The Erie City Council met on July 1, 2026, for a caucus and public meeting that included final passage of three ordinances, a presentation on workforce housing, public hearings on historic designations, and extensive public comment. The most charged topic was an incident of police violence against Kevin Sparks, with multiple speakers demanding systemic reforms, adoption of a national use‑of‑force policy, and creation of a civilian review board. Council also debated and passed a resolution commemorating America’s 250th anniversary, tabled a historic designation for the Spencer House pending additional historical context, and approved the reallocation of CDBG funds to the Erie County Re‑entry Support Services Agency.
So let's start it if anybody has any questions on anything that we're going to be doing for for the final passage. We have those we have three items for final passage. Yes. I've got a couple coming, right? So you have to what I would like to go back and um draw everyone's attention to because we did have some changes, and I wanted to do some clarification, is uh item number two for final passage, and that's the landlord and rental, uh Article 330. Um it was sent out by our solicitor just uh the updates, but if you wouldn't mind uh mayor and I'm gonna put you on the spot here, or or solicitor check, uh just to kind of go over some of those updates. Thank you, Dr. Titus. Uh council, you'll recall we had the first reading um on the landlord and rental ordinance um at our la at your last meeting. Uh you'll recall that there were some questions from particularly the apartment association. And so we did meet with them, had a a long meeting with them, I think um between the meetings, so last week, and we talked about their concerns. Um, one of the concerns we heard from them was the frequency of the inspections. You might recall that we were um proposing that we change the frequency. Everyone would be inspected every year, and then if you passed, you could get on a two-year cycle. Um the landlords uh really talked about how they felt a four keeping the old, which was you could get on a four-year cycle if you had two successful inspections, that they really wanted to go to that. I expressed to them that I felt four years was too long to go without an inspection, but then we discussed and kind of the negotiation we came to was we would we would consider the four-year if when a property changed hands, the cycle started over. So what we had been talking about was that we would treat rental registration like car registration. You know, you register, but then your inspection holds even when you buy a car. But they were uh in agreement that when a property changed hands, everything would restart and the registration and inspection cycle would start over. So with that concession, I felt more comfortable about keeping the four-year cycle. That's if you pass two good inspections and we agreed they would be clean on the first time. So it's not you come and you have some violations and we come back, two fully clean inspections, we would consider keeping that four-year cycle. So we have changed that in the ordinance today, certainly open to your comments, but I just wanted to give you the the reasoning why we got there. We also have some thoughts that while we bring this program in-house, you know, giving us a four-year cycle on some properties would keep the workload down a bit and give us a little chance to get ourselves going. So we did that is an a change you'll see today. The other change that they asked for was to give them a little more time on the payment of fees. Um they raised a good point that our fees for registration are due around the same time that taxes are due, and that that felt a lot. And so they asked whether we could push it out a bit, and so we are proposing that we push the first payment, I think till the end of July, so that it's not hitting the same time as taxes and just giving them a little more time. So we did make those we we are proposing those changes in your ordinance today. Go ahead. Uh the solicitors sent those out. I kind of looked got the some thank you. I appreciate that. Um, and although we did uh settle on for have some consensus on it in its past form or current form, be that as it may, uh I think that in a good deal everybody gets something. And uh I I like the compromise. So thank you and the and the association both uh for working diligently to you know come to some understanding. I agree. Um thank you for for meeting with them and then working through because I think this is this is a great this is a great end product here. So thank you. Any other questions on this particular one before we go to another topic? Yes. Council members, some of these we're trying to save paper now, so some of them have the six pages resolutions, and some are just a page, so it's a little confusing at first. So I might keep passing some back to you to sign. That's it. Thank you, Mayor Daria. And so you felt everything was good with the changes. I did. And and you know, in the meeting, they said, Will you, you know, can we talk about perhaps not moving the program, you know, in-house and keeping it with BIU. And I basically said to them, no, we're not, we're we're not still considering that. I think council is in favor of the move.