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Quoted Text

A vote for Mr. Stratton  
First published: Sunday, November 4, 2007

The easy choice in Schenectady politics is the one voters have to make on Tuesday, namely who should be mayor come January. That would be the incumbent, Brian Stratton.
The tougher question is the one that soon will be facing Mr. Stratton himself, who has suddenly emerged as a potential candidate for Congress next year. It's altogether understandable that his is among the names most prominently mentioned to succeed U.S. Rep. Michael McNulty, and for the same reason why he gets our endorsement for re-election.

Schenectady is a demonstrably different city than it was when Mr. Stratton was first elected four years ago. A genuine fiscal catastrophe was a very real possibility then, with the state comptroller's office predicting that Schenectady could run out of money. The city's bond rating was as low as any municipality's in New York. Its budget deficit was an alarmingly high $10.2 million.

Mr. Stratton has every reason to talk ever so bullishly about the progress the city has made. And he has every right to warn, "Let's not forget where we were four years ago."

Schenectady now has a surplus of $8.1 million, still short of the $12 million that the mayor wants to see. Its bond rating is back at investment grade status. Taxes, though still quite high, are down slightly for the second consecutive year.

Michael Cuevas, Mr. Stratton's opponent, has a way of shrugging off such accomplishments. He goes so far as to say the mayor was wrong to have made the city's finances such a priority. The fact is that he hasn't had much of an answer for this question: Why would Schenectady voters want to kick out such a successful mayor after just a single term?

Mr. Cuevas, currently counsel to the state Assembly Republicans, is running something of a single-issue campaign. His concern, not illegitimately, is crime and public safety. But to claim that senior citizens are afraid to go outside in Schenectady, even in the daytime, strikes us as an irresponsible exaggeration at best.

State crime statistics show a decline in crime in Schenectady between this year and last year, after an increase during the first three years of Mr. Stratton's term. Mr. Cuevas speaks repeatedly about the need for better management and more accountability in the city's scandal-plagued police department. Yet Mr. Stratton has an appealing plan to put police officers on 12-hour shifts and do away with compensatory time and union leave that frequently leaves the city short six cops on a given day.

There's little reason, really, to think that Mr. Stratton's next term as mayor wouldn't be a successful one. The question is how much longer he'll serve.

To say, as he does, that it's his intention to complete four more years, rather than run for Congress, falls short of a guarantee, though. People have been elected to Congress, after all, with weaker records and less impressive credentials than helping to rescue an aging industrial city.

Our endorsement of Mr. Stratton comes with our hope that he'll continue to be such an effective mayor, right through 2011. THE ISSUE:Schenectady's mayor deserves to be re-elected.THE STAKES:The city needs to keep moving forward, rather than retreat into an uneasy past.

  

Is it just me, or does anyone see anything wrong with this editorial from the Times Union? First, I don't think any media outlet should be endorsing any candidate. The media outlets are not in the campaigning business...or at least they shouldn't be. Second, lets not forget that the TU also endorsed Ed Kosiur!!

Let's not forget the Stratton pulled the city out of financial disaster by taxing it's residents to the point that no-one wants to move here and many people are trying to sell their home to get out from under the heavy tax burden. Stratton can also take credit for making Schdy County the 10th highest county in the country.

You don't expect the TU to tell the entire truth now do you? Perhaps we should write an editorial countering what the article stated. But I doubt that it would get printed.