City Council

Thursday, October 16, 2025 7:00 PM Williamsport, PA Council President Adam Yoder brought the Williamsport City Council meeting to order on Thursday, October 16, 2025 at 7:00 PM.at Trade & Transit Center II, 144 W. Third St, Williamsport, PA. This meeting was duly advertised in the Williamsport Sun-Gazette. Council members present: Also, Present: Adam Yoder, President Derek Slaughter, Mayor, absent , President Mr. Eric Beiter, Vice President Valerie Fessler Liz Miele, Councilwoman Sam Aungst, Fire Chief, Ada Randy Allison, Councilman, Justin Snyder, Police Chief, absent Vincent Pulizzi, Councilman Solicitor Austin White Jon Mackey, Councilman, Janice Frank, City Clerk Bonnie Katz, Councilwoman Jamie Livermore Absent: Scott Livermore, S&P Bonnie Katz, Councilwoman Kris Black Bill Scott Members of the public Approval of the Williamsport City Council minutes of 10/02/25 approved upon a motion by Mr. Mackey and second from Mr. Allison All were in favor. Way’s Garden Mr. Joseph Pawlak Stephen Petro is appointed to a lifetime term starting 10/02/25. He will replace Paul Nyman . (appointment term is subject to change per updating thePawlak Mr. Joe Way’s Garden ordinance) Mr. Yoder: We have appointment to the Way’s Garden and Stephen Petro Mr. Gary appoint to lifetime term starting today Knarr replacing Paul Nyman and aside from discussions that may Ryan Higgins Mr. Tom Cillo may be looking at adjusting that C. Dave Young, Police Chief Ch language, it's Mr. Petro or what have you so. Motion and a second. Sol. J. David Smith Mr. Mackey made the motion and it was seconded by Mr. Beiter. Janice . Frank, City Clerk, absent Todd Heckman, Fire Chief , . Ms. Livermore I'm here for the Way's Garden appointment and Stephen Petro is re placing Paul Nyman. Mr. Yoder If you want to come up and say anything and you're welcome and I'm happy also to open up for News Media questions, comments from members as well with his candidacy. Steve Petro. I don't really have anything to say. I'm just looking forward to joining the board of Commissioners. I love the space and what it brings to the community. I hope I to add to that any way I can. Ms. Miele stated Most of the discussion centered around this is rephrasing Members ofof Newslifetime Media term, which is a pretty massive request of someone starting out in city government. We run for four-year media Members of the news terms and seemed like a heck of a lot when I got elected. So I believe Janice is modifying language to make it a five-year term and that's intended as no insult to Mr. Petro, but would provide for a more elegant mechanism for members to step off when they felt it was their time instead of having to resign because there was no other means of descending from the commission. Thanks for your willingness to serve, Steve, and we look forward to you doing awesome things at Way's Garden. Mr. Beiter : I would like for the public's benefit. Explain a bit about your background and how great of a fit it is for you at Way's Garden. Mr. Petro Yeah. I went to Penn's College for ornament mental horticulture and -- ornamental horticulture and I'm designer and estimator and I'm not in the field too often. It's a great excuse to go out and get dirty at the end of the day and help Karl with whatever he's come up with for the garden. Mr. Beiter: We appreciate your expertise. Mr. Yoder: I appreciate your expertise and willingness to serve. It's a great asset for the city and need good competent, thoughtful people taking care of the asset. Very much with that and grateful for you stepping up. Questions for Stephen? All right. Ms. Frank on item six. The appointment was carried with five yes roll call votes. The vote was 5 to 0. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, M. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, Mr. Pulizzi was absent. Presentation PFM Group Thanks again for having us. This is the third of probably five presentations we'll have. This is the second official if you'll remember when we started this process, there were three phases of this. One was financial condition assessment and talked about that I think that was in about July or so: Second was to come back and tell you what we heard from departmental interviews from talking to several of which the people are here tonight, department chiefs, deputy chiefs, planners, assistant planners, all of that sort of stuff. And to kind of tell you the rest of the story that's not just in the numbers all though it's a thing and there's numbers in here as well. And last is bringing these together and answer the $3 million question: How do you close the deficit for 2026 in a way that helps you going forward. That's the last part of our presentation. This is -- we're at the second intermission here so-to-speak if you're a hockey fan. My colleague Bob McDermott will take you through the presentation. Mr. McDermont , Thank you for having me. My name is Bob McDermott, director with PFM. For the management review, we met with all the department heads and directors and some key staff. Discussing their budgets, their goals over the upcoming years and any challenges or operational issues that they wanted to bring up. Want to highlight that as part of the budget numbers shown in this document, we did remove the City Hall operation allocation. In 2023, department budgets showing centralized costs as line item. To equalize across the time period looking at in 2020-2024, we've remove that had number. Just for consistency purposes. Going to go through all the departments and everything we discussed for -- we broke it up into two sections, elected officials and senior appointed officials and not going through the Mayor's office and City Council and I believe you all have a good understanding of what you do as part of your job. I'll go down to the bottom so just an overview of elected officials and senior appointed officials and the trends over the last five years. So generally pretty consist. Mayor's Office showing 0.3% growth, and city clerk pretty consist in terms of full-time employees. And solicitor is growing and those are expect to go away over the next few years and that growth is temporary and expected to decline. City Controller and Treasurer. City Controller over the time period growing at 10.8% annually and related to audit costs and trying to catch up on previous audits and dating back to 2022 in an attempt to bring the city up to speed on required audits, there's some contracting costs and again, they're to go away over the next few years. City Treasurer 10% growth over that lame period and that's due to going from two positions to three positions and there's also some contractual costs there. But all of this makes sense in the larger context. Administration and financial department and covering core, financial, and fiscal management functions. You'll see some growth here. So salaries and wages growing at 27%. These are just largely due to reorganization of positions and there's been some movement in re-org since dating back to 2023. That's when you'll see some of the jumps so positions that already had existed moving into finance. It, which was shown in finance move to that City Hall and centralized operational fund and there's movement but overall, the costs have grown at a reasonable pace. There are some costs that are growing, which are centralized costs such as insurance costs, that was one point which was growing. I believe I have it here. General Liability Insurance 450-500 over that time period and centralized cost for the entire city. Information technology shown in the finance department moved to that CHO allocation. We also have human resources, central department critical to costs. Just one position so that department itself growing at 5.3% over that time period. Largely related to personnel costs going to move to police. This was a core part of this section and an important part of this section. Bureau of police is charged with enforcing the law, preserving the peace, and providing effective police services so 48 officers and civilian positions and community relation officer IT position. One thing that's important about this section -- first, I'll go to calls of service. What is the police department responding to? How does that look? Traffic-related incidents are the largest source of call volume for the department. Followed by domestic-related incidents at 13%, disorder, follow up and service calls. These are calls that the department is handling over the phone. It's in an attempt to not send out an officer and preserve existing resources and you'll see that the follow up/service calls are growing at annual rate of 17% and that's in an attempt to preserving existing resources. What I'll say is even if call volumes are declining, that doesn't mean the nature of calls are consist. Certain calls may be taken -- might one call but takes one to two hours of policing time. if it's Goll going up or down, it's not indicative of the demand on the department. I want to highlight that. Peak call volume in the afternoon Monday through Friday and seeing in the chart, Columbia volume by hour and day and tends to peak in the afternoon. Around 2-5 and afternoon commuting hours and a lot of that is again, traffic-related incidents, which are the highest source of call volume. Not the only source, about a quarter, but the highest source of calls. I want toddies cuss police facilities. As you all know, the police department spreads across multiple facilities with central staff in adjacent building and core operations down the road. There are some de-efficiencies that we noted. We were brought on a tour. It was informative and eye-opening experience. For the operations and patrol building, there are some issues so one thing -- I'll run through some of the things that we highlighted and there's a lack of secure parking facility. Improvised wooden lockers for police officer belongings and equipment, some space issues for tools and equipment. And just generally insufficient space within the building. There's some pictures here to highlight what we're getting at here. And then insufficient space for recordkeeping and evidence storage. This first picture at the top just shows the entry doorway and police locker. You'll see Department of Public Works constructed these lockers and this doorway. In the second picture down here shows the main floor and in the middle as you'll see, there's police officer taking a call. These are calls coming into the department. they're being taken at this central desk. On the right adds you'll see this lit -- as you'll see this little doorway here, that's where, I don't know the correct word, people accused of crimes, people being charged with crimes, are processed in this room over here. May be disorderly or making northeast noise. This is at the same time right next to officers trying to field calls. Additionally, there's holding areas next to critical infrastructure and again, I don't want to say or imply that services are being affected. The Police Chief walked through every different situation. Say there's an assailant and witness in the building at the same time, all the steps they have to take to keep them apart from one another. There's a lot of complications that exist within just operating within this facility. We put that as a higher priority -- as a high priority long term but again, this is still within the context of the fiscal situation and the city needs to be able to borrow money to address any facility issues and this is a future step that we believe needs to be addressed and again, high priority. So we have the Bureau of Fire, fire department providing suppression, rescue, and emergency medical services. The department's budget has grown 2.2%. It's been relatively consisting over the past -- or dating back to 2020. I'm going to move to call volumes. Same way that we show the data for the police department. The fire department, and something we see across the state, across the country. EMz calls being a significant portion of call volume and EMS is 52% and false alarms are 15% of overall calls, motor vehicle accidents being 8%. Then other dangerous conditions, public service and other -- and fires are 4% of overall calls. On the next page we show how they're growing and EMS calls a growing and significant portion of fire service request and we see that across the country, across the state. That's growing at 8.5% on average a year. Then some other public service calls, 7.7% and then fire-related calls growing at 7.7%. But overall, just the number of incidents total unique incidents, calls to the department growing at average of 3.3% a year. The pattern of calls is different from the police department. We see calls coming in from about 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and that's where Thar peaking and calls overnight, but 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Monday through Friday is really the peak of call time for the department. Mr. Yoder: What do you consider a public service call? What's that classified as? I will have to look back at my -- Mr. Yoder: I was just curious to what it was. That's fine. Everything else is fairly self-explanatory. A public service call is basically a call. Mr. Yoder: Like a catch all? Like hey, none of these other categories. It's just whatever other service. Fire hydrant is leaking on the street corner. Cat in the tree sort of thing? Okay. Bureau of Codes, charged with protecting puck lick health through inspecting rental problem -- public health through inspecting rental properties and other issues and the department has 6.5 staff and decline from previous years and it was 8.5. There were two positions, a clerk and typist and building official that have been -- that were removed from the department. You'll see that the actual cash compensation goes down at average of 6.4% over that time period and contractual seriousness go up. That -- services go up. Building code official, ask that service is being contracted out over this time frame. Overall just with that decline in position from 8.5 to 6.5, the department's budget declining around 2.3% a year. For revenues -- I have them up here. Permit and rental inspection and the department generates revenue as part of operations and building permits growing at average of 12.6% a year and around $700,000 and the last year the department highlighted there were some big projects that contribute to that. There's Wawa, Sheets, Chik-fil-a and Combing college and others with revenue from the city and department. In addition to building permits increasing, rental inspection revenues are also increasing at average of 9%. Then overall, just the revenues themselves for the department wide revenues increasing at rate of about 7.9%. Dating back to 2020. One thing is issues related to the permit management and currently the department is spending a lot of time fielding calls from applicants so if someone with these in a application for a building permit, they so modernizing the system they have is a priority and the department hopes to modernize their of the ware and sow during the discussions. Next, we have the Capitol department of -- Department of Public Works and spans different divisions and Office of Director and Engineering Flood Control and Streets and Traffic Control and largest division. Overall, let me go down to this. The levy system is a regional asset and cost is by the city and currently required upgrades to maintain FEMA certification you can see here just with the cost within the two levy systems and going for them and is this is system we want to flag as potential for regionalization and discuss and highlight for others and fire department and police department where regionalization of some services in agreements with other departments maintaining the city property and city assets and departments and the issues that arise there from their assets. Same thing for maintaining city hall and other properties that the city owns. Since DPW is responsible for that and a plan moving forward to address the assets and the city manages its property, that may provide relief to the department or streamline operations. Department maintains vehicle fleet and moving into a more regular replacement cycle, especially with a resent ARPA dollars over the past few years and that's in several departments where vehicle replacement cost shows up and it's in the budget but it's for capital costs, which are generally speaking a good investment. And next is recreation. It's in charge of summer camp and swimming pool, et cetera. Overall, the department, administration costs are -- have declined by 1.3% over the time frame and recreation programming is increasing and 25% year over year increase and however, that is also related to investments in the swimming pool over the recent years and a lot to be expected or not a surprise. Recreation programs are generating some revenue for the city and that's a trade where you have for wanting to provide services that are equable and feasible for the public and recouping costs. Overall, those revenue haves declined over the last four years and you'll see it's naming rights 35,000 to 30,000 and swimming pool revenue admission about 4% decline and other program revenues declined as well again, cost recovery is not the ultimate goal for recreation programs. Access and expanding programs was a core goal of the department when we spoke with them. how can they make the services as accessible to as many people as possible. We have the planning department with five full-time employees with director and assistant director and community development and office manager and there's some splitting of positions between funds and one thing that was discussed with the department was compliance with federal grant funding and we believe that's a very important function and the compliance is critical and goal of the department over the upcoming years. I believe that is it. Anything that I any questions. Mr. Yoder: Thank you very much. Any quos by members on anything they went through here. Mr. Mackey. Mr. Mackey: Lot of calls for the police and fire departments. Any discussions had with codes because they go out and answer calls when they -- and they should be out process looking for violations and any discussions in that realm? Bob, The quality of life and current resources pushed them more towards the building maintenance, rental inspections as oppose to more responding to quality-of-life calls. That is something that we can look further into. Mr. Mackey: Yeah, that would be information I'd like to have. PMF To add to that and Bob can kick me or correct me if I get this wrong, I don't think your code's date is anywhere near as robust as fire and police data. Some is the nature of the services. You call 911, doesn't go to police or fire. Goes to the county and logs it in the system and tracking response times and there's the county's involved, and emergency 911 system involved and that gets tracked in a very specific way. We're able to come to the police chief and fire chief and say give us what's called your CAD data, computer automated data and spit out calls and what are the calls and how often. Go a step down and Councilman Yoder and I have talked and said, okay, what does this tell me about staffing levels? Go the next level down saying for police, how long does it take you to respond to a driver's accident? How long do you want to take to respond? How many officers do you have available? And you can do that with police and fire. You don't have that data for code. No data in terms of what the calls are or how long it takes. Part of that is why don't you have it? You're not forced to track it. Public safety is different. It's tracked through an emergency 911 system and it's not unusual to have enormous calls between the data available for police and fire and the data available for codes. That said, I think there's absolutely room to do better in terms of collecting data within the code territory so that the answer to the question when someone says we're really busy and I dent have enough people. Show me the calls and the people and the response. Show me. They I'm not sure codes can. Mr. Mackey: That all makes sense. Again, to add to what you just said, yes. There's an element of public safety to codes as well. They should be much like our police and our fire keep track of things they're doing and outside of CAD and 911, they track it all. They should be doing the same. I 100% agree. Mr. Yoder: Any other comments, questions from members? Mr. Beiter, What should we expect next from you guys? Representative Let me draw out a few things on that next chapter. We told you the finances and what the operations are and how do we bring these recommendations and hit them quick and My thematic on the major departments and the things we're thinking about for police. A couple, a few have asked us what's the right number of police officers? What's the right number of captains? What's both -- what should this table look like in the terms of number of boxes and where they are. Spoiler alert, we're not answers that in this study because that's a longer stud by, but we'll toe you -- study and we'll tell you how we'd go about answering it. You can think about it because it's fair to have that conversation with them and data. What we would do is our approach doing a deeper dive into this sort of thing and ask the police chief and assistant chief how long should you take to get to a call. For the types of services you want to provide and response time you want to have, this is mathematically the number of cops you should have. We'll talk about that in the report. This is huge. If you're look for a take away from tonight's presentation, your police facilities are inefficient and insufficient. Inefficient and in order for them to go and talk to one of the officers, they have to walk down the stairs, grab a car, drive down the street, have a conversation and drive back. Inefficient. And insufficient. Take a look at those pictures closely and now envision someone coming into the building perhaps not fully in the best frame of mind and think about how you would move them throughout that building. The bathroom at one end of the billing and people at the other. We'll talk about the need for financial improvement and balance taxes -- balance budget and doesn't increase taxes and this is tangible one one and get them to build a real play station. We have opinions and we're not engineers and take them with an enormous grain of salt. That's a tangible thing to work towards. With the fire department, that's a big thought for us. You know, one thing for you to think about kind of thematically is when you say what is our police department do? The answer is lots of stuff. I know no one can read that table, but all the different colors or all the different thins for the fire department, it's really three things. It's not exclusively, but three is 75% of your calls are EM s call -- EMS calls endings. If you have a fire department that's primarily a quick response department for pear medics and need to take care -- paramedics and take care of the 4% of calls that are fires, what would you do differently? Easy to think about your fire department as we need to get a number of people on staff to knock down a fire in a building. You do, that is unquestionably a huge part of what they do. If you look at where they spend their time, they're filling the gap in your EMS system that's struggling to getting people on board. Thematically for codes --  Ms. Miele: One thing I was curious about. Do these statistics, do these percentages mirror other fire departments in other cities you studied? > Pretty close. Definitely EMS is always the higher and fire is always the lowest or one of the lowest. Maybe 4% or a little lower. Yes, those two things, absolutely. The one I'm not so sure about and wonder if you can drive the number down a bit, is false alarms. 15% is quite a few. Do you do a false alarm fee? Sliding fee. Maybe you have one and I missed it. Those sorts of things. What can you do to get people to take care of false alarms so you're not spending people where they don't need. That's a little high. Could we get that down. Ms. Miele: Could it be related to the age of false alarms? Meaning college students or other end of the spectrum? Ms. Miele : Demographically speaking Williamsport and what's driving that and maybe that's not what make it is different from any other community but I'm wondering if there's different Democrat graph IBRAMs with the false alarms and target if there were misunderstandings or something like that and target specifically based on reporting groups that might. PMF It's an interesting question. Most of the communities I work w the demographics are fairly similar. Almost one or two small colleges and whatever, Penn State and I don't think that impact it is too much. But false alarms are coming from where? Colleges generate fair share of false alarms. Is it people's homes? Are they occupied buildings? Driving out to a strip of commercial building where a cat is stepping on an ab an alarm. Ms. Miele, looks like that could save us money. Yeah, the interesting thing with codes is we'll talk in there about what we heard about concerns of the frankness of the department and there's a lot of concerns about how effective the organization has been. And what these numbers tell me is a couple of things. One, if you want to do the area, can't spend less money every year. So $830,000 to $820,000 to $690,000. That's going the wrong direction if you want to do better there. Doesn't mean you can't do outsourcing. But you've heard me say this 100 times. Don't think of outsourcing as a way to save money. You probably need to spend more in this area, not less. But I would also, if I sort of break this area down into three pieces, you have planned review, which you have outsourced already. That's the building code officials. And you have rental inspections, which should be a really big part of this and rental inspections generate $40,000 a year. I don't know if more or less than they should but probably not close to covering the cost of the program. Then quality of life calls and not many want to make a living off getting people to cut their grass or take mattress off their porch. That's always with you in the department, and it's an important one because it's one other than people see rental units and want them well maintained, but a lot happens within the building. If you're a resident owning your own home and the building looks safe, it's the quality of life stuff to focus on. How do you get more productivity out of this area, but probably not much about saving money. Public Works, these folks have done an admiral amount of jobs with not much staffing. If you can get rid of some building ands shrink the footprint and doing the amount of work they have to dorks the vehicle fleet making progress in terms of updating this and going to continue to do that and get that on a regular cycle. Something I wish had been in the previous . And I'll make up for it now. Regionalization is not guilty for police and fire and if you have a flood, the water won't go to the border of Williamsport and the town next door and stop. It'll keep going and the and thesecity is staffing that regional system and souled move to an authority and easier said than done. It's a regional asset protecting the region funding regionally and talk more about that in our report, but that's where we're headed. If you could take the $200,000, which is about the staffing costs and shift that to an authority, that's a meaningful savings for you. And last one in terms of number and recreation, first off, this table is wrong and I apologize because I did it and mess it had up and I'll fix it. clearly 12+ 21+ 30+ 5 don't equal 17. Revenue is wrong. If you add them up, 51, 63, 68, it's 68 to 973. Instead of 2% cost recovery rate, it's 8% cost recovery rate. We'll get that fixed but the story remains the same. There's a couple of different ways from a financial perspective to think about recreation. One is this is a service that we want to pay for itself and we want to -- we want it to be a service to cover its costs and more or less cost neutral. That is not your department at all. Cost recovery rate is really, really low. Maybe that's fine. The way the department from our conversation thinks about this is more like a Social Security agency. What's the most number of people we can serve, what's the most recreational opportunities we can provide to people that wouldn't otherwise have them and so if that's my moat mode, the two things I would think about is dug on the outside community to expand -- draw on the outside community to expand access. Could I get colleges to put students in my summer camp program to increase the staff to allow you to open a program in a different part of the city, and cost relatively neutral and what that department seems to be focused on is the number of people is serves and access to services. That's the first thing. The second thing is, is there any facility, fill in the blank on your own, that's relatively high cost that serves a relatively small amount of people? If you're looking to get the most bang for your buck, what if you instead of spending $200,000 on a scum gutter at the pool, what if you use that to do three more sites for your summer camp program? Hard call to make. If you are really going to have a recreation program, that's focused on serving the largest number of people, and not about recovering costs, that's something to evaluate. In this one, I didn't want you to think we skipped you entirely, valley, in terms of planning -- Valerie, in terms of planning department. I'm going to steal something we used in another report. It's true here still. We talked about ultimate way to close your gap is tax-based growth. And Pennsylvania rewards residency so it's not about bringing Amazon here and having 50 engineers drive into town because they won't pay tax here anyway. It's great to have them. Not saying don't get big employers but from a city government perspective, you benefit from higher tax values and higher residency. What's the department that you have that will drive that sort of thing? Yes, police and fire is part of that and public works, but your front line, think of them as your defense. police, fire, and codes as the defensive side of the ball. The offensive side of the ball where you can drive change is right there, it's the planning department. You can shape the nature of the community in a way where you'll be able to do things strategically with housing. Do things strategically with land use planning. This is where you go from I need to stop these five things from happening because they're bad to I need to do these three things over here because they're good. That's kind of the thematic way we think about the planning department. So that's to give you a sense of the themes that we have going into the last phase of this. In the back of our heads, there's a financial hole we have to close, and now we have the operational picture about what you do and what you might be able to do differently, and that's bringing those to. Some of the ideas will be good. Some of them will think you're good and that's fine too. That's what we'll come up with next. Mr. Yoder: Any other comments, questions? Mr. Mackey, sorry. I didn't see you. Mr. Mackey: There's no surprise to the police department and working conditions and this is one thing we all Mo we don't talk about much like city hall is something we all know needs remedied but we don't talk about it enough. And I keep asking, who's responsibility is it to find your officers and you all a place to work that's stuff in that's not a Wal-Mart-sized police station like the previous company we had come in suggest. Whose job is it to get that ball rolling? I'm legitimately asking that and not me blaming anybody. I've been to the police station. I've seen it. I know you've you guy haves seen it. the know the Mayor's seen it. When you sit down with your boss, and tell him this isn't acceptable. What answers do you get? Whose job is it to get the ball rolling? I'm not looking for an answer, I'm just asking the question. We need to figure out how do we get these balls rolling. How do we get out from under city hall? How do we find you guys a better place to do your job? Part we're trying to answer and PFM is trying to answer, I'm not an engineer and I don't know the place. Mr. Mackey: Nor are you and that's fine. I can't answer that and if we died so build where you are now, you have to do something bigger than what you have now and more expensive than you can afford with cash. We have to get you to a point where you're financially strong enough to borrow money to do whatever it is you want to do. That's the part of the conversation that we're focusing on. Mr. Mackey: Sure and felt when someone, whoever that, you, is brings us a plan that we think is going to work, we're all probably going to vote yes on it. we have not had any legitimate ideas for a place for the police to go since we all moved out of city hall three and a half years ago. We've had a couple of meetings where people sit down and they draw stuff out by hand on a piece of paper and we have a discussion about it. But that's as far as it goes. Yeah, but who is you? How do we get that ball rolling? Not asking you. Just putting out there. Mr. Yoder: Any other comments or questions? Mr. Allison I have one, quick one if I could. The EM Sequoyah s calls, do we know how many -- EMS calls, do we know how many if any are outside of Williamsport? No, we don't. Mr. Yoder: Or none of them are you saying? None of them. Mr. Allison: Okay, just wanted to know. Okay, thanks. > This isn't a mutual aid thing if that's what you're asking. That's for fires. An Dallas cowboys: Okay, thank you very much. -- Mr. Allison Thank you very much. Ms. Miele: What percentage of calls are handled by the township now that we have the agreement? Well, do we -- what we don't track -- okay. You don't need to tell me right now, Sam. I was just curious about it. Before reasoning both to -- if we're responding to all calls and all of those, what level of volume they're generating. Thanks. Mr. Yoder: Any other questions? This is a good point to maybe talk about next steps here. I know, Gordon, you talked about the next step of this and the next kind of presentation and marrying the two. What is this going to look like in terms of our budget, et cetera? What's your time line kind of look like? So our -- we have one meeting in November and that's, you know, roughly when our budget should be here. Right. So our time line is to write up -- take the ideas that we have and write them up and to quantify them and generate them the plan document and going for the other side of these people. Draught budget going for them and going to be done and there's that hole we'll come back in and say, okay, remember, these were our ten ideas and how we think. This is the five to use to close in this combination. Starts with Jamie and the Mayor first and comes to you. We have kind of two tracks: Produce the plan document, because that's what we're here for. But also we have an opinion on how best to close the 2026 budget deficit and probably make sense. The fourth of the five presentations us back here again to talk about what the 2026 budget looks like and which of our ideas are in there and in what combination. That's probably the next step.  Mr. Yoder: Yeah, that's great. You kind of elude to what I was going to publicly ask and reiterate. I think -- speaking for myself here and I'm confident I'm not the only one of the group. I think it would be great to see as much of whatever makes sense, factored into the budget. That's an ask, right. I mean, legally I think the budget is due in like three weeks. I don't say that to freak you out, Jamie, I know it's a tall order I suspect the nature of the work going on, it's not happening. Maybe it does or doesn't. Whatever. Three weeks is a tall order for where we're at today in the process is my point. Couple weeks after that, we have our work sessions. There is time. It would be great to see that factored in and do exactly what you're talking about and maybe be here for the first work session if it's amenable. Here's what the budget looks like, here's what's where. Have you be a part of that process. That's where it doesn't make sense. at this point, this PFM show starring PFM talking about our own stuff should be over. The next conversation and one more episode of this show if you really love it at the very end saying it is the plan. The next meeting is not about the plan document. The next meeting is about the budget. Mr. Yoder: Yeah, I think when we're being realistic about closing the gap, making this happen, I mean, factoring in that up front, it makes council's lives easier and going about it that way make as cleaner process. Still enables the public like us to be transparent with the public. Frankly, enables us to maybe even dive deeper into some maybe other things that we're unsure of going into budget that we think makes -- so anyway. Yeah, that's how I view us coming into the process and being part of the budget process. In addition to create and what happens in the end of the year. What happens is there's a budget that balances in a way that doesn't just close this s deficit and future deficits and you have the plan document that outlines not just financial goals but the other stuff. That's what we're working towards is on that both the budget and plan document. Mr. Yoder: Excellent. I'll look forward to have any final questions before we let them get on the road? Ms. Miele. Ms. Miele : No questions but thank you very much. And I look forward to building on it with you over the next couple weeks as we go into budget season. But it -- even if we didn't build on this, it's helpful information. So thank you. Mr. Yoder : I second that. This is good stuff. Very good stuff. All right, thank you both very much. We really appreciate you being here and spearheading this process. Limited Courtesy of the Floor Tom Adams, 900 Hollywood Circle The person that was supposed to be here, is not here. Bill # 1882-25 An Ordinance Setting Term Limits of Elected Officials (final reading) The City Clerk read the ordinance. Mr. Beiter made the motion and it was seconded by Mr. Mackey. Mr. Mackey : I gave him the heads up we were starting. As far as I can tell and I'll call on you here in a second, we're looking at exact same ordnance we voted on two weeks ago. Austin, I was hoping you sent me the e-mail from the discussion that you had with the board of elections. Talk about how that affects the ordnance. Mr. White I have suggest to council two changes of forwards into each article. Those being within subsection A from all of the articles and presently reads as passed at last meeting, no persons shall serve more than two consecutive terms as blank or more than three consecutive terms as council. The suggestion I have for that is that the clause -- or that be modified to read "no person shall serve, or be elected to, ... then the same for the rest of the sentence. For instance, for 1-1105, term limits of council members, no person shall serve or be elected to more than 3 consecutive terms as a member of City Council. And the reason for that suggestion is I did have a chance to speak with the board of elections directors as far as what the likelihood scenario would be for the board of elections and what they'd do in the event there's term limits assigned to elected officials within the city. While we don't know for certain until there would be an issue, for instance, someone would try to be placed on the ballot who could not be based on ordnance. If that were to happen, my understanding from having talked with him, Mr. Lieman and filing in the court and board of elections not going to be the gate keep tore telling someone whether or not they were allowed to be, to put in a petition. That conversation going to be allowed into what, as far as what the ordnance in it is current form said, which was no person shall serve. I believe we talked about this a little bit during the last meeting. The prohibition was against serving as opposed to being elected to what it means in the practical matter and current form, it doesn't preclude someone from being elected to a third term but preclude them from serving that term. There's nothing to prohibit someone from running and getting elected but then they'd be subject to removal because they're not technically allowed to serve. I talked with Mr. Lieman about this and that would be of his concern and he's seen in other places where that does become an issue because someone is allowed to be elected but not allowed to serve. That edition is meant to correct and prevent someone from just getting on the ballot and then not -- and sort of falling into that loophole so-to-speak. And it would also make it in legal terms and we call it a case or controversy and means when something's right for a judge to review and make a decision on, the rule of law is just that you have to have an actual case or controversy for a judge to issue a decision. Judges don't give advisory decisions on things. In this event, if someone, if just said shall serve and someone was running, ordnance doesn't prevent them from running and a risk that the judge wouldn't issue a decision till after an election and by that point, it's not good for the process. It's not good for the voters and everything. This would create an actual case or controversy relative to the election process touchdown catch so someone could say, hey, you've gone past your term limit. You're not allowed to be elected to another term and if you try to be, I will have to file a petition to challenge -- or a challenge to your petition and for the same -- on that same note, someone trying to run and perhaps doesn't agree with this would be able to say, hey, this prevents me from being elected and that's an actual case or controversy at this moment, which I can file declaratory judgment or something like that . Trying to get a holistic view of things that could arise in the wake of term limit ordnance being that we don't have one so we're not talking about adjusting it. We have to think through all of the different possibilities. Second change that I'm suggesting a change in subsection B and change intended to address the other conversation that we had at the last meeting was issue of whether or not the ordnance could preclude someone in office from running again. This is intended to allow, and this is -- if I remember correctly, this may be the exact language that Ms. Miele refer Ms. Miele : You give me too much correct. Mr. White No, I think it's the exact language she mentioned during the meeting. When I heard you say it and looked at ordnance and said that's so easy. I can't believe I didn't think of that. I was looking through all the different ways to do this, and it does really get accomplished that easily. So thank you for that. That is under B where the revision is to add the words and one additional term between commas and I'll read it the entirety of that sentence under the date of the this ordnance may serve remainder of current term and one additional term regardless of whether such service would exceed the term limits established in subsection A. Those four words and those two commas, that section -- or that addition is recommend to be added to each of these to avoid the legal issue that arises based on that city of Bethlehem case. Those are the only two cases I'm suggesting and it's up to council to make the changes. I put it on a piece of paper and put it down, doesn't mean it's in fact presently part of the ordnance. If you're interested in one or both of those, you need to do a motion amend of some sort before you vote on it. Ms. Miele: We could do a motion to substitute for the one you sent us. Mr. White It's been read into the record so-to-speak. If you're interested, do a motion to accept these solicitors additions to the ordnance and that would be appropriate. If you're interested. Ms. Miele: Seems like the simplest route. Mr. Yoder : If that's how the group wants to do it, that's fine. The first one you mentioned, the loophole, that makes perfect sense to me. And I don't agree with the second one. Specifically look, make it's a little thing. Looking back on why it's an optional third class city. It was really back in the '60s a desire to have a little more autonomy from the state. The timing of that actually from when I think -- Bruce, you told me this before, the timing of what we adopt that had was right around when they adopted the fact that people from Williamsport can be grandfathered into being home rolled. I say all that because I think the context for that Supreme Court case Austin is talking about is important. It's just to me, like one little more thing that with the intent of trying to have more autonomy and build a government system, community what have you that we want in our own kind of approach to doing it outside of Harrisburg, one more little thing that's just like we're not able to do it. I say that because I think even more broadly, you start thinking about how we do other things and embrace being a third class city and maybe this is a little thing and maybe it's not the right thing to start this on. But in the spirit of that, this is maybe a good example of where that overreach maybe in a minor way comes into play here. I don't know that I agree with that second change. Ms. Miele: So we're thinking this through, Adam. The net effectiveness. We're really only looking out for the next four or five years that that additional terminology has any impact? Mr. Yoder Yeah, sure. Ms. Miele: Everyone currently serving can run for one more term whether or not that would exceed the limit? The two-term limit? Mr. Yoder: Sure, affects controller, Treasurer, bonny and the mayor. It affects four. Ms. Miele : Me but I don't matter in this one way or the other; right. Mr. Yoder: Either way. My point is -- Mr. Yoder it's your language, Ms. Miele. : My point is -- Ms. Miele : I need to watch my language, Austin. Mr. Yoder: This was from the '70s? 1986. Mr. Yoder: A lot changed in nearly 40 years and there's other instances where we try to do something for very good reason and there's this old kind of Supreme Court case that's going to be like nope, can't do that . I think we have to challenge that stuff. that's my personal opinion. Ms. Miele : I'm fine with that one way or another. It sounds to me that what our solicitor is saying if someone were to challenge it, we'd lose based on precedent. Mr. White I'm not a judge. My opinion from a solicitor's office is this language, I recommend this to avoid a legal challenge because I -- given what that case -- given that is an optional third class city case and what is said in that case, and it is the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, I feel pretty comfortable saying that I don't see -- I don't see it being -- falling on the city's side if the city were to be challenged is the way to put it. That is why from a solicitor's office, I'm recommending the language to avoid getting into a legal challenge and city has to defend against that . Trying to get in front of that. It's LUISA torr's office and I'm not -- solicitor's office and I'm just the lowly solicitor. Mr. Yoder: Fair. I appreciate that. We have to get comfortable with challenging stuff and doing that. If it's this, fine. If something else, fine. That speaks to something we as a city have been very nervous about historically of legal costs. We don't want to get willy nilly certainly. There's an approach to doing it in a thoughtful way, I do think we need to be more willing to take those resistances in other places. -- risks in other places. Ms. Miele: I don't disagree. This one the risk might be unpleasant and sued by the controller or mayor for ecosystem clouding them in this ordnance -- excluding them in this ordnance. I'm happy to take Austin's recommendation. But I agree with your point in theory, but I don't think this is the hill to not die but lay down on. I'm willing to die on the hill that I think the controller and Treasurer's terms should be three and not two. Only because I feel like those positions should be hired and not elected. But setting that aside as something we may or may not accomplish by home role in the near future, they should be at least be as close as we can -- a lengthier term to give someone time to get comfortable in position and pleasure something. Mr. Yoder: Yeah, I'll throw this concept out there while talk about Treasurer controller specifically. If the consensus is adjusting to three, all in favor, fine. I'm not oppose to eliminating for those two positions specifically. I say that because of the more technical-oriented resolving. If you get somebody that really embraces that and there's a lot of value they can bring. You know, the idea of that from going from two to three terms at least for me taking more advantage of when we get somebody embracing the role and developing the skill to do it well, in that vein, I'd be comfortable to re--- vain, I'd be comfort to believe remove for those two and I'm fine with adjusting that myself. Randy, please. Randy: Vince, sorry, go ahead. Mr. Mackey: Just letting everyone know Vince is here in spirit. Mr. Allison: I agree with you, Adam, on those two positions that not having a limit. That's all. Mr. Mackey: Vince, anything to add to that conversation when it comes to controller Treasurer, are you there? Mr. Pulizzi : I appreciate it very much. Can I also agree with Randy. I appreciate you guys speaking umm for that. That is a position, both of those positions are positions that are very technical. I personally would like to see term limits removed for those two positions, at least for the time being. Until we get a feet a bit more under us. I do like Liz's position that should we move to a third class -- sorry, move to home rule, that would be a hired position, but in the meantime I would truly hate to see us potentially lose qualified people for those positions that embrace the technicality of it because of term limits. I appreciate it very much. Thank you very, Jon, thank you for making sure everybody had a chance to hear me. Mr. Beiter : At this point, I'm in favor of moving it to three terms versus eliminating it. Because some point down the road, another council because that's the route we're going, if they determine that somebody else should be in that role longer, they can do that but hopefully we have the incentive to get home rule down, we have the reasons why we need to get it done. It'll be a non-issue. Mr. Yoder: Fair. I'm fine with that and sounds like there's other motions to make. Mr. Beiter: I have a quick question for clarification on from last meeting. In that language, we talked a bit about the potential of someone doing three terms on council and stepping off for a term and coming back. Is that still allowed with the changes in language or whether it be a mayor or anybody, does it allow them to do that? Mr. White As it presently written with the additional language, it is a matter of consecutive terms. So technically, yes, if someone where are to step off for a term or not be elected for that amount of time, they could theoretically do another stint of four or -- eight or twelve. Mr. Beiter: Looking for a way to get Randy back. Mr. White If that is a concern that is be cumulative, you could put that in the ordnance as opposed to consecutive. Mr. Yoder: Not for me either. If a future council thinks it becomes one with other systemic changes that don't happen, they can figure it out. Reverse called happen as well but I understand and agree with you, Eric any other comments or questions and might be want to make changes? Mr. Mackey : No just that I of course over the last two weeks, I think I'm not also leaning towards either eliminating or extending controller and Treasurer too . I see the value in that now. However we want to -- I think I would probably tend to lean more towards Councilman -- sorry, Councilwoman Miele's suggestion. Maybe we should address that first. I'll allow -- Ms. Miele: Changing from two to three. Two different amendments. Mr. Yoder: A couple different ones. Ms. Miele: Part of it is under 129.04A and 131.04A. Change the number 2 to number 3 making language read "no person shall serve more than two consecutive terms as city controller or city Treasurer" . Mr. Yoder: Making that motion. A second? Mr. Beiter seconded.. Mr. Yoder : Any additional comments or questions. Seeing none, Mrs. Frank, first motion to amend. The motion to amend was carried with six yes roll call votes. The vote was 6 to 0.. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes, Mr. Pulizzi voted yes, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, Ms. Miele : Next motion I'm hearing we need to make is under -- sorry. Under section 111.05 section 123.03 section 129.04 and section 131.04 part A in all three, amend the language to read "no person shall serve or be elected to more than ... adequately made, Austin? Mr. Yoder: Second to that? Mr. Beiter seconded the motion. Mr. Yoder: Additional comments or questions? Mrs. Frank on that motion to amend. . The motion to amend was carried with six yes roll call votes. The vote was 6 to 0.. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes, Mr. Pulizzi voted yes, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, Ms. Miele h: If I follow the thread, we're not making the final motion. Are we? Mr. Yoder Adam: I don't support it but I could be the on one. Ms. Miele : I heard Randy say he was in agreement to you. Once again, it's not as important to me so if someone else wants to make a motion. Then happy to entertain the concept. Mr. Yoder: Any other motions anybody else wants to make? Mr. Allison: I'll make a motion. Ms. Miele: What's your motion, Randy? Mr. Allison : To not do that. Mr. Mackey : Well played, sir. Well played. Mr. Beiter : To be clear, we are not making a motion to change the language that would allow someone to participate in that third term? Mr. Yoder: That's what it sounds like. Ms. Miele: Fourth term depending on the office. Mr. Beiter: Yeah, and things like that. Ms. Miele : To be clear, also, Austin, my understanding from the perspective of say the vetter services office is that -- voter services office is that it would be up to someone to bring a challenge if one of those people currently sitting in those resolving were to run for reelection. That is to say that the lawsuit that we were speaking of is not presumed. It would have to be -- someone would have to challenge the petition of someone seeking to run for reelection and seeking term limits? Mr. White Correct. Based on my understanding, at least presently it would not be self-effectuating within the voting season as in someone would not be allowed to be placed on the ballot or written into the ballot. It would be that either a opponent would have to file a challenge to the petition or the person who feels aggrieved would have to file a declaratory judgment action to have the ordnance invalidated as to them as applied or if none of those things happened, that person could be subject to removal after being elected whether that's through getting the district attorney involved and there's a whole process and special type of civil action. But it is not -- it doesn't carry - - doesn't execute on itself and requires someone to do something about it if someone is doing something that's not in compliance. Unlike many other ordnances in the city, where of course there's code enforcing the areas and police and not enforcement mechanism this this other than the people and normal court system and processes associated with that. Ms. Miele: Us being central Pennsylvanians, someone will take action on that down the line. But it's not a guarantee. Mr. White Yeah, it's not. I generation that someone could file a lawsuit tomorrow and not aware of someone preparing to do that. Ms. Miele: Only one way to find out. Mr. Yoder: Any other questions or proposed amendments? Mr. Pulizzi: If I could, if you could give me a very clear understanding of what now Randy's motion precluded on this particular ordnance. Randy motion was joking around and not for anything. Ms. Miele: Randy was just goofing off. Mr. Pulizzi : Apologizing. I just wanted to know very clearly what we were voting on. If I may just to reiterate, feel free to -- extending controller and city Treasurer out to thee terms and they may not serve more than three consecutive terms; is that correct? Mr. Pulizzi : No motions made to remove Treasurer or controller from this specific ordnance? Mr. Yoder: That's correct. Mr. Pulizzi: If it was extended out to three terms, I'm okay with that. Mr. Yoder: Any other -- so we're at main motion like which is to vote on second reading. We've made those two changes Alaska the loophole that Austin -- about the loophole Austin brought forward and Treasurer already Controller. I don't get the sense there's other amendments to make. I call a vote and second reading of the main motion to pass this as we have amended it. Really just a long winded last call. All right, Mrs. Frank, item 9, the main motion.  The ordinance was carried in final reading with six yes roll call votes. The vote was 6 to 0.. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes, Mr. Pulizzi voted yes, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr.. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent Bill # 1881-25 An Ordinance Transfer Ordinance #11 2023 Budget (final reading) The City Clerk read the ordinance. Mr. Yoder asked for a motion and a second. Mr. Beiter made the motion and it was seconded by Mr. Mackey seconded it. Ms. Livermore Second reading of ordnance number 11 for 2023 budget and this was just the reorganization of the budget after we did the 2023 audit. Mr. Yoder : Any comments or questions in final reading? Seeing none, Mrs. Frank, item 7. The ordinance was carried in final reading with five yes roll call votes. The vote was 5 to 0.. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes,, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr.. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, & Mr. Pulizzi was absent. Resolution # 9964 Resolution Accepting a Contract for Audit Services with Maher Duessel The City Clerk read the resolution. Mr. Yoder asked for a motion and second. Mr. Mackey made a motion and it was seconded by Mr. Beiter. Ms. Livermore The resolution before you is to accept the contract for audit services with Maher Duessel for the years 2024-2026. Maher Duessel met the city's RFP minimum requirements with the lowest responsible bid. Maher Duessel currently serves over 350 governments of which 100 of them are municipal entities. They serve some local authorities in the city and they do the water and sewer authority and serve hope enterprise and North Central Site Services and those are some of the companies they service in the area. They have done audit services for Pittsburgh, Lancaster, Allen town, Bethlehem, Sun Berry and piston. And the number of audits performed annually and they're ranked in the top 50 accounting firms nationwide for the appointment of federal awarded dollars audited. Mr. Yoder : This went to finance. Mrs. Miele. Ms. Miele: I speak for Randy and myself but Randy can speak for himself. The work done by axelrod the last few years and we came in under by 5 or 10,000 for each budget year. Realize there's a bit of saving ands consequently there's sufficient funds and impacting slightly more than sufficient funds in the budget year and budget in the next budget year to complete the audits and get caught up by the September 2026 time frame we've been eagerly looking toward. Ms. Livermore this bid is about $20,000 less than the previous just because of the position we were in for the previous audit and about 20,000 less for annual audit. Ms. Miele: Wow, that's great. The firm looks qualified and more represented and trying to enter into the market. Might be another reason for the favorable rates we were given. So we're excite to move forward. I will say I always have a bit of trepidation from switching from one firm to another. I stated in another with finance and that didn't happy with the city's auditing services and not turning out to be a good thing for us and just as well that we move, you know, three years here and three years there. Might be a good practice here for awhile. Also this is in the technical proposal, which we had not reviewed before the finance committee meeting. I've never seen a firm that provides their turnover numbers. In the firm, we should be working with most of the same people over the next three years so that's a good thing as well. Ms. Miele: That's everything I recall from the finance discussion, but I'll offer the floor to Randy if he has anything to add. Mr. Allison: I think you hit all the high points in the details as well. I was equally impressed by the detail they had. They not only gave the total amount for each year going ahead, but they broke it down into different department sections they'd be looking at and assigned a dollar figure to each one of those. It just -- they really pay attention to detail, and gives you a little bit more of a idea of costs. Yeah, I was very happy with it as well. Mr. Yoder: Thank you both for that. Are there any additional comments, questions on the auditing resolution? Excite to be here. It's been a long time coming. Ms. Miele: More excite to be there next year. Mr. Yoder: Same. Ms. Miele : When this is annual consultation. Mr. Yoder : We're closer. We're closer. All right, Mrs. Frank then, on item 14. The Resolution was carried with five yes roll call votes. The vote was 5 to 0. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes,, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, & Mr. Pulizzi was absent  Ordinance #6513 Bill 1880 An Ordinance Designating Buck Run Alley (final reading) The City Clerk read the ordinance. Mr. Yoder asked for a motion and second. Mr. Beiter made the motion and it was seconded by Mr. Mackey Mr. Bill Scott Second reading for ordnance presenting for your consideration and this ordnance is for designating Buck Run Alley and unnamed alley 112 running east to west between another unnamed alley, 111 Mary street and Penn Street and between elder's street and lion's avenue. I followed up with the Lycoming County coordinator and he's been out. We'll see about other situations we've had like this in the city. And also we did talk to the resident who suggested this name, Buck Run Alley, and as Tyler agreed to, we should do this so there's no confusion with the emergency response or delivery service. Mr. Yoder: Any additional comments or questions for Mr. Scott. Mr. Mackey. Mr. Mackey : Thank you for making that call. That was a discussion that came about from this two weeks ago. You're saying that process is ongoing? I would be just curious to know what the findings are. When you find out, let us know. Thank you for following up on that. I think it's important. Mr. Yoder: Any additional comments or questions? Okay. Mr. Frank then on item 8. The resolution was carried with five yes roll call votes. The vote was 5 to 0. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes,, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, & Mr. Pulizzi was absent An Ordinance Amending Section 353.01 of the Codified Ordinances of the City of Williamsport, Lycoming County. Pennsylvania (first reading) The City Clerk read the ordinance. Mr. Yoder asked for a motion and second. Mr. Mackey made the motion and it was seconded by Mr. Beiter.. Ms. Fessler . You have a memo in front of you outlining the recommendation of our department to increase the number of zones in the area and there's a large amount of property that was group of peopled and developers more likely to redevelop this giving them the tax abatement. Also included in the documents you were provided was a ma'am of the current zones as well as proposed changes. If you have any questions. Mr. Yoder: This did not go to committee and came to us a couple days ago late. I think they were egotore get the process started -- eager to get the process started. I added it. Of note for the group, we will need to do a public hearing before -- at the next meeting so that's being advertised, I believe. We'll have to procedurally do that then as it's amending the ordnance and as it's related to LERTA with a heads up in a couple of weeks. Any comments or questions from members? Ms. Miele: I don't have any comments or anything about this till the current expires and I think as a rule the city should put a bit more thought into designating areas that we specifically would like to see developed as it stands, we are basically designating almost the entire city with three heavily residential neighborhoods on the end and I don't think it'll result in any horrible happening between now and the end of 2026. In the long run, I think that incentives were designed more to target development within specific zones and that's why we outline the three zones and other zones that should have been considered and Newberry, on the far end of the city and other areas we'd like development. That said, when we -- if we decide that we're going to pursue another commercial toward the end of 2026, I'd prefer to see us call out smaller zones within the zoneses and we're very specifically want to see that development. Maybe I'm not being clear. Mr. Yoder: No, you're spot on there. Ms. Miele: And it seems to me like something used to direct development a bit to the right or left. Not exactly what I mean. But thoughts along those license and no issue of doing it hard and fast over the next year and we think it's going to be useful I suppose. # Mr. Yoder: There's pockets that council woman Miele talked about and going for them looking at the map. Mr. Beiter look at those more precise zones to put that in? Mr. Yoder We can. It won't change the zoning and make the commercial areas in the areas available and not changing them and anyone's ability to build a commercial business and residential neighborhood. Scott Williams really drove this and our goal was to rather than piecemeal different tracks just to include full census tracks in this iteration of it. Rather than saying this street and this street and excluding this street. And not going with the residential area with the ordnances. Mr. Beiter: He's going to look at zoning in the city as a hole. I don't want that to happen and we don't have something to protect those areas in the future. Mr. Scott He'll work in 2026 with DCD on a grant to have a look at zoning in the city and rewrite of the zoning ordnances which we'll do in conjunction with Gary obviously. But as Gordon mentioned earlier, our department is working really hard to drive community and economic development and one of the challenges right now to what council woman Miele is suggesting we don't have great data to do that. We have police data and fire data, but it would be really great to have codes data to overlay. We don't have a GiS system so it's in our budget so Scott can use his expertise to take the fire data, the codes data, the police data, overlay it to identify which neighborhoods are underperforming so we can potentially identify state and federal resources to invest in those neighborhoods. Whether or not it's funding or resources that can basically bring neighborhoods underperforming up. That'll be part of what we're doing. At that point, we're going to make this work in a way that will incentivize development in areas that we know developers have to have eyes on currently. Mr. Yoder Any other questions? If I can chime in. Do we have interest currently in the areas? We do. I mean, do we have any kind of -- anything that you can share about what specifically that kind of thing? >> Nothing to be comfortable sharing in this meeting without the developers. Mr. Yoder: I guess Ms. Miele shared with like why now? Like there's interest there but I mean has there something going to be spurring this interest and we've had this in place with a couple of years now and to me, came out of nowhere and trying to understand what's the route here and do we frankly need to do this to incentivize it? That's what I'm trying to understand. I ask that because I don't think you were in your position yet. We passed this orgiand there was a lot of -- originally and debate amongst ourselves about that this issue specifically. Probably a bit more of believer on the residential side. And I have those questions for a meeting there. Frankly of, you know -- lingering there. Frankly the effectiveness of the tool and that stuff. We've gotten Wawa and Chik-fil-a. That's worth it by outside of that, I don't know we've gotten really anything necessarily from outside the area so-to-speak. Anything that you can communicate to maybe address some of that? Ms. Fessler Sure. To your point what have we gotten to benefit out of this. under the existing ordnance that we enacted we had four commercial properties and residential properties developed with estimated $3.2 million add to the fax base. And estimate because some of the properties haven't finished construction or received tax assessments. Current annual exception for those properties is only 55,000, which will be added gradually to tax revenue over the next ten years. That's to speak a bit to what that incentivizes. As far as why now, one thing is that Scott Williams worked at length with Nick grimes throughout this year and seeing multiple ordnance amendments coming through with changes to the process and our process was very clunky and made it very hard for people to apply. It was a back-and-forth process between our department and codes. It put a lot of onus on the developer or property owner to keep a yellow piece of paper or pink piece of paper and remember in 30 days after this or after they get this permit, mail this yellow piece to our department. He worked hard with Nick grimes to streamline the process and in part of streamlining that process was his analysis of the zones and what made sense and what we can potentially enhance based on developments we were aware of coming forward in the next year or so. So the thought process was because there's a public hearing with this to bring the other changes to the ordnance, in the meetings that happened prior this year because they were very easy, like, yes, this process is clunky. Let's fix it and get this moving so our office can move through applications in a faster time line. We realize that we're almost at the end of the year and have two budget meetings coming up and this would be a public hearing in 30 days so we wanted to get it onto the year. Mr. Yoder: Any other comments or questions? All right, hearing and seeing none, Mrs. Frank on item 10. The ordinance was carried with five yes roll call votes. The vote was 5 to 0. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes,, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, & Mr. Pulizzi was absent Resolution #9965 Resolution Accepting the Resignation of the Treasurer Kevin Mackey The City Clerk read the resolution. Mr. Yoder asked for a motion and second. Mr. Mackey made the motion and it was seconded by Mr. Allison Mr. Yoder The Treasurer tendered his resignation last Monday morning and effective end of the day tomorrow. So as a part of that process, we have to accept his resignation and the position is posted and we're getting a couple of applicants in and we'll kind of maybe feel out timing in terms of when we do interviews and we'll have to do public interviews and have to do vote to Mr. Beiter: I have an OD question with municipal election timing and things like that . Should we not hire someone in that time frame, even though this job is posted. Could someone technically get enough write in votes to be elect to that position? It's not on the ballot so that wasn't matter? Mr. Yoder Exactly, not on the ballot. I believe -- I'd have to look specific to the Treasurer position, but I believe as tends to be the case it's the way the law is set up in Pennsylvania. Mr. Beiter That window is 30 days from when I don't recall. Mr. Yoder: Do be candid, I don't know that we want to stretch the window for sure. This is a bit different. When Mr. Grimes resigned and we had a bit of window in there we were able to get ahead of the curve. We don't have that with the timing of Mr. Mackey and id feel a bit tighter for everybody because of that we'll get it. That's the background. Any comments or questions, referrals? Mr. Mackey, go ahead. Mr. Mackey, : I want to thank Kevin for his service. I think he's done a great job. I wish he'd let the situation play out, but we all have to make our own decisions so I wish him all the best. I look toward to getting good applicants in here that we can keep things moving. Mr. Yoder: Absolutely. Dawn, you're back there. Derrick isn't here but could you just give us an update on how his like exit process kind of goes as well? Thank you for the reminder. Mr. Allison thank you and good evening. Mr. Mackey is in the process of writing down his processes for the person that you choose. I would like to talk to council afterwards about a few things you need to make decisions on here in the short run. He has written down his bank accounts. We have a backup for him. It's just a process of getting things straightened out. And I think it'll be all right. So any questions other than that that I can answer for you? Mr. Livermore Adam: I think his resignation was active for tomorrow and I don't know how much time is left on the process. I suspect it'll be wrapped up by the end of the week. That's why I was asking the question. I had a bit of communication on him and know a few things on the back burner, but I had not been able to connect with him this week ask saw you here so thought it'd be worth it. That's good. He's sent me a couple files with his duties and some information on how he does his job. So it'll be okay. Mr. Yoder stated, appreciate your help in getting the post up and running. Mr. Livermore Wendy is the deputy Treasurer and she's listed on everything and able to get into all bank accounts and all online access and switched all the AP check signatures to Wendy and Dawn in the process of switching all checks to Wendy and it'll be done by tomorrow or Monday. Mr. Yoder: Cool, thank you very much. Mr. Allison, you had a question. Sorry about that. Mr. Allison: Not a question. Just a comment. I'll try to keep it brief. We've all seen the progression of the Treasurer's department and how it's drastically and dramatically changed for the better. Over the past several year-over-years now. And Mr. Mackey, Kevin's taken it to several steps higher and deeper. And brought literally millions of dollars into the coffers of the city because of his diligence and his ability to imagine things or research things and really do deep dives. I'm grateful for what he did, I know we all are because our city is more stable than it would be right now. Somebody going to take that seat in some ideas that he had. Going for them to help them understand those things. It's equally important and it's going for two full-time individuals beside the treasurer's and in the Tampa Bay's office beside -- treasurer’s office beside the Treasurer themselves and we haven't discussed this much. We'll be looking for places to save money. Weather correspondent Kent spare the two full-time positions in the Treasurer's office and not saying anybody was thinking that and I did want to get that and get that into the record for needing those two full-time people and I'm grateful for the things that Kevin did. I too wish him all the best in the future. hopefully we'll find some -- have a slate of good individuals to look at. We really need that. That's it. That's all I have. Thank you. Mr. Yoder: Randy, I appreciate that and reiterate your points on the staff we have that will be there in transition, very grateful for them and we've got to notably Wendy, she's been through this a couple times and been there for a listening time. And really because of both of them and her institutional wisdom I'm confident in the transformation going to take place yet again. I hope as we get into budget, this will be a bit controversial here, I hope there's something we can do for her specifically because she's about to train the third Treasurer and he's been a rock in that department. We need to do something. We absolutely need to do something at budget time. Any other comments or questions? All right. Mrs. Frank, item 11, please. The resolution was carried with five yes roll call votes. The vote was 5 to 0. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes,, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, & Mr. Pulizzi was absent Resolution #9966 Resolution Authorizing the Purchase of a Card Access System The City Clerk read the resolution. Mr. Yoder asked for a motion and second. Mr. Mackey made the motion and it was seconded by Mr. Allison. Mr. Black This is for a card access system for the foreign end of the city and going to be from company call the Berkshire systems and take this off the river valley system going to be in there now and put it all on controlled by parks personnel and it's 36 months but not for that amount. That's for the three-year term. This is coming out of streets and parks contracted services budget. Mr. Yoder: Comments or questions for this. Mr. Beiter: Do we need to make an amendment to -- Ms. Miele: It seems prudent to amend the resolution. An amendment to amend the paragraph beginning hereby resolved to read "as hernia proved in 36 months for total of $6,666. Unless someone prefers a different amount. So moved. Mr. Yoder: I'll second it. Comments or questions? Mrs. Frank on the amendment.  The amended resolution was carried with five yes roll call votes. The vote was 5 to 0. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes,, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, & Mr. Pulizzi was absent Mr. Beiter c: How does someone obtain the card? Mr. Black They stop by the general offices at streets and parks and get one there. Get picture taken and pay fee and prize they're a resident of the city. Mr. Beiter: Just want to make sure everybody knew the process still. Mr. Allison: I have a question. What does this go into effect? Mr. Black We have one now and we'll be taking it over from river valley transit and bringing it onto our own system so they're not going over to RBT's office and they're not sure if it's a REZOLINA den of the city -- resident of the city getting it done and might not live within the city limits. Mr. Allison: So if we have a card now, we'll have to get a different one then; is that correct? Mr. Black If we -- yes, you will. At some point, you will. We'd like to expire all the cards on a certain date and have the people come in and give them a new card. Mr. Allison: Okay, that makes sense. We'll have to publicize it enough to people contested get caught. Okay, thank you. The resolution was carried with five yes roll call votes. The vote was 5 to 0. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes,, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, & Mr. Pulizzi was absent Resolution 9967 Resolution Authorizing an Agreement Between the Williamsport Bureau of Fire & Cumberland Marine The City Clerk read the resolution. Mr. Yoder asked for a motion and second. Mr. Mackey made the motion and it was seconded by Mr. Allison. Chief Smith l. Before the resolution between the Williamsport Bureau of Fire and Cumberland Marine. For a boat trailer, we had one get damaged in the spring of this year, May time. It was damaged beyond repair and our relationship with the Cumberland Marine, they made agreements to get a trailer up here and it was on our wish list with wonderful grant writers, and they let us loan one in the meantime to get us by so we were in operation for swift water team. Since then, thank you so mel and Valerie because we were able to secure all the $2500 for the complete total of the trailer. That being said, we have the $2500 in our miscellaneous cost that could absorb this and not for the wonderful ladies that write grants in the senator's office, this would not be possible right now. Ms. Miel: No, they were in favor of largely free boat trailer. And grateful to all the people involved in getting the money and making it happen this year. Mr Yoder : Any additional comments or questions? Hearing and seeing none, Mrs. Frank, item The resolution was carried with five yes roll call votes. The vote was 5 to 0. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes,, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, & Mr. Pulizzi was absent Accept for filing WMWA & WMSA 08/2025 Mr. Yoder asked for a motion and a second. Mr. Beiter made the motion and it was seconded by Mr. Mackey. The minutes were accepted for filing with five yes roll call votes. The vote was 5 to 0. All were in favor. Mr. Allison voted yes, Mr. Mackey voted yes,, Ms. Miele voted yes, Mr. Beiter voted yes, Mr. Yoder voted yes. Mrs. Katz was absent, & Mr. Pulizzi was absent Announcements The next regularly scheduled City Council meeting will be held on Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 7:00 PM, Trade & Transit II 144 West Third St, 3rd t floor, Williamsport, PA. There will be a Police Pension Board Meeting Immediately following this City Council meeting. Upcoming Meetings: Tuesday, October 21 6:30 PM HARB Tuesday, October 28 11:30 AM Redevelopment Authority Monday, Nov. 3 12:00 PM Planning Commission Tuesday Nov. 4 11:30 AM Public Safety Committee 1:00 PM Finance Committee 2:30 PM Public Works Wednesday Nov, 5 9:00 AM ERC Thursday, Nov. 6 7:00 PM City Council Meeting Comments:  a. Members of the Public My name is Alex Hemminger at 331 and proposing a change from ordnance 503 blocking garage entrance short term orientation be blocking garage entrance/driveway. Do you want me to read the actual ordnance now and then proposed change or just the proposed change? >> Fair enough. The current version the police are not able to enforce people blocking say past the curb cut so you get the 10-foot of your driveway and you don't have any way to get out and into the street without going around the cars parked directly in front of the way. I've called many times and every time I've been told there's nothing they can do because they're not in front of the curb cut. So I'm proposing the verbiage be 521.03 blocking garage entrance/driveway, no person shall park a vehicle at any time in front of opposite to or in such a position as to block entrance to or exit by a garage or driveway and parking at least five feet from the curb cut of driveway. This would effectively not be like south Williamsport and 10 feet from the curb cut. Just five feet to turn out and into the road without having to go around a car. If you're tow ago trailer or anything Ick -- towing a trailer or anything like that, it's almost impossible. I'd like to ask for a crossing guard for confusion corner. We almost got hit, my son and i crossing and a crossing guard just in the interim -- Ms. Miele: Were you the people running across that street like bats out of hell? Mr. Hemminger It's every day. We can't retrain the people of Williamsport to slow down at intersections but we could get a crossing guard to maybe help. I don't know if it's the correct forum for that, but I figured I'd ask. Mr. Beiter What about the school district? That's one at versus frequency non-and market street and a lot of kids from Hollywood circumstance and will tropic Campbell and so on that walk to school from there. That's the only place I've ever seen one. Ms. Miele: To Alex's point-blank layups, there's a lot of students. When I was a student at curtain, I lived on that street and crossed there all the time. And that is -- it's actually a more dangerous intersection. The one thing -- Mr. Yoder. I'm not mitigating that and I'm taking up your time. Apologize. Ms. Miele: You get more than three minutes. Mr. Yoder: I think kids are crossing all the time and I see it. I was asking what about the school district because just of that and you said you asked them? What was their feedback? I'm not pushing things, just curious. Not a definite. There was interest in it but from what I understand, maybe it's controlled by Penn DOT. I don't know -- Ms. Miele: The whole street is. > I have to can be the them next. Trying to go up the chain. Ms. Miele: I asked city engineer to look into this. They put new lines down on two pedestrian crossings going across more or less Hepburn Street and the one that's like 150 feet long that goes -- that is unsafe enough that we shouldn't be acting like that's a protected crossing. But the other two I think we're working on doing like a zebra stripe on those to make them and signage, additional signage. We have to go through Penn DOT for amendments on market street and right oval window way. He's approaching Penn DOT about a handful of intersections up and down market to see if the city can make changes there, and we are looking for protected -- funding to put in a more protected crosswalk system on market street I think in the next year or so. None of that helps you with a crossing guard. In the interim, a physical barrier would be nice to stop people trying to take out the school children trying to get to school. Ms. Miele: I attempted to stop for someone in the dark not during the school day to let him cross the street in the short Hepburn intersection and people went around me into the parking lane and nearly ran him over. I could see trying to narrow. Penn DOT's right of way is wide and narrow that and cut out parking lane or put it there so people couldn't go around each other in confusion corner. Trickles too much pavement and make it is dangerous for everyone and everybody else had a car go around them in confusion corner. Right, just saying: Mr. Yoder For the blocking garage entrance, I sent a mass e-mail on September 21st to all council members. You recollected have it in there and try to get it et up for agenda thing if I can. That'd be great. Thank you Administration b. News Media c. Council Mr. Yoder: Thank you. Any other comments from the public? Any comments from members of City Council? Comments from members of the administration? Jon. Mr. Yoder: Apologize. I'm fairly certain I saw advertisement for downtown Halloween. Ms. Miele: 29th. Mr. Mackey: Just to let everybody know. Ms. Miele: I think it's maybe 4 or 5 -- I'd be remiss if I told you wrong time. Mr. Mackey: That's it. Mr. Yoder: Downtown Halloween, October 29th. And Halloween trick or treating in the city is actually on Halloween; correct, this year? Ms. Miele: Hours, 6-8, anybody? My kids will be in violation unless we know the hours. Mr. Yoder: I think the resolution says 6-8. I don't know if that's been adapted or changed year-to-year.  Elizabeth: And downtown Halloween is 5-8:00 p.m. for the record. Mr. Yoder: Cool, thank you. Mr. Mackey: Apologize. Is -- will someone take up the mantle to look into this parking ordnance Mr. Yoder: Already sent something to Austin. Mr. Mackey : Great, wonderful. d. Council Comments Adjournment Meeting adjourned upon motion by Mr. Beiter and a seconded by Mr. Pulizzi. Meeting adjourned at 9:14 PM with unanimous ayes. Submitted by: Janice M. Frank City Clerk