A Citizen’s Report
on
A Meeting of the Corning City Council
March 3, 2025
The Council for the City of Corning, New York held its regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. at Council Chambers, Civic Center Plaza, Corning, New York.
All Councilmembers attended the meeting except Councilmember ReSue. Counting City of Corning employees, 15 members of the public were in the audience.
Comment Period on the Comprehensive Plan Extended
through March 14, 2025
The Comprehensive Plan Update Steering Committee hosted a series of open house events during the fourth week of February. For those who were unable to attend and would like to review the information presented and share their thoughts, the Steering Committee has made the discussion documents available online and created a survey document that will be open to March 14, 2025.
To access the planning dociments and the survey follow these steps:
Go to www.cityofcorning.com
Go to Strategies tab.
Click on Comprehensive Plan (first item on the menu)
Notice the list of documents that is toward the bottom of the Comprehensive Plan page.
Click on Open House Materials From 2025 (second document in list). Having your thoughts in mind after reviewing these will help fill out the survey.
Click on Comprehensive Plan Open House Survey (first document in list) and follow the prompts to offer your input.
Announcement by the Mayor
Regarding the Invocation at City Council Meetings
In 2006 the Council adopted a resolution making it mandatory for the Council to invite clergy to give an invocation at every meeting of the City Council. Only a few of the nine members of the Council are asking clergy to attend to give the invocation. Because of this, the City Clerk reads a “fallback” prayer that the Council adopted in 1962.
Mayor Boland prepared an outline of the current problem, the prior resolutions of the City Council, alternatives for action, and a suggested course of action. See the mayor’s outline and proposed new invocation:
The outline proposes making it optional for the Council to invite clergy to give the invocation. It proposes a new invocation which someone will read if a clergyperson is not available.
Mayor Boland and Councilmember Coccho will offer the proposal as a resolution of the Council for discussion at its April 2025 meeting.
Report on the Comprehensive Plan
City Manager Ryckman and Comprehensive Plan Update Steering Committee Chair, Pam Walker, presented a program explaining the background of the effort to update the plan, steps already taken, current status, and needed action to create an updated comprehensive plan.
See the presentation slides here:
A comprehensive plan, they said, is vital to articulate a vision for the city’s next 20 years, to give policy direction for decision-making, and to provide the legal basis for ordinances that coordinate with that vision. A comprehensive plan builds confidence in its citizenry that the city’s decisions reflect their desires. Further, a comprehensive plan supports and legitimized the city’s applications for grants, which historically adds about $2 million dollars a year, on average, to the city’s resources.
The City Council last adopted a comprehensive plan in 2002. It no longer adequately addresses the issues that face the city nor the concerns and hopes of its residents. In short, according to Ms. Walker and Mr. Ryckman, things have changed.
The City of Corning obtained an $80,000 grant from the State of New York to create a new comprehensive plan. The grant requires that the plan incorporate “smart growth principles”. So far, the Steering Committee has selected a consultant, gathered data through stakeholder interviews and other efforts, and is engaged in obtaining community input through a first community open house, a farmer’s market outreach, a survey, and three added community open houses. To obtain the broadest possible input, the Steering Committee advertised its efforts through school PTA’s, churches, and community organizations.
The Steering Committee has completed about half of the work needed. It will finish collating the public input it receives, prepare a draft plan, and after Council workshops, and a public hearing, present a final plan to the Council and to various State review processes for consideration and approval.
In general, Ms. Walker and Mr. Ryckman felt that the Steering Committee has engaged new people, fresh faces, and new voices, all with the goal of insuring that the updatedcomprehensive plan preserves the character of Corning that we all love while expanding its horizons and meeting future challenges.
New Business - the Council Unanimously:
Authorized the City Manager to enter into a Sales Tax Allocation agreement with the City of Hornell and Steuben County for a five-year period ending February 28, 2030.
Background: The New York State sales tax is 4 percent. Steuben County, its cities, towns, and villages benefit from an added 3 percent sales tax. A stop-gap mechanism assures that the revenue generated by this tax for the City of Corning will not fall below a certain level.
On top of this, there is a 1 percent sales tax which the County and municipalities divide by agreement. Of this 1 percent, whether the revenue it generates goes up or down, Corning will receive $900,000 per year under the agreement. This is a $50,000 increase over its earlier sales tax division agreement.
However, the agreement is tentative, requiring approval of the State Department of Finance.
Authorized the City Manager to accept a grant not to exceed $5,000 from Steuben County for enhanced STOP-DWI personnel services and equipment.
Authorized the City Manager to dispose of surplus vehicles, equipment and supplies by sealed bid, auction, or inter-municipal transfer.
Background: Inter-municipal transfers are ones which occur between municipalities or other governmental entities, like the Community College, to help each other. This doesn’t happen often. These are not internal transfers among departments.
Visitors’ Comments
Vinnie Azzarelli, 74 East Market Street, appeared before the Council last month to complain about unlicensed cannabis dispensaries in the Gaffer District. He followed up with an email to city administration and the Council. His email included a city ordinance to control illegal dispensaries adopted elsewhere. He feels that the City of Corning could use this as a template for action. Even so, he said that he has not heard anything from anyone.
Mayor Boland responded that Mr. Azzarelli’s concern is shared. The mayor said that the city is working on the matter, but he is not at liberty at the moment to share specifics. However, he wanted to assure Mr. Azzarelli that city will address the matter.
Mr. Azzarelli thanked the mayor.
Hilda Lando, one of two Steuben County Legislators representing the City of Corning was unable to attend the meeting. Ms. Lando sent a written report which this reporter reprints here without edits:
“The training session on Open Government was held last week and was very interesting. There are a few things that we need.
The state 1% legislation sales tax agreement with Hornell and Corning was approved in the Admin Committee meeting for $900,000 from $850,000 for 2 years. It still needs approval from Finance.
From the Conference & Visitor's board meeting we learned that we are getting several emails from Canadian residents that they will not be coming to our area because of the political issues. Therefore, money will not be spent towards attracting Canadian tourists which have always been a large number of tourists coming to our county.
Our Destination Development grant award (new money from the short term rentals) has been modified because some of the applicants were not 501 something. However, the Gaffer District and CMoG projects are still on the list to be approved by the Admin Committee and the Legislature.
I have asked the chairman to put a meeting together with county and local law enforcement, county administration, Weights & Measures etc so that we can collectively come up with a plan to address the sticker stores in our county and discuss the dispensaries. I would like to have everyone in the room together to work on a plan.
Most of the boards I serve on are non profits and are all very worried about federal funding. Several are looking at temporarily revising wording with value and mission statements to keep in line with what the new administration is looking to cut.
Online Board of Elections inspector training was approved.”
Joe Tobia, the other Steuben County Legislator representing the City of Corning was also unable to attend the meeting. Mr. Tobia sent a written report which this reporter reprints here without edits:
“On Monday, February 24, the County Legislature approved a Social Worker Position for both Corning and Hornell that will be connected to their respective Police Departments. This position will consist of a Social Worker that will respond, with Law Enforcement, to certain domestic calls within the city. The Social Worker can provide assistance to our police department, when responding to certain calls, by assisting with those individuals who may have a mental health diagnosis and/or who may need additional services from our County Community Services. This new position will be posted very soon.”
The meeting adjourned at 7:12 p.m.
NOTES
The writer of this report has presented items in an order different than that in which they occurred at the meeting.
The writer has, except as specifically noted, amended, or eliminated comments and attribution for them. Unless quotation marks are used, the comments reported are not verbatim.
For brevity, the writer has not included all items on the agenda of the meeting.
Some material has been added by the writer for context or clarity and where it is extensive, is labeled “Background.”.
コメント