Plattsburgh’s Democratic Mayor Chris Rosenquest announced on February 2nd that he will not seek a second four-year term. Since then, several candidates have entered the race to lead the northern New York city.
The latest is Independent Iris Cain. Originally from the Midwest, he worked in New York City until making a career change during the pandemic and moving to Plattsburgh two and a half years ago. The 28-year-old eco-friendly funeral director and entrepreneur has formulated a plan for the city he calls The Plattsburgh Initiative. He tells WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley as a downtown resident, he thinks a number of issues are being ignored:
It's very frustrating for someone who lives here and I bought my first home here and with wanting this place to be as good as it can be. And even seeing my neighbors with their frustrations, it's kind of emboldened me to step up and be a representative of my community. And I've seen that a lot of people here feel like their thoughts and opinions on, you know, the state of things here just isn't getting to the top. The decision making is not incorporating their needs and concerns into these final decisions. So I really want to be kind of a mouthpiece for my community and really be a representative to help get their concerns and agendas pushed through so people feel like they are heard and their needs and wants are finally being addressed as a community. It's not just ideas from one person. It's a body of people being represented.
Your website has said that you have a vision to revive the city. Is that part of it, the issues that you mentioned not being addressed or talked about? Is that part of the vision?
Absolutely. One of my neighbors said it best. He said Plattsburgh is like a donut. You know when you think of the Center City, there's just not enough happening down there. We always focus on a lot of our policies that affect the ring of Plattsburgh. But when you think of specifically the heart of downtown, there's just not enough happening to attract people to you know, the area. And when you think about it, historically downtown has been such a lively place and over the years we've just seen a steep decline. And even since I've been here, you know, in just this short period of time I've seen the decline myself. So it's really about getting some new footing downtown and cleaning up the space and bringing in new opportunities for entrepreneurs and just making the space more aesthetically pleasing and just getting more reasons for people to go downtown and support our small businesses here. I just don't feel the city is doing anywhere near enough to support these people that are willing to invest in our community. Why are we not investing in that?
Iris Cain, what are the key initiatives that you plan to put forth during your campaign for mayor?
When it comes to any project that I take on, I tend to see things as a finished project. So I have a lot of fleshed out plans. A couple of the bigger ones are we really need to be a hub of culture and commerce here. And I think that being able to accommodate some larger entertainment would really drive tourism to the area. It would really help with the shortage of recreation. So we have the space where the Crete Center was. I would love to work with all parties involved and get something put there. You know, another one too that's very interesting to me is living downtown people don't talk enough about how blessed we are to have these students. However, there's certainly a behavior issue with, you know, the college presence here that doesn't get addressed. So I want to work very closely with SUNY and now Clinton Community College has merged with them on campus down here. We're going to have more students than ever. I want to address behavioral issues. I want to work with them and provide the students more opportunities to get involved with the community and I want the community to really work with the student body because they are such a huge, huge asset to our community. And I think lastly a large idea of mine is I really want to coddle the small businesses downtown. They are literally the bread and butter of who we are as a community. And all these small businesses that we have are great but there are so many vacant storefronts and it's very frustrating, especially on a weekend, to go and see nobody walking around in our area that could be, you know, a potential hotspot for tourism and commerce. So I'm proposing a entrepreneurial business incubator program essentially to give resources to business owners that want to start their businesses and pitching a pipeline program with the city to help incentivize landlords to have their spaces lease ready and to essentially be a matchmaker for businesses that want to start these small opportunities to get their get their business going. We want people with big ideas to want to come to Plattsburgh to invest in, you know, all these old buildings that we have too that are just being underutilized or vacant. We're not taking advantage of it. We're not capitalizing on these things. And the idea of a waterfront hotel to me is a no brainer. We need to have more of a luxury setting to bring people in and make people fall in love with Plattsburgh the same way that I got off the plane the first time and I completely loved it here. I saw so much potential and I saw what it would look like if things were successfully run here. I saw all the potential and all the opportunities here that we're just not grabbing at. So I really hope that if I become elected, I have the opportunity to really utilize this and really reignite passion with my community because I think a lot of people are, they've lost touch with their love for Plattsburgh and I want to undo that. I want them to fall in love with their community again.
Iris Cain, as I looked at your biography, there was no indication that you've ever held office before. So how are you qualified to run a city and craft a budget that's in the tens-of-millions of dollars?
You got it. So you know, a big thing with my previous career, I was essentially a business manager/regional trainer/I mean I wore many hats with a huge corporation down in New York City. It's an international corporation. Essentially I was in charge of running hundreds of stores throughout New York City's five boroughs. And I was no stranger to working with huge numbers and having to kind of analyze the information being put in front of me to make educated and coordinated decisions to increase our business health and to make decisions that would essentially affect our business firsthand. So I'm no stranger to looking at these intimidating numbers, some people may find as intimidating. There's a lot of opportunities for growth here, especially with our budget. I've looked through anything that's available to the public and there's a lot of interesting things: strange amounts of overtime and unusual spending habits and things that we can really cut out and adjust. And as well, as, you know, a huge amount of grants just sitting there in the queue waiting for somebody to grab them. New York state is plentiful with those and I don't know why we're not doing more to secure these grants for our community. So I'm not in the political sphere. But as a businessman I see how to invest in Plattsburgh in a way that is entrepreneurial and I think that is what we need right now. A lot of my political adversaries at this time are, you know, within the political sphere. They're calling experience. But my question is, that's what's gotten us here. Why would we want to go back to, you know, why are we allowing people that would want to correct their own problems, essentially? You know, I really want to fix that and as an outsider I see the problems that they may not see and as a data analyst I'm able to really look at all the information we have here to make decisions that matter. I'm running on information that is solid and factual.
Independent Iris Cain will face former Republican Mayor Don Kasprzak and the winner of the Democratic primary between Clinton County Legislator Wendell Hughes and Assistant District Attorney Dan Lennon in the November general election.
