The City Council of Rochester convened its first meeting in the newly renovated high-tech chambers, beginning with a public comment period addressing bullying prevention, municipal transparency, and concerns over public fund usage. Following administrator and mayor reports highlighting the city's "Just Serve" designation and new police officer inductions, the council conducted public hearings on land vacancy, a new housing plat, and amendments to the Unified Development Code. Significant discussions centered on the UDC text amendments regarding cannabis and liquor restrictions, the approval of a $1 million homeownership subsidy for a new development, the procurement of secondary firm natural gas for the energy station, and a major Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system upgrade agreement. The meeting concluded with the adoption of the 2026 council calendar, the acceptance of federal grant applications, and a debate regarding councilmember compensation increases.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for relationship. Under God, indivisible liberty of justice for all. Welcome everybody to our October 20th City Council meeting. This is our first council meeting in our newly high tech chambers here. So welcome to the bright lights here. Bright lights in big city is what we are. So we open every council meeting with our open comment period. This is an opportunity for anyone from the public to speak on items that we will not be taking public testimony during a public hearing later in the agenda. Each uh person has up to two minutes to speak for a total of 20 minutes. I will be keeping track of time through a couple methods. One, uh the stop, uh the stoplight here, and then the the uh clock, the red clock below the the uh the clock there on the wall. Uh and so uh know that I may need to cut you off uh because of limited time. We want to make sure that others have an opportunity to speak. I'd also request that each speaker be concise to allow more people to speak, and participants are encouraged to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope and jurisdiction of the council's ability to affect policy. Council members and staff do not respond to your comments during public comment period, but will instead follow up on any specific requests separately. If you have materials to share with the council, you may give them to the uh city clerk who is on my right, and uh you will now be invited up to speak in the order which you signed up, and we will start with Miss Molly Dennis. You may have to to uh hit the button there, hit the button on the the mic, and you'll see it'll turn green. Yep, there you go. All right. Thank you. Hi, I'm Molly Dennis. I'm a permanent resident of Rochester, a parent in a community advocate. October is national bullying prevention month. Our civic theater has presented the wonderful presentation of prom, which is a powerful showing of how bullying and ostracism can affect a community. Many of us in Rochester find it interesting that leaders can easily watch this uh message, but do not in fact look in the mirror themselves at their own behavior. Examples, Councilmember Doring showed up to my house for National Night Out, all while having threatened me in writing to never speak at a city council meeting. Mayor Norton blatantly fear mongers using media, which falsely slanders and weaponizes to destroy reputations, and even President Schubring promises that staff will follow up, yet our city continues to erode our public trust by denying to answer simple transparency questions. For example, how do you spend how many hours a week on city council work? The fact is limiting public speakers' voices, denying information, and blocking uh the social media feedback are all abusive control tactics used by other governments to silence their residents with the padded platitudes of these veneer tactics of these hoops right here that you are demanded to jump through. They are all window dressing to hide that the city's false claims that we are authentically wanting public engagement. We do not want public engagement if we require residents to have to go through extra means to do so. Integrity matters, transparency is trust. Please do better. Thank you. Next up, we have Jesse. I just have one name, Jesse. Is Jesse still here? Welcome. Please state your name, and you have two minutes. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Back in the 1800s, all the poor people had horses and rich people had automobiles. Today, all the poor people have automobiles and rich people have horses. I'm talking about money. This involves with everybody in town, I believe. How many of you have your cell phone here today? Come on, nobody's gonna officer, you ain't gonna arrest anybody, are you? Well, I didn't bring a cell phone in. Because in the rules, it says no cell phones, tobacco, vapes, and that's being honest, truth and the facts and the principle of it. I'm not very good at math. I fail math.