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Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy delivers State of the City as re-election bid nears

Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy delivered his State of the City address Monday night.
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Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy delivered his State of the City address Monday night.

Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy delivered his State of the City address Monday night.

Proclaiming the city's future is bright, the Democrat highlighted affordable housing.

“Schenectady is a leading community with new housing initiatives," McCarthy said. "Work continues on the next phase of the 300-unit Northside Village. Homeownership opportunities are still a cornerstone of my award winning Homes program, and construction of market rate apartments remain strong in this community. The last several years we have produced over 1,100 units of newly built or renovated affordable housing in the city of Schenectady.”

McCarthy says several parcels of vacant land and buildings in the Mont Pleasant neighborhood will developed into 60 units of affordable housing.

Expected to announce a bid for a fourth term any day, the Democrat added the former Elmer Avenue school also will be redeveloped.

“It's recently been awarded state and federal housing tax credits to transform the building into Elmer gardens, a senior housing complex," said McCarthy. "Developed by Home Leasing and Better Community Neighborhoods, the project will convert the historic Elmer Avenue School into 51 apartments for adults aged 55 and older. And 26 homes will be reserved for seniors in need of supportive services to live independently. These units will be funded through an Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative award.”

McCarthy said the city has made strides in neighborhood investments and lowering the tax rate. He noted Schenectady received a record amount of funding through the American Rescue Plan to reduce homelessness and increase housing stability.

McCarthy addressed deteriorating sidewalks, which has been an ongoing problem.

“The current process used by the city council for special assessment for sidewalk replacement, I believe, is too complex," McCarthy said. "It has many variables that residents find hard to understand. I'm going to submit legislation to the council and ask you to put in place a fixed cost of $55 per foot of sidewalk for the property owner, which could be financed for 10, 15 or 20 years at the Council or the residents discretion. The city would assume the liability for the variable cost. And again, we're spending a lot of time and effort engineering cost, design costs going back and forth. That translates into added expense but not actually anything practical in the field. We're doing calculations in terms of how much we should charge the residents. If we just make that assumption, it'll smooth things along and speed things up. And I'm also going to recommend that the council appropriate a million and a half dollars of ARPA dollars to help finance this initiative."

McCarthy conceded the city has seen an uptick in crime but argues that violent crime remains 20 percent lower than it was in 2012.

Democratic City Council President Marion Porterfield summed up McCarthy's address as "a good recap of all the things that have happened over the past few years."

“For me, anyway, the most, the most significant takeaway moving forward, was actually doing something about the sidewalk program, the process that we currently have in place, as you know, has had spits and starts," Porterfield said. "And we really have not been able to really get it done quite smoothly with any of the neighborhoods that we've tried. And so he's proposed something that would make it a lot smoother. So, he said, he's going to come to the council with that. And I believe that the council would be open to discussing that and see if we could get that done in a more efficient way.”

City Republican chair Matt Nelligan, a candidate for mayor, says McCarthy is "not recognizing the reality of the city."

"Spending a lot of time patting himself on the back for things that aren't really going as well as he says," Nelligan said. "When it comes to crime, you know, he tried to say crime was down. In fact, murder is up 66% this year in the city, last year, I should say, in the city, and he's got no solution to that problem. He's now talking about sidewalks, which is something I've been talking about from the beginning. And I think, you know, while I understand that, you know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I think that his solution is not a workable solution. It would just put more burden on taxpayers that are already overburdened, so, I thought it was a fanciful presentation, but not a truthful one.”

Porterfield is also weighing a campaign, but said Tuesday she hasn’t made a final decision.

Dave Lucas is WAMC’s Capital Region Bureau Chief. Born and raised in Albany, he’s been involved in nearly every aspect of local radio since 1981. Before joining WAMC, Dave was a reporter and anchor at WGY in Schenectady. Prior to that he hosted talk shows on WYJB and WROW, including the 1999 series of overnight radio broadcasts tracking the JonBenet Ramsey murder case with a cast of callers and characters from all over the world via the internet. In 2012, Dave received a Communicator Award of Distinction for his WAMC news story "Fail: The NYS Flood Panel," which explores whether the damage from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee could have been prevented or at least curbed. Dave began his radio career as a “morning personality” at WABY in Albany.