The Peekskill Common Council held a work session followed by a regular meeting on January 12, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. The work session included updates on the Esther Street closure extension, approval of professional services contracts, reappointment of Keane and Beane as city attorney, and a substantive discussion on adopting a non-cooperation policy with federal immigration enforcement ("Peekskill for All"). The regular meeting passed nine resolutions unanimously and heard extensive public comments on immigration policy, police accountability, and other community concerns.
Today, January 12th, 2026, we have a short agenda and then executive session for discussion of matters concerning the medical financial credit or employment history of a particular person, persons, or corporation, or matters leading to the appointment, employment, promotion, demotion, discipline, suspension, dismissal, or removal of a particular person, persons, or corporations. So at this time, I'm going to turn it over to our city manager. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Good evening. And so I'd like to ask Carol Samel if she could talk to us about Esther Street closure extension. Yes, thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Good evening. Yes, happy to follow up on Esther Street closure. And what we're asking to do is to renew the closure of Esther Street, which has been closed for a number of years. And Esther Street and its closure will be a part of that study. And that's an important um context because it also will involve looking at all the stakeholders that are involved, and the traffic flow, quite frankly, in the downtown, um, as well as in the rest of the city. That's clearly one small part of the safe streets for all, but I think it's important context for the closure of Esther Street. That said, so that I think will help us understand what our next steps are with that. That said, um I also reached out uh at your request to the two new businesses that are on um Esther Street to find out what they thought of the closure and whether their business needs were being met. And um they both um uh are supportive of the closure. Uh one loves the closure, uh, really appreciates it, thinks about ways to engage the business uh have his business engage in the the um the closure closed area, the plaza, if you will. The other had concerns really more about monitoring. Um really, you know, appreciated the closure, appreciated having the additional open space, but wanted to make sure that we were staying up on monitoring. And that is just I think something we can take up with the police department in their routine, you know, circulation around the downtown. Um the specific issues that she had, she raised um related, she thought we discussed how those might be addressed, and we you know, we really said well, a final design would really help with those things, including you know, loading issues, safety concerns, people hanging out, the lighting, that kind of thing. Um so I said, well, a final design, we should be thinking of those things with with that in in mind. Um but at the end of the day, we are proposing to keep it closed for the year with the thought that we would um studied in the safe streets for all study and um you know make improvements as we can. Any questions, council? Carol, uh we we're not doing any snow removal or any uh treatment uh th throughout the winter could it seems. Um is that is that still known? Because it looks like we're not we're not shoveling in who would be responsible. I think that would still be a city uh responsibility. I will look into that aside to let you know the plaza the plaza itself. So the city has uh you know this this park has only been in place since the pandemic, and so the city has uh gone in there and cleaned up when it's necessary, and we'll take a look at that tomorrow. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? All right, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, uh the next item is uh that we have some professional services to be renewed. And uh Eric, you want to talk to us about those? Good evening, members, council members. Uh evening. So uh there are as Matt as the city manager stated, there are a number of uh professional services providers that we get retainers from each year or renewal agreements each year. Um some such as uh the the consultant for the planning department or on multiple year um contracts, but most of the legal ones are annual um retainers. So listed on the memorandum. I'll give you a rundown of what the individuals, what service the individuals are providing. I've included the retainer agreement through each of those giving the hourly rate. Um it's difficult to estimate the cost because we don't know exactly the um amount of work or cases that they're gonna have over a year, the types of cases. So um we could go on the past budget, I you know, past what they've been paid in the previous year, but um so I relieve with the firm um he's on his own. I believe he provides um advice to the asset tax assessor regarding um tax sortiari proceedings. He helps doing doing the negotiations when they go beyond just the standard um tax sociari proceeding when they move to the next level.