The Erie City Council convened on March 25, 2026, at 6:30 PM. The meeting included roll call, approval of minutes, and two public hearings: one for an intermunicipal liquor license transfer and another for a waterfront conditional use permit for a new AC Marriott hotel. Public comment periods addressed housing affordability, landlord negligence, and community concerns. The council took no final votes on the hearings, deferring decisions to a later meeting.
It is now 6 30, so we will go ahead and call this meeting to order. Roll call for the city council meeting of Wednesday, March 18th, 2026. Councilmember Titus, Brzezinski, Flores, here, Horton, Poll here, Shaw, and True. Present. So this leads us to our moment of silence. Uh and I will ask Councillor Horton if you would please lead us into the pledge when we're done. Thank you. Approval of the minutes from the March 4th, 2026 City Council meeting and bills for payment on March 20th and 27th. Members Rosinski, Lorez, yes, Horton, Poll, yes, Shaw, yes. True. Yeah. Titus. Yes. Okay. We have no presentation this evening, but I would like to remind everybody in the audience that we do have pub two public hearings tonight. Uh, and those will start at approximately 7 p.m. So wherever we are uh within the public comment section, we will have to stop and we will go into those public hearings, and then we can return back to the public comment section. Um so we will go ahead and ask. Is there anybody here for a repository sale? Is there anybody here for a repository sale? Is there anybody here for a repository sale? All right, seeing none, we will move into the public comment section. So when you come up to the mic, I will ask that you say state your name clearly uh for so that we can be recorded in the municipality and to know that you will have five minutes. Please be mindful, we'll have a timer that goes off. Uh, and this is to help keep us on track. So anybody who would like to speak, you can come up, say your name clearly into the mic, and you have five minutes. My name is Freda Tepfer, and I live in Erie, and I was a little distressed to see um a mini excavator sitting on the sidewalk on West 26th Street. I believe it was either Myrtle or Walnut, and it was there all weekend, and then on Monday, National Fuels contractor did close the street and had some work going, but what was the machine doing on our sidewalk all weekend? There was no um detectable warning of any kind coming from the east on the west, there may have been a barricade that fell over. Um I'm seeing things like flagging to show sidewalk closures. Really, we need to take this seriously. People have a right to safely travel in our cities, nowhere's no snow, and I understand that national fuel and the water authority have certain emergency opportunities, but leaving a piece of equipment on the sidewalk all weekend long is just not forgivable. Um I just want to alert the city and any nonprofits that may be hearing me that there's a deadline of March 30th to comment on a general services administration requirement that you have to show how you are not doing any DEI work. Um, if you want to get government contracts or grants, and this applies to cities as well as nonprofits. So I some of us have been sharing that information, but but um if you're a nonprofit, be aware of that. Um so the planning commission meeting agendas do not always show what's gonna happen. The meeting at which the uh waterfront conditional use permit was discussed, there were under waterfront conditional use permit, it says nothing. Um and I watched that meeting today. Also, in trying to find that YouTube event meeting, it was mislabeled. So I hope that the IT department can work that out so that we can find these things. Also, um that there's all this down wood that people cannot expect the city to take away. Well about three feet apart, and there's two rows, a foot and a half apart, and you pile all your sticks and branches and your um stems and stuff from the garden, and you put it there, and it's a dead hedge and it's habitat, and then you don't have anything to worry about. So it's a great opportunity for that. Um you'll be hearing more from me in the hearings. Thank you. Good evening, council and Madam Mayor and Madam Mayor's administration. Um I thought this was a public hearing, um, but it turns out that's a city council meeting. So I'm gonna try to make this short. One, um, I would like to see Jason. Can you state your name for the record?