm confident that it'll happen, this calendar year, we will have something before council, to vote on.

That is an assurance that, that I know that the mayor feels the same way, and we're working on that.

And once you have a new zoning code, there will be more opportunity for different types of buildings.

You know, right now in Rochester, you don't you don't see a whole lot of things like condos and townhouses and co-ops, in part because our zoning code makes those things difficult.

We can change that with, more modern zoning.

So that's one.

But the other is it's not just about building.

Building is super important.

I couldn't agree more that that's what we should be focused on.

But there are also so many habitable properties in Rochester that are vacant, and that is a place where code enforcement needs to be.

The other piece of this, if we have, if we have properties that, people that that are predominantly absentee landlords are not paying close attention to and are taking it out of a place of habitability, and it's not being rented.

And, you know, this is why people ask about, tickets, about grass not being cut, but when your grass is two feet high is a pretty good indication that that, no one's paying attention to the property.

We need to make sure that we are using code enforcement to make it uncomfortable for people who are being absentee, derelict landlords who are also not even or not even landlords at all, and not occupying the property, and make sure that those are places that have opportunities to be bought by folks that we have.

And I'm sure Miguel's going to talk about land Bank and how we have all these different tools that we can use.

But the first thing is having more inventory.

And you get that in two ways building and taking what's already out there and being underutilized.

Yeah, great Segway mentioned.

I think the the land bank is an opportunity.

We have brought this up many times with the administration.

I think it's something we'll be working on next couple of years.

But, you know, other cities utilize their land banks as property management and are able to secure the properties and then sell to first time homebuyers or other people who are going to be occupants of the units.

So I think we could do a lot more in that space.

The other thing is we need to support homeowners that currently own.

And I think, you know, in this budget, we have the New York State Targeted Home Improvement program that will provide resources to current homeowners to make sure that they can stay in the properties that they're in and rehab those properties.

The city of Rochester has historically been a place where, the the state, has really looked at us as the leaders and development of housing.

And I think there's opportunities with, a hot program at the state level which subsidize, single family, projects for homeownership.

We have one that's going to be in the northeast, first Genesis project.

So I think that's an exciting prospect to, recreate opportunities similar to the first Genesis housing project, which I think is 21 units of, single family homeownership opportunities.

But I do think that the inventory that we have currently, the existing housing stock, we have to reevaluate what we do with our, our auction processes and our land bank and create more opportunities for homeownership in the city.

We're gonna take our first and only break of the hour.

We're going to take phone calls when we get back to them.

Coming up in our second, our, you know, finale continues our conversations on budgets with an eye toward Albany and the New York state budget.

We're joined by Assembly member Steven Holly.

He'll share his perspectives on everything from taxes to childcare to economic development and more.

That's coming up next hour on connections from Sky.

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And we're back on connections.

Going to take our first car of the hour.

Jenny in Rochester.

Jenny, go ahead.

Hi.

Thanks for taking my call.

First, I'm thrilled that you guys are talking about the budget.

I want to understand it better.

And it would help me out if y'all could define, some terms that you threw around that I weren't.

I wasn't, aware of PAB under run.

I know PAB is a police accountability board, but I'm not sure you got what you meant by under run.

And then also, what if you could define cjb dollars?

And I look forward to hearing about the, basic, guaranteed basic income plans and the budget, too.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So, Cdbg and I'll let Miguel define the, the other one, is, community development block grant money.

That's money that comes from, housing and urban development, and it goes, specifically to cities and some towns.

But Cdbg is, money that comes from the federal government.

It funds, a lot of housing, roof repair and a bunch of other miscellaneous, miscellaneous items.

But Cdbg is community Development Block grant funding.

Yes.

And under runs every department, at the end of the year, evaluates whether they have resources remaining in their budget lines.

And so this year and in subsequent years, prior years, we've had under runs in both the PAB and the council budget Office, which is one department.

We're all in one department.

So that's where the funding, was able to be reallocated into the new budget year, through budgetary intent.

And, take another call from Andrew in around equate.

Hey, you guys, I love you guys.

I love what you guys do.

I think you need to get out of the housing business.

You.

Why don't you just let people buy lots and, builders build without all your.

Yeah.

Well, involvement, yeah, I don't.

First off, the city is not in the housing business.

The city doesn't own a single house.

But I think you're right.

We we we are simply facilitators.

The houses that were built, for example, through by the block were built through, private folks.

So I, I agree with you.

We're not we're not in the housing business is not what we do.

We, our job is simply facilitating, the purchasing of our lots, which is why we have our RFP in, in, in a private person will buy that lot.

And any of our affordable housing projects are run by, the private industry.

So the city's not so to to your point in, to answer your question, the city's not in the in the housing business.

We don't have a we don't collect rent from anybody.

We don't we don't build houses ourselves.

We partner with others.

And the new zoning code is very much about trying to make sure there's less red tape to get through, to be able to build.

But the city also, government also has a responsibility to make sure things are permitted and zoned appropriately so that, we're being we're actually being good stewards of public land and public resources.

So that is the balance that I think citizens to strike right now is how can we both, remove red tape while also making sure that we're doing our job as permitting and licensing entities?

And I think we're we're I think in the city of Rochester, the new zoning code will strike that balance very well.

So I do want to touch on some of the, programs that were started under Arpa that aren't continuing right now.

And I think one of the big ones is guaranteed basic income.

And we've talked about this a lot over the years about whether or not the city could sustain a program like that going forward.

So I want to start with you on that.

I mean, it's not funded in this year's budget.

It was previously funded by Arpa dollars.

Do you see a path for the city funding, or is there another avenue that needs to go through for guaranteed basic income to become a permanent program here?

I'm sorry that I feel like a broken record on this subject here, but I'm gonna I'm going to say something I've said several times before on this show, back, in the Warren administration, I worked on, I wrote a letter to Mayor Warren at the time and asked her to join what, Mayor Tubbs out of Stockton, California, who started the first guaranteed income program and as a as a phenomenal leader.

Mayor Tubbs started a, an organization called mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

I'm not sure if it actually got started under Mayor Warner.

If it was Mayor Evans, but the city is now a proud participant.

Mayor.

Was that look.

Looks like it was you.

Does.

Either way, the city is a proud participant of mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

The purpose of this initiative was for cities to demonstrate that guaranteed income works, so that the places that actually print money can start to incorporate it.

Cities have to pass balanced on time budgets.

As Miguel said before, Mayor Evans and his team started with a $97 million budget deficit.

This year, there is no money for the city to start a guaranteed income program.

The places that print money is the federal government.

And frankly, sometimes it feels like New York State prints money.

For example, the state, legalized online sports gambling and took a pretty big cut of that.

I don't know where all the money goes to, but I'll tell you this much.

None of it goes to the city of Rochester.

So we don't we don't have ability to raise new revenues substantially to do anything close to a long term, sustainable guaranteed income program.

What we did with our produce was demonstrate that it works.

And it did.

And I'm sure that the mayor will talk about when the report's coming out.

But at this point, very few people argue that guaranteed income as a program works.

The question is who's going to pay for it?

And what I question right now is why we spent all this time talking about guaranteed income, when we just watched the federal government cut by $300 billion, the most impactful social social safety net in the country, which is food stamp benefits or Snap benefits.

So thinking about a world right now when the Republicans again are trying to gut the entire social safety net, that a city with that a cash strapped city like Rochester can start a program while the feds are cutting the safety net.

Feels feels to me like it's pie in the sky and not the place for us to be focusing our attention.

Mayor, anything you want to add?

The only thing I'll add is, you know, we have a program right now that we're working with the county on.

We got $25 million in poverty direct cash program, very similar to guaranteed basic income.

More to come on that.

And I think that that is, that that will have promise and will probably show, some great, some great opportunity there.

I think, one of the another thing I wanted to mention in Arpa that, we, we started doing and we are continuing is that we want to be led free by 2030.

We want to make sure that all of our drinking water, we don't want to be like, Jackson, Mississippi or Flint, Michigan.

We want to make sure that future generations have access to clean drinking water.

We're continuing that program.

Even after Arpa was gone, we were able to go to New York State and get dollars.

We're using local dollars for that, and we're on.

And we even got some federal money from that.

We passed it.

We passed it together again.

Other cities are looking to Rochester to see how we were doing this.

And, we we are pretty positive that by 2030, we will have every single lit line replaced in Rochester.

And then not only that, we did something also very unique.

We not only are replacing and we just replace the 10,000 line, I celebrate it, replacing in the 10,000 line.

About four weeks ago, we, we also replaced the lines that went, inside of the house as well.

If somebody had, a line in their house that, that had led in it, we also did that.

So that was an Arpa initiative that we started.

But because because of good planning, good, partnerships with levels of government, it's finding, finding money everywhere we can.

That's a project that is going to have a lasting impact on, on, on Rochester, because we're really making sure that we invest in our water infrastructure.

Just the other day, you heard about a Holly line, breaking, which sent water gushing all over the place.

The these, investments in our, in our water infrastructure, are absolutely critical.

And we've done that, through Arpa, and we're gonna continue to do that in the years to come.

So we've shown that as programs work, that we've been able to, sustain them if they, if they make sense.

Same thing with the Peace Collective that's going to continue.

Our, same thing with our advance Peace program that was all funded by Arpa.

Now, that is now completely funded by by local dollars.

So we have, the ability when it when we're, when we, when we're able, if we plan correctly to be able to replace those dollars.

So those are some of the other projects, that were funded by Arpa that we're still continuing.

So, yeah, I bring these things up because, the budget passed 6 to 3 with, council members Danny, Mary, Mary Lupine, and Kim Smith voting no.

And these were some of the things that were brought up in some of those conversations about why they voted no.

And another one that council member Martin had brought up was the funding of a public utility study.

This would be, public, public utility that replaced our and this has been a long time call for from advocates here.

It would also be arguably the biggest, development project the city had ever engaged in if it was done.

I mean, we're talking multiple billions of dollars, but, this budget doesn't, move towards, actually doing that study, but if that's something you guys see is feasible.

Miguel, I'll start with you on that.

You've heard a lot from, at council, from, advocates, from Metro Justice and other people.

They are in support of a public utility.

So I did want to get some of your thoughts on it.

Sure.

Well, I want to answer the question first and then I'll answer that question.

So I'll be the slightly different answer and maybe contrarian a little bit.

I don't think that the city of Rochester, to this point can fund, GBI program within the context of where we are today.

I do think we can be facilitators, and I think this report will probably give us a sense of where we can go in that direction because, you know, similar to what we've done with the Mia grant where we got outside partners to find the resources, and we pay some administrative fees, if you will, to help implement, I think something like that could be happening in this space down the road.

So I just want to answer that, with respect to the public utility question.

Well, let me start with this.

I'm I'm the only sitting legislator as a leader of a legislative body that has allocated money to the possibility of a study.

I did it twice.

This year is sitting in reserve.

There's been money that's sitting in reserve.

I'm not interested in studying power in Webster or around Detroit or Penfield or Pittsford.

And if the question is, should the city be studying power in those spaces?

My vote is no.

And there was no proposal to put anything forward this year.

There might have been some clamoring around it, but there was no proposal put forward.

And at this point, I think the real question is how do we hold our genie accountable?

What can we do around the Public Service Commission?

Could we study different energy types?

Can we increase the amount of energy we can produce here locally?

The question of can the city implement a genie like, infrastructure here in the city of Rochester by ourselves?

To me, the answer is already no.

So why waste my money or the city's money, or the taxpayers monies on studying something we know the answer to?

So that's where I am.

If, if there was a a bigger picture conversation about the future and involved other municipalities, towns, villages, etc., I've already proven that I would be at the table for those kind of discussions, but as far as the city of Rochester studying our genie or studying a public utility by ourselves, it doesn't make economic or fiscal sense.

And I have a fiscal responsibility to the taxpayer.

Mitch, anything you want to add there?

What do we initially, I voted for the measure that Miguel put forward when we initially did.

So we we did so asking for Monroe County's participation.

But I also just want to point out that our genie covers eight counties.

And if we are going to do something, substantial that requires billions and billions of dollars of assets, it would be very nice to know there are other governmental entities that want to participate in this.

I also really want to understand where New York State stands on this.

New York State is a responsible entity for regulating RGA, who, by the way, is 100% failing this community in many, many ways.

There is no if, ands or buts about it.

From my position, they have regulatory authority in New York State via the Public Service Commission, and that's a place where I'm still looking for answers and seeking out how we can find, people in New York State who want to answer for what to do.

I'll share one last thing.

And I wrote an article about this in the beacon a few weeks ago, in the Hudson Valley, where their, utility company is having similar massive, problems in the community from both a customer service and a service delivery perspective.

The state delegation there put forward legislation to actually create a new public, utility, not not having to study and trying to beg, beg and figure out different municipalities and jurisdictions and towns to participate.

But actual state legislation, because the state has the authority to do this, to create a new public utility.

I would love to understand where we are as a community in exploring that.

And I'll say this Rochester can't do it alone, okay?

Rochester cannot do it alone.

It just can't.

And that was the deal in the beginning.

If you remember that in order for Rochester to do it, they were going to be other county going to come along.

Yes.

Remember that.

But people seem to have forgotten it.

But that was the deal.

All right.

Well, this has been connections people talking about the city budget.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

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