On April 28, 2026, the Syracuse City Council met to review the Engineering Department's operations, ongoing projects, and proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Mary Roberson, representing the Engineering Department, presented an overview of the department's three divisions, current workloads, and significant budget changes.
Naves, President Paniagua, Councillor Mantos, and Mary Roberson from Engineering. So Mary 116. So Mary, if you can give us an overview. Okay, I'll go get it. Sure. Oh, I'm sorry, we're joined by Councillor Rousa. Since we have a couple new um counselors, I was kind of gonna go over what engineering department does and refresher for everyone. Um we're composed of three divisions. Um fully staffed, we're 21 people, but we do have a few vacancies that we're trying to fill. I have a new person starting mid-May, and looking at another person as well. So trying to make some um new hires there to fill our vacancies. But we have uh building division, which manages all our capital improvement projects in our city-owned buildings, fire police, school district, um, city hall, parks, um, and anybody with a city-owned facility. Um, then there's a design and construction division, and they do all the capital improvements and permit reviews and stormwater requirements in the street in basically in the street right-of-way. Um sewers, roads, sidewalks, paving, uh, bridges, culverts, anything like that, um, as well as stormwater review, which we had very um stringent requirements with DEC to meet. Um, a new permit was issued in January of 24, and each year we have to meet meet certain requirements that increase year by year. Um, and then we have mapping and surveying division, which provides support for all our projects, doing surveys for street right-of-way and city-owned buildings, um, and also our record keeping of documentation of our right of way and property, and they work with us on a lot of our projects that we are progressing. Also joined by Councillor McJook, Chair of Public Works. All right, thank you. Um we have all kinds of projects going on. Each division is I did a tally um building division and design and construction division. Each division is working working on roughly 35 to 40 projects that are either in design or construction. So we're very busy. Um, and that does not include um, I forgot to also mention um floodplain management or the permit review or stormwater. Um so if you want to go over the budget, and also I also forgot to mention JSCB. We're in um phase A of four phases of our 400 million dollar 10 school renovation. So we're currently designing the first three schools, which is roughly a hundred million dollars. Mary, I'm gonna jump right in. I have a couple of questions. When I'm looking at professional services, that's almost triple. That's on page 117. Yep. So professional services. Um I have $30,000 for um use of consultants for miscellaneous projects, but the big increase is for the legal land expert for $54,000 and a zoning consultant for $135,000, and that's related to legal support um associated with the I-81 project to try and secure control of land. Do we get funding for that? We do not. So it's out of our budget. It's all out of our budget. Okay. And what happened and Joe is here if you have Joe Driscoll's here if you have any questions. And what happened with the contractor services related parties, same page 117. Say that again, counselor. Um practis services, it went to zero. Uh seventeen. 5417, all right. On page 117. Yep. It was 78,000, and now it's zeroed out. That is Lisa. Oh, yes. We had an employee on Surah, um, but we no longer have him on our budget.