The City of Rochester held its final City Council meeting of the year on December 8, 2025, marking the end of 2025 with a focus on economic development, housing growth, infrastructure projects, and community engagement. The agenda included public comments on homelessness and civic engagement, five public hearings on land use and easements, the approval of the Rochester Sports and Recreation Complex, the selection of its operator, funding for recreational programming, a new energy storage agreement, and board appointments. The meeting concluded with a brief discussion regarding a recent mayoral veto of a health clinic item.
Please rise as you're able for the Pledge of Allegiance. Liberty and Justice Raw. Thank you. Welcome everyone to our December 8th City Council meeting, the last City Council meeting of the year. And we begin every city council meeting with our open comment period. This is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on items that we will not be taking public testimony later this evening during a public hearing on. Each 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, the uh stoplight here and then uh the stopwatch at uh up there. And uh I also please uh uh because of the limited time, we want to make sure that uh everyone has an opportunity to speak. I'd also ask uh speakers to be concise to allow more people uh to speak during the designated time. Participants are further encouraged to limit comments generally to topics that are within the scope of the council and our jurisdiction. If you have any materials to share with the council, uh you may give them to the city clerk to my right here to distribute to us, and uh council members and staff do not respond directly to your comments during the public comment period, but instead we'll follow up on any specific requests you have separately. When you get to the microphone, please state your name clearly, and we will start with Lindsay Williams. Good evening. My name is Lindsay Duos Williams. I'm the artistic director of the Rochester Civic Theater and co-chair of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Region 5. KC ACTF is a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to encourage, recognize, and celebrate the work of college theater students around our country. Each year, the seven states of Region Five come together for our annual week-long festival with over 70 colleges and universities participating. As co-chair, it was my job in 2023 to secure our next festival location. I knew that Rochester had not only the theater infrastructure that the festival needs, but also a beautiful conference facility at the Mayo Civic Center, ample hotel rooms, easy parking, accessible skyways, excellent dining, and of course affordability for our schools and our students. It was a joy to work with Experienced Rochester to secure Rochester as the new home of KCACTF Region 5 for the next three years. Over 1,200 students, faculty and professional theater artists, will be arriving on January 18th, bringing their creativity, artistry, and energy to downtown Rochester. This weeklong festival represents a significant economic opportunity for our community with these 1,200 visitors filling hotel rooms, dining at local restaurants, and patronizing downtown businesses during what's typically a slower winter season. Earlier this year, I stepped into my new leadership role at the Civic Theater alongside Jaclyn June Johnson as managing director, and we are so proud of the Civic Theaters partnership with the City of Rochester, Experience Rochester, and the Mayo Civic Center, as well as with our thriving arts ecosystem, including that theater company, Absolute Theater, Hometown Opera, Rochester Dance Company, and many more. While our current production of Frozen is completely sold out, we invite you all to experience the remarkable work that is happening at the Civic Theater sometime this spring. Thank you so much for supporting the arts in Rochester. Thank you. Next up we have Molly Dennis. So on this month's mayor's Rochester Voices, I listened to the Tri-Government Leaders who talked about resources for people experiencing homelessness. So I would just like maybe a raise of hands on the dais on how many people have actually volunteered for the warming center. I know I have, so you have awesome. Two, three, fabulous. Okay. So we want to be where people are, and I hope everyone has experience to do so. President Schubring, you mentioned you thought that we need more trust, respect, and uh building connections. And I I went to the event on Thursday, which was the public forum for better public meetings. I brought the agenda. We advertise it the week of, and I saw a lot of elected officials, including um Councilmember Miller, Councilmember Keene, Councilmember Doring, and Mayor Norton and President Schubring there. But I did not see very many people. And I know Mayor has talked about the FTP, right? The same 10 people showing up to everything. Well, I find it kind of uh frustrating that the elected officials are not inviting and encouraging other people to come to this important meeting. If you go to my public um Rochester Facebook community um page, uh advocate page, you will see photos of that event and who attended and who did not. Um so those who attended, I I appreciate that because that was a very important meeting. And I just I feel like it is tiresome that our city is not including people, that not reaching out, and it's a veneer of saying that we are doing uh this public engagement. It's it's something that we as a community, I I feel it's essential to have voices at the table that aren't the same 10 people that the mayor says attends everything. And that means that um to to foster uh you know participatory budgeting in people's taxes, uh public engagement, that we need to stop this window dressing of you know, trying to say that we're checking off the the and actually do follow up. So I would like to see follow-up from this meeting. Thank you from all the elect officials who attended.