The Syracuse Common Council held a budget hearing on April 16, 2026, with the Law Department. Corporation Counsel and Deputy Counsel Joe Berry presented an overview of the department's operations, workload, staffing, and challenges. The hearing covered litigation volume, problem property enforcement, outside counsel usage, and squatter issues, among other topics.
I just think you'll see that it feels like it's going quite easier. Sorry. You're all good. Um, okay. No, that's what we love. It is what it is. Okay. We'll give people one more minutes. One more minute. Okay. No, we'll just go. So uh one on five more. Thank you. We were hoping that folks would see that key me so you can get together and do the list that he's constantly flowing. I'm trying not to take it personally, but I think so that he doesn't make myself. Can I share your book? Of course, yeah. Julie had given us this to the easier way to look at something for the bug ink. It has everything that's in here, but not in that meeting. All right. Good afternoon. Um I know that there are more colleagues that ran to get refreshments, our fourth hearing of the day. Um we're trying not to take it personally here in the law department. Um but join joining me today, as of now, Counselor Nave President Paniagua, and we have the Department of Law. We've got Suketzov and Joe Berry. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Uh thank you very much. And what I've been having everyone lead with is uh, you know, what what does your department do? How does it fit into the structure of the corporation? What do you do? What are some of the the wins that you can share with us and other you know potential challenges for for the for the past budget year? Sure, thank you for the opportunity to do that. So our office represents the entire city. We are legal counsel for the entire city, all of your boards. Um primarily obligation as corporation counsel is to defend the city in actions commenced against us. So to date since the beginning of the fiscal year, we have received 203 notices of claim, and that is the first step to starting a lawsuit against the city. So that's a pretty significant volume of claims that come in. In addition to that, we also um address affirmative claims where if someone has damaged our property, so think I I hate to be on the record saying this, but think national grid is doing some kind of digging and injured, you know, harms one of our pipes. We go up, we pursue that and get um those claims addressed so that we can repair our pipe and we're not out any money. Um I think that the next biggest thing that has the greatest public um impact is the work that our office does in conjunction with codes and SPD to address problem properties. It can be a nuisance property, it can be a property that has ongoing trash issues, like they just their whole front yard is full of trash. It can be um the more serious claims that we have taken um great lengths at trying to pursue if you are selling illegal cannabis, if you are selling tobacco to minors, if you are engaged in the sale of illegal drugs, we have created a mechanism where we work cross-departmentally to try to address those properties early on. We have a process by which we have now developed to pursue those. It takes a lot of man hours, it takes a lot of coordination amongst departments. I could not be successful without codes, if I'm being completely honest, and SPD's help. Um, but we have really got it down, if I do say so myself. It took us a while, we had to figure out what the courts would allow us to do and what they wouldn't allow us to do, but we now have a good system where we can identify properties earlier, we can go after them when they have demonstrated a significant um ongoing issue with what we deem to be um illegal or improper practices at a site. Um beyond that, we pursue um bad landlords we or bad property owners. So the name Kletzke may mean something to you.