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SCHENECTADY
Council race has 5 vying for 4 city seats
Candidates’ goals include crime prevention, better communication
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

   The Schenectady City Council race features just five candidates for four seats. The Democrats put up a full slate, but the Republicans handed their campaign to one man: a Conservative retired police offi - cer.
   The candidates are offering fi ve different plans for the next four years, with goals ranging from developing police walking beats to instituting a system similar to New York City’s 311 line for code violations and other minor problems.
   Joseph Allen, a Democrat who has been on the council since 1996, said his biggest priority for the next four years would be redeveloping the neighborhoods.
   “There’s a lot of things that need to be done in the neighborhoods,” he said. “We need to spend more money in our neighborhoods. I want the entire city to be paved.”
   To come up with more money, he suggested creating a special fee, similar to a payment in lieu of taxes, for rehab facilities. They should have to pay because they use a disproportionate amount of fire and police services, he said.
   “Everybody knows when you put up a group home in our city there’s going to be police issues, fire issues,” he said.
   He also wants the city council to do a better job of cutting taxes next year.
   Although council members still go through the entire budget proposal every fall, he said they don’t search for cuts as thoroughly as they used to.
   “Sometimes we can make 15, 20, 30 suggestions and save some money,” he said. “Hopefully next year we can provide a larger tax relief; 1.2 percent is good, it’s not an increase. But maybe next year we can do 2.2 percent.”
   He plans to support the mayor’s fight against the police union as well, even if the negotiations over the new labor contract lead to arbitration.
   “We can’t back off. We have to stand up for the residents of Schenectady,” he said.
   Denise Brucker, a Democrat who was appointed to her seat late last year, wants to find a way to institute continuous recruitment for both firefighters and police officers.
   “I understand it’s costly,” she said, adding that she thinks it would be worth it if the city could keep both forces at full strength.
   “It also might increase diversity in both the police and fi re departments,” she said. “I think it’s important to have a public safety department that looks like the city it serves.”
   She also wants the council to start holding neighborhood meetings.
   “I would like to see the city council go into the neighborhoods. We have a lot of people come to us for the meetings. I think it’s important we go to them,” she said. “The council would be there to answer questions.”
   She said she’s hoping the comprehensive plans will also help the council funnel grants to the neighborhoods to fuel development.
   “Downtown is starting to exhibit some growth. I would like to see more emphasis and more resources going into the neighborhoods,” she said.
   Brucker served on the council from 1998 to 2005, but she was prohibited from running for reelection under the Hatch Act. The act bans certain public employees from holding political office, and Brucker had taken a job at the Schenectady Municipal Housing Authority.
   She now works at Schenectady County Community College and is free to run for office.
   Thomas Della Sala, the only political novice on the Democratic ticket, wants to address the city’s crime problem by funding more after-school programs for children in third through sixth grades.
   “We need to work with those kids before they get to where crime’s one of their options,” he said, before adding, “If we can afford that, I don’t know.”
   But he wants to look for grants and then pool the money with the school district’s funds to see if they can afford to create more programs together.
   He’s staunchly behind the mayor on the issue of tax cuts.
   “I happen to live in the real world. A cut is a cut,” he said in response to some residents’ complaints that the proposed 1 percent cut is not enough.
   “Yeah, that’s not a big deal, but you’ve got to start somewhere,” Della Sala said.
   He is also a supporter of zerotolerance code enforcement.
   “We have codes for a reason,” he said. “Take snow shovelling. It’s a safety hazard — if we don’t shovel our sidewalks we force kids out into the streets.”
   He said he believes criminals are drawn to run-down neighborhoods.
   “The way a neighborhood looks is directly related to the crime in the neighborhood,” he said.
   Richard DiCaprio, the only non-Democrat in the race, said he would be in “constant contact” with the police if elected. DiCaprio is a Conservative also running on the Republican line.
   “We need to spend a lot of time at the police department, knowing exactly what strategies they’re planning to clean up our neighborhoods, so we can relate that to the people,” he said.
   “There are people living in fear and that shouldn’t be. No one’s telling them anything. We can tell them, ‘This is what’s being done.’ ”
   He said other city departments, including code enforcement, also need to vastly improve their communication with residents. To speed up responsiveness, he wants to create a system similar to New York City’s 311 line.
   Callers use the non-emergency line to report code violations and other minor problems.
   “It’s working in New York City and it could work here,” he said. “People call now for months at a time — there was garbage left behind on one street and I called every day for two weeks and never got an answer. That has to change.”
   He envisions creating a biweekly newsletter offering updates on paving and other matters. He also wants to reopen the senior center and enlist senior volunteers to run youth programs.
   At the same time, he wants to cut all unnecessary expenses from the budget, going through it line by line.
   “The taxpayers, we are tapped out,” he said.
   Margaret King, a Democrat who was elected last year after being appointed to fill a vacancy, would push for the creation of police walking beats if re-elected.
   “It’s got to be a priority,” she said. “We’ve got to get officers back in the neighborhoods, walking around. We’ve got to have people get to know the residents.”
   She said she’d urge Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett to create a plan for walking beats.
   Like Brucker, she also wants to focus on recruitment. She wants city officials to speed up the development of a proposed school public safety club.
   “We’ve got to focus and maybe even enhance our efforts in recruitment so our police force and fi re department look more like our community,” she said.
   As for taxes, she’s happy with the 1 percent cut in the proposed 2008 budget. She wants that slow but steady drop to continue.
   “I don’t want to go to an austerity budget. I think we need to maintain the services,” she said. “[Mayor Brian U. Stratton] has been able to keep the services going strongly I know 1 percent is not a lot, but it’s a start.”
   She also wants the council to recruit anchor businesses for each neighborhood business corridor.
   “If we can get a few key businesses, we can get the neighborhoods moving,” she said. “Neighborhoods have to be our big priority. The master plan’s going to be a big help.”
   The council is scheduled to adopt the neighborhood plans early next year.

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SCHENECTADY
Stratton wins 2nd term
Mayor, team of Democrats sweep races
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

   Mayor Brian U. Stratton and the “Democratic team” swept the city races Tuesday, riding the wave of economic development and financial success that Stratton touted throughout the campaign.
   He asked voters to not only return him to office to continue Schenectady’s recovery, but also to support “the Stratton team” at the City Council level. All four of his party’s council candidates — including two incumbents, one appointee and one political novice — were voted in.
   Conservative Richard DiCaprio, the only candidate holding the Republican line in the council race, was rejected by a margin of 805 votes.
   Republican mayoral candidate Michael Cuevas lost by 3,803 votes. Stratton sailed to an easy victory with 6,503 votes in unofficial results — more than 70 percent of the vote.
   It was a far cry from the 2003 nail-biter election, in which Stratton won by 312 votes after a week of ballot counting. This time, he worried over the votes of his council colleagues, closely tracking Councilman Joseph Allen’s numbers until it was clear the only black man ever elected to the council would pull out a fourth-place win.
   At one point, Allen was just 200 votes ahead of the only non-Democrat on the ballot.
   “I know what that feels like,” Stratton said.
   Allen did not come out to celebrate, and Stratton refused to announce his own victory until he was sure Allen had also won.
   “What a change from four years ago!” he said when he declared victory just 77 minutes after the polls closed. “The citizens have said they believe in what we’ve done. They know that real change is in fact real change and they know working together works.”
   He thanked residents for “all the sacrifices” of the past four years and vowed to spread the downtown economic resurgence to the neighborhoods.
   “Now we need to build on what we’ve done and invest in our neighborhoods. That is our pledge,” he said.
   He said he will also host a Stop the Silence summit this winter, in response to the growing “no snitching” attitude that keeps witnesses from reporting crimes.
   “We still have a ways to go,” Stratton said. “Tax relief will remain a constant objective of mine. Rebuilding our infrastructure — we have many simultaneous needs.”
   Although crime went up in Stratton’s first three years in office, he emphasized that he did successfully restore the city’s financial status during those years.
   When he took office, Schenectady had a deficit and the state comptroller’s office was threatening to take over with a fiscal control board. The deficit was erased two years later. The city finished last year with its largest surplus in 26 years, and independent auditors say the city now is a safe investment.
   Meanwhile, new office buildings downtown have been built and filled to capacity while new businesses have opened. General Electric even started hiring more workers at the Schenectady plant this year.
   Stratton promised to spread the economic resurgence into the neighborhoods in the next four years, a goal shared by all of the newly elected council members. He also said he wants to continue the 1 percent tax cuts of 2007 and 2008, reducing taxes incrementally while finding non-tax revenues to fund the city’s needs.
   Some vocal residents have complained that the tax cuts are too small, and Cuevas tried to win over voters with promises of an austerity budget in which all but the absolute necessities would be cut.
   He also assailed Stratton’s crime and police policies, saying Stratton should not be re-elected because crime rose in his first three years in office.
   But Stratton was able to fi ght back with the unofficial statistics from the first half of this year. Violent crime and property crimes have fallen 16 percent, more than in any other Project Impact city. Stratton said the reduction proved he made the right choices by enrolling the city in the project, which allows state and federal law enforcement to patrol with city police.
   Cuevas also offered a more measured approach to police discipline, saying he could get the police union to work with him.
   Stratton promised to continue to fight the union, even if the current contract negotiations lead to arbitrations. The negotiations are already in mediation, the step before arbitrators are called in. The biggest sticking points appear to be the addition of health insurance payments and the elimination of compensatory time, a move that would add the equivalent of six additional officers a day.
   Stratton, 50, will receive a $36,000 pay raise on Jan. 1. His new salary will be $96,706.
   The council members who were elected Tuesday will also get raises. Their salaries will rise from $9,800 to $14,093, although the three remaining council members will earn $9,800 until they face re-election.
   With the raises comes a new expense. They must pay 20 percent of their health insurance costs or opt out of the city’s health care system.
   The elected council members bring a series of new initiatives with them. Allen, who drew 5,166 votes, wants to create a special emergency services fee for nonprofit rehab facilities, since they don’t pay taxes.
   Denise Brucker, who had 6,238 votes, wants to the council to hold meetings in each neighborhood. She also wants to find a way to institute continuous recruitment for both firefighters and police officers.
   Thomas Della Sala, the only political novice on the Democratic ticket and second-highest vote-getter with 6,310 votes, wants to address the city’s crime problem by funding more after-school programs for children in third through sixth grades.
   He wants to look for grants and then pool the money with the school district’s funds to see if they can afford to create more programs together.
   Margaret King, the top vote-getter with 6,392 votes, said she will push for the creation of police walking beats

MEREDITH L. KAISER/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER Schenectady Mayor Brian U. Stratton, left, and City Council candidate Tom Della Sala watch as votes are counted Tuesday night at the Ancient Order of Hibernians on State Street.

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With the raises comes a new expense. They must pay 20 percent of their health insurance costs or opt out of the city’s health care system