By Ashley M. Casey
Associate Editor
The village of North Syracuse is looking to give Village Hall a facelift. At its Dec. 12 meeting, the Village Board of Trustees voted to pay $2,000 to have a design plan drawn up for the front of the building.
“It’s dated,” Mayor Gary Butterfield said. “Some of the wood there is starting to rot. Some of the metal is starting to rust.”
Trustee Fred Wilmer said the village should address needed roof repairs before improving the façade of Village Hall, so he voted against the resolution. However, Wilmer agreed that the facility could use a makeover.
“As you walk through the Village Hall, there’s places that look nice and a lot of places that still need to be finished,” Wilmer said.
Deputy Mayor Diane Browning pointed out that the village needs to have completed the work before seeking reimbursement from possible grants.
Trustee Christopher Strong said approving the design plan “doesn’t lock us into a timeline” and would allow the village to check one item off its to-do list for the needed improvements.
Also at the Dec. 12 meeting, the Village Board of Trustees voted to approve a grant application for surveillance cameras for the North Syracuse Police Department. Chief Bill Becker said the police departments in the city of Syracuse and the village of Solvay use a similar audiovisual system to deter crime.
“People usually don’t want to do criminal behavior in areas that are being recorded,” Becker said.
Assemblyman Al Stirpe has expressed interest in helping the village obtain grant funding for the cameras, so the Village Board of Trustees needed to sign off on the grant application.
Becker said the cameras would first be installed in the village’s main corridors of Route 11 and South Bay Road.
Finally, the Village Board of Trustees discussed Onondaga County’s desire to take over the sanitary sewer system. The county wants to lease North Syracuse’s sanitary sewers.
“So it’s going to happen. Either we say yes now or we wait,” said Trustee Lou Ann St. Germain.
Village Attorney Scott Chatfield said there likely is little room for negotiation with the county, but it does not appear that the agreement would grant the county access to the village’s sewer maintenance fund.
The sewer takeover would not include the storm sewers. Mayor Butterfield said the village has 635 catch basins.
The village board decided to table a vote on the sewer agreement to give all parties more time to digest the logistics. The board will revisit the issue in January.
