The Rochester City Council held its first regular meeting of 2025 on January 6, 2025. The meeting included a public comment period, a city administrator's year-in-review video, mayor's report, approval of a consent agenda (with two items pulled for separate discussion), six public hearings (all approved with conditions), a discussion on council committee/board appointments (with an amendment that passed on a roll-call vote), a feasibility report and public hearing scheduling for a street reconstruction project, authorization of a software contract, first and second readings of ordinances, and other business including requests for future study sessions and support for a grant application. Four new council members were welcomed.
Welcome everyone to the January 6th, 2025 uh City Council meeting, the first city council meeting of the new year. Before we get started, on behalf of myself and my three other new colleagues, I wanted to offer a hearty thank you to Councilmembers Palmer, Councilmember Wall, Councilmember Keene, and Mayor Norton for welcome welcoming us to the dais and also to Administrator Zelms and all of our city teammates. Thank you for your extensive orientation and responsiveness as we for drank from the proverbial uh fire hose. I have renewed respect uh for the expertise and professionalism of everyone here and really looking forward to the next year as we work together on behalf of the citizens of Rochester. So with that, we bring we begin every meeting with our open comment period. This is an opportunity on our agenda for the members of the public to speak on items that are not on our uh agenda tonight uh as a an agenda item. Each person has up to two minutes to speak for a total of 20 minutes. I will keep be keeping track of time through a variety of methods, uh including uh this uh stop light here. So please know if I need to cut you off because of the time limit. Uh we that is because we want to make sure that others have an opportunity to speak. And I'd also request that each speaker be concise to allow more time to for others to speak during the designated time. And participants are further encouraged to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope and jurisdiction of the council's ability to affect policy. Uh council members and staff do not respond to your comments during public comment, will but but will instead follow up with any specific requests separately. If you have materials to share with the council, you may give them to our city clerk, Kelly Geisler, uh who is sitting to my right to distribute. You are invited to uh speak in the order that you signed up, and I believe Christian has given me the sign-in sheet. Uh so with that, uh we will hear from uh Molly Dennis. Thank you. Um I just want to say hi. Molly. Thank you. Thank you so much. Uh and greetings, I'm Molly, and uh, we all know you, but if you can restate your name, we would appreciate it. Thank you. I am Molly Dennis. I'm a mother, a volunteer, a citizen of Rochester who has lived and loved Rochester through uh almost a decouple decades now. I just wanted to um say I received I didn't bring it with me, it's actually my vehicle, uh letter, uh certified letter from Dan Doreen, who threatened legal action if I came to speak. Uh Miss Dennis Dennett, you're not to uh uh uh identify others in the community. So sorry your public comment. It should be addressed to uh public issues and not uh personal issues. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought silencing a and uh and uh a citizen okay I'm sorry, I received a certified letter from someone on the city council um threatening legal action is if I came to speak at the council tonight. Um, but I believe that this is fear-mongering and uh intimidation. So I'm gonna show up and I showed up to speak here. Um two minutes is not long enough time, so I will post things on my Facebook community um advocate page after this if I'm not able to speak for the length of time needed. The City of Rochester, I believe, is systematically silencing resident voices on social media, which I believe is wrong. I believe that eliminating virtual public comment by a not denying people who are like in nursing homes who are disabled, who are uh lack transportation to come speak like I am right now is wrong. So I hope that the new council will address these two issues of denying open comment and media uh social media comments and uh reinstate those uh for public um transparency and voices. I just I do want to uh congratulate everyone if you can please wrap up. Thank you. Okay. I I feel like some of my time was was taken by wrap up, please clarifying wrap up. Okay. Okay. Well, I'll skip the congratulations. Um I do I do want to uh say that uh some of my work, of course, on the City Council was cut short uh due to the Thank you, Ms. Dennis. Thank you. We're moving on to the next speaker. Our next speaker is Barry Skolmeck. Hi President. Yes.