PEEKSKILL, N.Y. Essential information about the city governments operations is easy enough to find, if you know where to look. The City of Peekskill is run by a seven-member city council known in Peekskill as the Common Council, comprised of six part-time councilmen and a part-time mayor, all of whom receive a public-funded salary.
The Common Council meets four times a month for a work session on Monday evenings usually at 6:30 p.m., and hold bi-weekly business meetings with department heads, the city clerk and the corporation counsel, called a Committee of the Whole Meeting following the second and fourth work session of the month at 7:30 p.m.
A councilman can hold the position of deputy mayor and acts as mayor during official city business in the mayors absence. A full-time city manager and assistant city manager run the day-to-day operations of the city. The majority of the citys municipal departments are housed at Peekskill City Hall, located at 840 Main Street.
According to City Clerk Pamela Beach, there is no state law that mandates when a municipalities must post their agendas but posting for the time, location, and agendas for the common council work sessions and committee of the whole meetings are posted on the citys website, on the Thursday before the Monday meeting.
Its online by Thursday by the end of the day, we have the packets out to the [Common] Council and for the public as well," Beach said. There are occasions when we are really backed up and dont get the information out at 4 p.m. itll go up in the morning." The agendas are also posted in the hallways outside the meeting rooms but the city stopped printing out entire meeting packets recently due to the costs, Beach said.
Residents are allowed to make statements to the council at Committee of the Whole meetings held in the city meeting room on the second floor. The council has recently changed its public comment policy to allow five minutes per speaker at the end of the meetings due to several unruly speakers at the beginning of some recent meeting that led to meetings getting shut down before the council could conduct any business. Residents and other guests are not allowed to speak at common council work sessions, which are held in a much smaller office on the main level. Residents are, however, sometimes invited to come discuss specific issues with the council at their work sessions.
Meeting minutes are kept by the clerks office and also held in the Field Library, just across the street. Anyone wishing to review the minutes can stop by the clerks office and copies of the pages can be obtained for 25 cents.
There are photos and brief biographies of the seven Common Council members on the city website. The names of current members of all other committees can be obtained from the clerks office during normal business hours, Beach said. The meeting dates for the planning commission, the zoning board of appeals, the historic and landmarks preservation board are all scheduled and posted before the beginning of the year and are all held at 7:30 p.m., explained Peekskill Director of Planning Anthony Ruggiero.
Submissions to the boards are due a month before the meeting is held. Ruggiero said residents with questions concerning an upcoming planning or zoning agenda should contact him directly at the planning department office. Members of those and other city boards are not usually listed online, he said.
In the past we havent because there is turnover so we dont typically do that, Ruggiero said. Also, I should point out that if you go to our website all of our meetings -- zoning, planning, obviously the [Common] Council, the historic landmarks preservation board, are videotaped so you can watch all the videos online, Ruggiero said.
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