Thank you, Patricia.

I'm an executive officer.

This meeting is being recorded and summarized.

I'm gonna sort my two.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I am Led Senator James Noelman, the chair of the small business committee.

Let's begin today's meeting for Monday.

I'm sorry, Wednesday, July 8th, 2026.

It is 11 p.m.

I'd like to take a short roll call.

I am here.

Uh majority leader wholesale.

Let's uh let's uh whole scene.

All right.

So is it um I'm all open?

Thank you, James.

Uh we're opening up public safety and veterans at 1 12 p.m.

I am present.

Let's say Kunzio, you're present.

Present, can you hear me?

I can hear you.

And we're in care of the members of the committee.

And we're gonna start.

Uh James, you want to take it?

Yeah.

So today's meeting is just discussion.

Um sorry I missed attendance.

I am here, which just uh court.

All right, thank you, majority leader.

Uh so today's discussion is uh with talking to my uh my friends, our friends, Douglas Horsting and Mike Burke.

They are from small businesses in Westchester County.

Uh, but they've been very uh very helpful, very informative of different things that they're going through in their businesses and different businesses are going through in uh crime in their stores.

Um I feel like this is a discussion to help our small businesses and also public safety to keep people safe, but also help small businesses uh navigate through this issue or what we could do on the government level uh to do better to make sure that we're partners and everything.

And um, you know, through you could introduce yourself at record.

Definitely appreciate it.

Sure.

Doug Westing from Metro Organ.

Uh Mike Burke from C S Pharmacies.

Well, thank you again for joining us.

It's uh this is uh an issue that unfortunately we're used to seeing, and uh we're trying to find ways to advocate in the state and then county level, local level, make uh stores safer and also see you guys prosper.

Um today's meeting I feel was crucial along with let's say the Tubia.

Um so once again, thank you.

I really do appreciate it.

Sure, I appreciate it, James.

So I'll just say this.

We appreciate your time and looking forward to some information from your perspectives on the ground.

And it's good that we hear and we communicate with our departments at the end of the day, as uh the chair of public safety and veterans.

We have of course the department of public safety, and we train the best police officers in the country right here.

Also emergency services, uh fire services under that, um, correction, of course, and a few other departments, district attorney.

And the reason I'm bringing this up, and of course, the veterans is uh public safety uh is the true one percent.

Um and we also want to include dispatchers and EMS EMTs and all that.

Um keep society running.

If you don't have public safety, you can have a society.

So we want to hear from you, what's happening and see what we can do, what we can do on the county level to help.

Uh you can't promise the world, but we do our best to help and listen and communicate and see if we make effective change.

So thank you for your time.

So if you could uh please, you know, just start with uh you guys firmly go through and different things that you're seeing and different examples we can.

So um back uh back and writing my first map with you guys uh unfortunately right closed.

But what we were able to do um, and you you helped a lot of that maybe in unofficial capacity if you could do it in official capacity of creating a team some sort from all the main players of public safety to the table.