In this week’s municipal elections, Democrat Mark Drnek was elected the next mayor of Oneonta.
Drnek defeated Republican Len Carson, a fellow member of the common council.
Democratic Mayor Gary Herzig did not seek reelection in the Otsego County city.
WAMC’s Lucas Willard asked Drnek about his campaign and what he believes resonated with his voters.
Mark Drnek:
The idea of inclusion in the process really appealed to an awful lot of people. We had this slogan, all in which, for the most part described, you know, my take on, you know, the position that I was all in. But as we talked about it, we, I think, all this came to an understanding that I don't do this by myself, and that it's going to be a case of everybody, including so many people who typically haven't had a seat at the table, becoming a part of the conversation, some collaboration, obviously, and, and hopefully success because of that.
Lucas Willard:
One of the issues and one of the things that you said on the campaign trail was you wanted to bring 1000 new residents to to Oneonta. Could you explain that and why you think that would be great for the city?
Mark Drnek:
Okay, sure. Well, it's I mean, there are various silver linings to the dark cloud of the pandemic. One of them was the folks that have some flexibility in the location of their employment, they really kind of self identified. You know, as people started working from home, for a lot of people, they had an epiphany that this wasn't necessarily someplace that they needed to be tethered to. And we have a quality of life here in the city of Oneonta that I think, frankly, is as good as any, and it's a it's a real, I think, a real marketing asset. As we look to bring people here, one of the things that we are going to be doing is actually doubling down on the various quality of life opportunities that we have here from recreation to entertainment and beyond. So that the strong hand that we have is made even stronger, but the 1000 people coming into the community will be impactful in an awful lot of ways. But one thing that will enhance the business district viability in probably an untold number of ways, it'll probably as much as anything else. Make those empty spaces more attractive to those businesses that have to really kind of look at the demographics, crunch those numbers, and make those decisions with the addition of shoppers. And, you know, just generally speaking residents will make a, I think, a huge difference in their thinking. And also in terms of our city services and our shared costs for city services among taxpayers, bringing more people into the equation as homeowners and business owners is going to wind up reducing the size of the various slices of the tax pie for people and I think that's, that has an awful lot of appeal provokes.
Lucas Willard:
So Oneonta is home to a couple of colleges. And I know that you were co chair or your co chair of the town and gown initiative. So can you tell me what what that is a little more detail. And also as a part of that, in part of attracting new residents actually getting college students to stick around once they graduate.
Mark Drnek:
But you got I mean, actually, I'll take that in reverse because you've nailed it on the head. We have 6500 and change a student's through the two colleges come through graduate every year. And we are seeing such a small percentage of those folks stay. And a small percentage of folks come back and they are an obvious target for residency. And one of the ways that you that you want to make that happen, frankly, is to engage those students while they are here in the community in in, you know the quality of life that we all share this so the town gown taskforce was created on the other side of the pandemic spike that was fairly well documented that SUNY Oneonta went through. There was an awful lot of concern among those in surrounding communities as to whether or not it was even safe to come into Oneonta and you can imagine the impact that that had on businesses. So primarily we started the taskforce as an opportunity to engage the community with these students and gosh, I guess was well over 80% of the students you can look at the Spike effected 11 or 12% To the students, well over 80% of the students importer were unaffected. And they were, you know, they were masked, they were engaged with the community. And we wound up documenting their efforts in various collaborations with the city to make some really nice things happen for the community. And in doing that, began to really ratchet up the concept of, you know, the the colleges and their students being as important to the community, as you know, as long term community members. And also, I guess, to just put a finer point on it, what we wound up doing, is identifying a need for communication between the college students and the residents and the businesses. And in order to kind of facilitate that, and have it be a successful, you know, enterprise, what we wound up doing was determining projects that could be collaborated upon with both the residents, businesses, and students. And in collaboration, they wound up having dialogue with the dialogue, they wound up having some sort of level of empathy that they didn't have before. And from that, you have a mutual respect and understanding that really, I think, will go a long way as we move forward to a six successful incorporation of the student body into the community.
Lucas Willard:
And as we're speaking, the house last night passed their version of the infrastructure bill. And I know that municipalities across the country are looking forward to an infusion of infrastructure money and what they could do with it. And so do you think that the city of Oneonta is at a turning point, in a way with the post pandemic economy trying to bring new people in? And also opportunities available for infrastructure investment? What do you think of sort of this moment in time?
Mark Drnek:
Oh, I gotta say this is a light switch moment. It truly is. We're set up right now for an expansion of our downtown footprint into an area that has been underserved and underutilized and honestly decimated these however many number of years since urban renewal were large, lots were created and nothing got built. We are looking at the creation of a an expansion that includes what amounts to an entertainment district. So there's a lot of potential for public private partnerships there. But we're also looking at our entrance into the city is off of something called lettuce Highway, which is about a five block walk for people from the downtown to the south side to turn that into a pedestrian friendly, you know, avenue that is treelined sidewalks and lighting and, you know, it's very hospitable. The potential for infrastructure funds on projects, like our long West Street, we have an East Street and a West Street and our West Street has needed some love for a while. We have you know, development potentially of the rail yards. There's just and and more and more and more I could probably go on for half an hour with all the projects that we we could use some help with and the infrastructure. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the infrastructure bill will wind up assisting the cities
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
