The Peekskill Common Council held a work session (Committee of the Whole) followed by a regular council meeting on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, at 6:30 PM. The work session included discussions on workers' compensation renewal, a proposed policy for the sale of surplus city real property, and potential riverfront concession agreements. The regular meeting adopted several resolutions, including a zoning text amendment for cannabis dispensaries, and heard public comments on a range of topics.
Not I'm checking right now. I have not heard from her. Okay. Good evening and welcome to our committee of the whole meeting for today, May 26, 2026. We have a short agenda, and then we have an 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 corporation. So at this time, I'll turn it over to our city manager. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Good evening, evening. First up, we have the results of our uh broker looking for the best option for us for workers' comp insurance renewal for June 1st through the 31st of May next year. And uh basically it can be boiled down to uh a 5.1 percent decrease over this past year and last year, uh the year we're in uh is ending with a 7.27% increase. So this was uh something that we were happy to see. And uh this we were we spent a lot of time talking to them about the self-insured retention program and whether or not we would use that, and so you can see here the the comparison to the 1.3 million dollars, but aside from the chance that that might not work out for us, this also would require additional work by uh the city city staff, which uh and we're not well staffed for the work that would be necessary for which we currently have a uh service due for us. And so if the council is okay with that, we have that prepared for the uh for the resolution tonight. Any questions, any comments, council? It's nice to see the premiums going in the right direction. It would be nice if everything else followed suit, but I'm good. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, thank you. Okay, and uh next up we the city staff uh got together and met to talk about having a policy for the transfer of city-owned property uh for and we just picked one half acre uh based on our experience with this. So the truth is that there have been lots of property deals that have not been able to advance further, and one of the um reasons is a lack of understanding of what our process is and what all of the uh necessary discussions we have to engage in in order to get a a piece of property up to the council for your decision. And so uh so we talk about it how we usually uh process property and there's basically four different methods uh and we uh they usually uh have to do with the determination of fair market value and the city council's fiduciary duty to obtain the highest value for the unneeded and surplus property in a meeting with the city attorney assessor and planning department. We put together a proposed policy for the council's um review and approval, and it lists out uh the necessary steps for getting a property uh listed as surplus, not needed. It um goes through the requirement by case law for establishing a value and the fiduciary duty that the city council has as stated in those those cases, uh and we talk about conditions affecting marketability, and then there are the four methods of sale that we talk about auction, a request for bids, listing with a licensed real estate broker, or getting an appraisal-based negotiated sale. And this put this all into a legal framework, talks about how the council would review that and review the property to declare it surplus and then approve the method of sale for the property. And that is a summary of the uh document that you have in front of you. Council questions, comments? So I just have a quick question. So this is not setting a new policy, right? This is just sort of like for transparency and to codify the pre-existing what's already been happening in the city so that people can see what's been happening. Is that accurate, Matt? This is and this is also to put out as a published document for the public to see for transparency. Thank you. A couple of just a couple of quick questions or uh potential adjustments under the affordability in section one. I'd like to see us really define what that measurable criteria is and remove some of the subjective language there. Like is there a unit count for the threshold? Is there something in there that we could put that is actually measurable criteria? Under section two on the on the purpose and scope required determination of surplus. We end with the line no marketing negotiation or valuation may occur without the surplus declar declaration. I think that really kind of is a blanket statement that may work against us. I think we would probably want to have some at least internal negotiations and to figure out where we're headed with the property so that the council could make a correct decision. So I'm thinking we might want to add some language that would allow preliminary internal evaluation in that portion. Say that again, we will not I worded it as allow preliminary internal evaluation analysis. Okay. Um on page six, section five number four under additional requirements. I'd also like to sort of fill that out a little bit. Um add uh minimal what the minimal public notice would be, what the minimal public notice period would be, and how we would notice that. You know, is that is that mailing to adjacent owners, is that web post? How are we noticing that type of information? Um on the last page of it, we there's some just uh Roman numeral confusion, which should be seven, eight, and nine.