On February 2nd, Plattsburgh Mayor Chris Rosenquest made a surprise announcement that he would not run for a second four-year term. The Democrat recently spoke with WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley about city issues and reasserted that his decision not to run again is the best move for his family:
It certainly was difficult to come to but at the end of the day I cannot stress enough how important my family is.
You appointed a committee to take a look at the potential of our current mayor – city council to having a city manager – city council with potentially a mayor that wouldn’t have the powers that the mayor has now or whether we would not have a mayor at all. What’s the status of the committee right now?
Sure. They are meeting. This is just advisory. Take a look at the work that the Charter Commission did back in 2015 regarding a city manager form of government or a manager/council form of government as well as what the authority of the mayor would be and the council would be in that new form of government. The council will need to be an active participant in putting this forth to the voters. They will be included in that process. But I really strongly feel that the city really does deserve that level of stability where it comes to management and operational effectiveness. It really is difficult to take a look at different management styles, different budgeting styles, different goals and objectives that cycle through every four years where you could have something like a parks improvement like we have completely overturned by the next administration.
Mayor Rosenquest, another issue that kind of frothed up rather quickly was the redistricting situation. Why wasn’t this taken care of a couple years ago even? This was supposed to happen shortly after the census.
Yup. This was addressed a couple of years ago. We did bring this issue forward to the council. It was raised by Councilor Gibbs the concern. It was explained then what the process was and what the constraints were and even then the council approved the commission for redistricting. At the end of the day the city’s charter we believe is slightly flawed in the sense that it’s saying the city needs to create and change this right after the census. It’s not feasible to do that. The timing is a bit off in that sense. We still need census data to be altered and changed by New York state. Based on that new census data the county then goes through their redistricting process and then the city typically would piggyback off of the county’s work. That has been what we’ve done for a while now. When it comes down to it the work that was done is politically agnostic and it should remain politically agnostic. Otherwise we get into this debate that we’re having now. I don’t know if it’s a mountain or a molehill on this one and it does not make sense why the controversy continues for something like this. It really is not a controversial issue. It doesn’t need to be anyway.
In the last Common Council meeting there was discussion as to whether the council and the city was going to move forward on this and basically the decision was we’re going to discuss this at the next work session.
Sure. I’m assuming that the council will put forth a resolution to create a new commission. Fine if that’s what they want to do. There are federal laws that are obligating the city to do this. But from the city charter’s perspective we’ve followed what the city charter says. We created a commission. We put forth a recommendation for a boundary change. The council voted it down, ceremonially but not officially. But said that they were not going to consider it for the regular meeting so it was withdrawn. They can come back and they can create a new commission if they want and that’s fine.
Mayor Rosenquest, I haven’t heard much of an update lately on the Durkee Street DRI. That had been under litigation. What’s the status there?
Right now we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to make a jurisdictional decision. Based on the Appellate Court there was a 3 -2 decision. Typically if there’s a 3-2- decision there’s an as of right to the Court of Appeals. But we’re still waiting on them to make that decision. I don’t know why it’s taking so long. I don’t know why this case in general has taken so long in each level of court. But I do want to make this clear, and I’ve tried to make this clear before, this has nothing to do at this point this has nothing to do with the development itself. This has everything to do with what the SEQR process in New York state says and the rights given to municipalities, like ours, lead agencies like ours, the right to make some environmental determinations. That’s what at question. Now what that means is it’s not only the city of Plattsburgh’s rights that are at state, it’s all of New York state municipalities rights that are at stake. There was a split decision on the Court of Appeals and I believe that’s the reason why. Those judges understood the SEQR process. And so really what we’re waiting on is for the court to make this jurisdictional decision. If it says it’s not within our jurisdiction then it’s done. There are no more court cases to follow through. But we believe that they will do the right thing. We believe that they will take a look at this and understand that this is beyond just our small little project. And NYCOM will also take a look at how they can provide support via an amicus brief to the court for this project because they too understand that this is well beyond impact to the city of Plattsburgh.
Mayor Rosenquest as you look at your future do you plan to stay involved in politics at all?
Of course, to be honest that’s just who I am. I have not ruled out lower office either. I know that there’s an option to run for a ward seat. That is something I am weighing heavily right now. I don’t know if that’s going to pan out or not. But I don’t feel like the 10 – 15 hours a week as a councilor would encroach into my goals of improving my relationship with my family and spending more time with Myles and spending more time in my business. I’m not ruling that out. But I know it’s a little bit unconventional for a mayor to become then a councilor. I could run as soon as this fall. I don’t know, again, I’m looking at some options and I’ll weigh those options
