Clinton County Assistant District Attorney Dan Lennon is running for mayor of Plattsburgh. The 29-year-old quit his job to campaign, saying he wants to avoid any conflicts of interest. In an interview in front of City Hall, Lennon tells WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley Plattsburgh needs a younger perspective in City Hall:
I have a vision. I have a plan. The city’s at a crossroads at this point. We have an opportunity to make some very big decisions in terms of development, progress and public service here. And I don’t think that anybody is running at this point that has a vision or a plan like I do and I want to see the city prosper.
When you say that Plattsburgh is at a crossroads, what exactly do you mean? What are those crossroads?
So at this point we do have an opportunity to put some big businesses here. I mean, I’m talking about that hotel development. That’s one of my biggest priorities here is I want to push that and I think that we can work with Common Council. We can come to a consensus and we have to work together to make sure that we can do what’s right by the city. You talk to most of the constituents out here I would say you poll maybe, every single one, you get about 90 percent in support of that hotel development. It would bring great business to the area and it’s actually us using that beautiful space that we have. We’ve got to take advantage of our lakefront property and we’re not doing it. And we’re putting in the groundwork at this point, but I really want to see us take advantage of it.
You work in the District Attorney’s office. What qualifies you to be mayor? The mayor also has to deal budgets and personnel. So as your background as District Attorney, what’s your qualification to be mayor?
That’s a great point and I appreciate that you asked that question. As an Assistant District Attorney, a lot of my role is case management, working with witnesses, speaking to people. Doing what’s right. Doing what’s hard. Now, that’s a very good point that I have to, you know, deal with the ins and outs of the budget as a mayor and that’s something that I’m going to work with. I’ve already taken the proactive steps in reviewing the budget myself. Mayor Rosenquest has made it available to every single person running for public office. He’s allowing us to look at the books and go over it with him. I’m taking advantage of that because I take this seriously. We need fiscal responsibility. The taxpayers have too much of a burden at this point and we need some good sensible leadership and I’m going to put in all the work I can.
Obviously there’s only Democratic candidates so far in the campaign. What sets you apart from the other candidates?
A plan. An actual plan. A vision. A vision for this city. I have three priorities: public safety. I work with law enforcement every single day as an Assistant District Attorney. I see the needs of the city. I see what the city needs in terms of public safety. I said it in my press release that there’s an influx of drug crimes in the area. It’s really just a quality-of-life issue and I want to be able to support public safety. I want to support the police. I want to support the fire department, first response teams. All those things are critical at this point. My other priority of course is recreation. I think it’s important. We owe it to our youth to make recreation a high priority. And the third issue: housing and development. I already talked a little bit about the hotel. But, you know, we have about 69 rent or owned properties in the building and the median, I want to say the median household income in the city is about $55,000. About a fifth of the city is below the poverty rate and our average rent is $940. We’ve got to start looking at better ways to figure out how we’re going to solve this issue for housing and development.
Lennon was then asked how he would approach controversial issues and build consensus with the city council.
“My view of the mayor is that there’s both a formal capacity, you know you’re the convening, you’re the CEO of the city. There’s also the moral capacity of the mayor. The moral capacity of the mayor needs to work with the Common Council, come up with a vision, a policy and whip those votes you need to get people on board. And I do think that there’s a little bit of a lack of candor in some of the council meetings. I was disheartened to see how short the last council meeting was because it’s taxpayers’ dollars that we’re dealing with here. And as mayor I would be taking the time to work with every single council member. If they have a concern, we’re going to hash that out before the council meeting and we’re going to talk about this and we’re going to come to an agreement and we’re going to make sure that we can work together so that way we can come up with something before we get right to the council meeting and then everything blows up.”
The city’s Crete Memorial Civic Center was torn down last year and Lennon was asked what should be done with the site.
“It’s sad to see that the Crete had to be demolished. But I do understand it was a public safety risk and I do understand that there was a risk to the safety of our children and you’ve got to look out for that. I want to bring back the recreation department, I can tell you that much. That would be a top priority is bringing back the recreation department. In terms of what we’re going to do with that, the property over where the Crete Center used to be, there’s a lot of things we can do with that at this point. An amphitheater would be great. I mean I’m talking about hosting concerts, things like that. We could have concerts. We could have little league games. Anything like that. There’s so much use for that property. But the first thing that we’d have to do is a feasibility study. We’d have to see what we can do in terms of like what market we could attract with that property because we don’t want to just build something and have a bunch of empty seats. We want to bring people here. We want to take advantage of what the Lake City can provide.”
Outgoing Mayor Chris Rosenquest, a one-term Democrat, has appointed a committee to study the possibility of changing to a city manager form of government. Lennon weighed in on the idea.
“I think it would actually be a great idea. I think it’s a great option at this point and it would be up to the voters. Now, Pat you mentioned this, I’m an Assistant District Attorney. I don’t have experience with the budget. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to work my butt off to figure out how to do that and I’m going to work with Mayor Rosenquest and advisors in doing so. But that I think would require me to endorse the idea of a city manager. I think it’s a great idea. A lot of metropolitan cities, I think there’s about 69 or 63 throughout the state that do have it, and it works well. There’s a couple cities that it’s not working well in but there’s a good number of cities throughout the state that have implemented the councilor-manager system and it’s been working very well.”
The Plattsburgh city Democratic committee endorsed Lennon’s challenger Wendell Hughes, a Clinton County Legislator, in the June 25th primary.
Lennon said he would remain in the primary and also plans to seek the Working Families Party endorsement.
