At the Jan. 25 organizational meeting, the Kingston Common Council reviewed and advanced a set of routine housekeeping and organizational items intended to structure city business for 2025.

The council's preliminary agenda items described in the meeting included adopting a tentative order of business for 2025, adopting council rules (unchanged from the prior year), designating the city's official daily newspaper for legal publications, and approving the mayor's request to deliver a State of the City address in the chambers. The president explained that because no rule changes were proposed this year the rules remained the same as the prior year but could be amended later.

Several intra-department budget transfers were described by staff: $20,375 in the parks and recreation department to balance accounts; $600 in the planning department; and $19,248.16 within the clerk's budget. The chair noted these are internal transfers with a net $0 financial impact on the city budget. The council also discussed authorizing a 6% relief penalty for 2025 and adding unpaid water department charges to the 2025 property tax bills.

On a separate agenda item, the council considered a Kingston City Land Bank proposal to purchase 46 Grand Street but concluded there was a procedural error and missing documents. The council agreed to send the proposal back to committee (finance) for further review and directed staff to arrange presentations from the land bank and related parties at an upcoming finance committee meeting.

The meeting also included the second reading of Local Law Number 1, which would repeal Local Law Number 5 and replace Chapter 49 (the city's ethics code). The ethics task force and others noted the rewrite aims to improve readability and transparency. The council discussed scheduling ethics training for elected officials and department heads with two sessions on Tuesday, Feb. 4 (10 a.m. and 6 p.m.); the due date for financial disclosure forms was noted as Feb. 15 and may change pending the local-law update.

Other brief announcements included a community vigil scheduled for 6 p.m. at 300 Broadway and upcoming Community Development Block Grant application review meetings on Feb. 14 and Feb. 28. Public-works issues such as potholes on Albany Avenue were mentioned during reports.