The city payment centers, yeah.

That's okay.

Thank you for common with me going up with uh myself several times.

All right.

Good morning, everybody.

Welcome back.

Um is what I was saying.

We are moving on to part two of four for the day.

Um joined by the same group of counselors um with Commissioner Nestry and the keyboards.

The Department of the Treasury, which is more commonly known as the City Payments Center.

Um we are on page eighty-seven for the counselors.

Um and I'll turn it back over to you all to give us an intro of the payment center and what it does, how it connects to everything, and then we'll jump in with some of the details.

Sure.

Um City Payment Center, also known as the Treasury, is where we collect the money.

We um collect and process uh tax payments, water payments, parking payments, the new school zone payments.

We process the cash payments here at the city.

Um the original agreement just allowed for the um third-party contractor to collect payments, and then there was no way for people to pay cash.

We have a lot of people who pay cash.

So I said let's make it easy for people to pay.

And um we made an agreement to collect cash payments here for those kinds of violations.

We also do the billing for the Syracuse Police Department for all the overtime they work at like the dome or um individual security details throughout the city.

Uh we bill for the board-ups if somebody's property is broken into at three o'clock in the morning.

Um the city has a gentleman in DPW who's on call, not a job I'd want.

But he'll go out at three o'clock in the morning and board up the broken windows so further damage isn't uh experienced.

We do bill for the service uh because we don't get plywood for free and the guy doesn't work for free.

So we bill for the board ups, we bill for the cut and cleans.

Those are properties that are either not maintained by owners or um the owner is you know, MIA, vacant lots that you can't figure out who owns it.

They need to be cleaned of either litter or they need to be mowed, overhanging branches need to be trimmed.

Um if it's a major cleanup, we also bill for those.

Um that involves um and Andy Jacobowski and his crew where they take a bunch of trucks and you know they sometimes have to get the police out there to tow illegal vehicles.

I mean it's you know, it's what when the lots are really a big big mess.

Uh we bill for the demolitions that the city does.

Um for the emergency repair program.

And we bill for the pilots and shelters.

Those are payments in the taxes, agreements that uh SIDA and the city has made um for um to improve development.

Um shelter rents are for um section eight housing entities that um have an agreement with the city, they pay a a lower base rate based because they are government uh subsidized.

So uh basically we have uh five cashiers, um eight control clerks, three uh information aids, and we answer any questions constituents call about any of the aforementioned types of bills that we send out.

Um we do research um if there's questions.

Um sometimes uh there might be a mistake on the tax bill, whether for whatever reason.

Um and we work with assessment to get those um corrected and bring them to you and we have them corrected.

We also do the uh municipal sidewalk billing.

Um that goes on the tax roll.

All of the um board ups, cleanups, ERPs, um, demolitions, um municipal sidewalk.

All of these things have to be updated every year.

We roll any onto taxes that as of April 1st have not been paid.

If we bill it on April 1st, we figure by the time somebody mails it in and gets it to us, then we're really getting too close to the cutoff in May for the tax roll.

So we do that.

We do add uh late charges as announced on the bill.

So if someone doesn't pay, we do add it to the tax roll.

If they don't pay the taxes, then they are seized.

Or they're uh potentially seized, I should say.

Um that's a good overview.

We get emails from people, we get letters, uh, we do the tax trust program is a big deal for us.

Um managing uh delinquent taxes, uh we've been had real good uh results, collecting delinquent taxes, working with people who in a lot of cases really can't afford their homes anymore because you know everything goes up, right?

And if they're living particularly people living on a fixed income, which most of us are, um just depends on how high it is, but you know, there are uh particularly elderly people, senior citizens who um are challenged to pay their all their bills.

Oh case you a question.

Of course.

You work with assessment, right?

Sure, we're how behind are you?

How behind are you?