Republican Janet Burman officially launched her mayoral campaign with a strong focus on public safety.
Burman says public safety is her number one priority, and accuses city leaders of making the wrong move when they tried to reduce spending because of the pandemic.
The common council and the mayoral administration acted to reduce the Syracuse Police budget by over $6 million. My first action as mayor will be to restore that funding.”
Burman says fire safety needs to be a top priority when the I-81 project gets underway. She says the city should start planning ahead, especially since the closure of fire station 7 on E. Fayette St. in 2014.
Former city attorney Tom Babilon will run for Mayor of Syracuse as a Republican.
“One of the mistakes that I’ve seen every mayor make when they come in is they’ve gotten rid of a large part of the institutional experience in the city,” Babilon said. “They come in and replace all the people that know what they’re doing and what’s going on with their own people.”
He says that can lead to blunders like the recent proposed contract with the Syracuse Police Department, which was not approved by common councilors after they discovered it would cost far more than the Walsh administration estimated. Babilon says another common theme he’s seen is how the city handles businesses of different sizes.