PLATTSBURGH — Daniel Lennon is one of two candidates hoping to win the Democratic nomination for this year’s City of Plattsburgh’s mayoral race.
Lennon, 29, a Clinton County assistant district attorney, will be facing off against fellow Democrat Wendell Hughes in the primary June 25.
Early voting for the primary starts Saturday, June 15.
On the pending criminal investigation against him and if there have been any updates since it was first announced last month, Lennon said:
“No updates, as we know of. Still haven’t been made aware of what the details of the investigation are, haven’t been made aware of what, if any, allegations exist. If there comes a time, we’ll respond to them, but what I can do now is just assure the people of Plattsburgh that I’ve done nothing wrong.”
(Lennon has been suspended from his position at the Clinton County’s DA’s office pending the investigation. Neither Plattsburgh City Police nor State Police have commented on the investigation.)
On his plans for improving infrastructure and housing in the city, Lennon said:
“There’s a lot of infrastructure needs throughout the city. I hear it all the time walking door to door but I’ve experienced it myself; I fractured my ankle in a pothole on South Peru Street back in February before I entered this race.”
“The infrastructure throughout the city, to be frank, we have a Department of Public Works that is working tirelessly and they are strapped, too. They have a lot of obligations that they have to meet ever since a previous administration cut a lot of departments and people have since been spread thin in their obligations so it’s becoming harder to tackle their tasks.”
“That’s the problem with the lack of development. When we don’t have development, we shorten our tax base, it becomes impossible for us to have full, flourishing, thriving departments with lots of employees that are paid well and able to accomplish all of their tasks.”
“So we don’t want to cut services, we don’t want to cut employment, but we want to be able to do that without extrapolating the burden on taxpayers. So the way we do that is we broaden our tax base with development, residential and commercial, and when it comes to infrastructure needs right now, … we have sewer lines that need to be repaired in the near future and so infrastructure is definitely a necessity at this point, but we need to be able to fund it and the way that we can fund infrastructure repairs is through broadening our tax base.”
“One location that I think we could see some development (for housing) is right off of Rugar off of Reeves Lane … if we could get 20 acres of residential development there, that would be fantastic. and that doesn’t necessarily need to be residential; we could have commercial, we could have recreational opportunities there.”
On the city’s proposed hotel development project at the harborside property that failed last year, Lennon said:
“I still am gung ho in getting that hotel development because in my conversations with the developer, they’re still willing to come to the table, they still want to invest in Plattsburgh. and I know that there’s some question about whether or not it’s the right deal for the City of Plattsburgh. Well you have to have that conversation with the developer to know whether or not it’s the right deal. I’ve had that conversation with the developer and it seems like the right deal to me and it’s not just because I’ve met with the developer, I’ve met with the city Chamberlain and gone over the details of the development.”
On if he is concerned the city now has an anti-development reputation, Lennon said:
“As much as the city may not want to confront it, the fact of the matter is this: we’ve got the DRI grant that’s up in limbo in the court of appeals, we had the Restore New York grant application fail. The state is not going to look favorably on the City of Plattsburgh in the near future, but with a fresh face, maybe they will.”
“With a new city council and a new city mayor — one that is constantly pushing and seeking opportunities from state funding — they might recognize, hey, this is a group of new city government. They are eager to get development in their area and they’re eager to use state funds to do it. I think we should reward that. That’s kind of why I pushed for the Restore New York grant application.”
On his plans to be fiscally responsible with the city’s finances and budget if he were to be elected, Lennon said:
“When it comes to the budget, the biggest thing that you have to do as the mayor is you have to rely on the expertise of your finance department and really want to have a conservative finance department and one that can oversee the entire city departments, one that holds all of the city departments to account because we don’t want that to run rampant.”
“Being a mayor and being a leader is that you have to be able to delegate tasks that you have experts in. One of them would be the city finance department and relying on their expertise to make sure that you have the budget and then going through it with them and asking the questions of why is this here? Why is that there?”
“That kind of level of inquiry and thoroughness is absolutely necessary to make sure that you are spending money the right way and not going over budget or having certain departments go over budget.”
“I don’t want to say that the chamberlain would be my right hand man, but essentially, they have to be to a certain extent, because you have a $60-plus million dollar budget that you have to manage on top of the 220-plus employees. So you have to make sure that you’re doing it the right way.”
On his ability to work with the six-person Common Council, Lennon said:
“The biggest thing is having an open line of communication with the city councilors, and being fair and upfront with them from the get go and that means any time an idea comes up and comes to mind, you have to get them on the phone or text or email, whatever it may be and let them know what you’re thinking and explain your process, explain how you got to that idea why it makes sense to you. and if it doesn’t make sense to them, you just have a conversation about how we can meet in the middle and come to a resolution and you would want them to do the same to you.”
“I don’t know what the lines of communication are with the current mayor and the city councilors, but … I would want to be able to speak to them daily about how things are going; what your ideas are, telling them what you learned that day; and just being respectful of the fact that they might disagree with you, because at the end of the day, no two people are going to have the exact same ideas.”
On improving recreation in the city, Lennon said:
“One of the more common concerns I hear when I go door to door and talk to people of the city is that they feel like there’s nothing for the kids to do, and it’s not just the kids that would benefit from recreational opportunities. Recreational opportunities should be for everybody: children, adults, teenagers, elderly … you want to be able to make sure that they’re active too.”
“The abolition of the recreation department back in 2017 left this gigantic void in the City of Plattsburgh and my view of it is that that did not need to happen. We did not need to get rid of the recreation department. It’s a low cost department to run.”
“We have great city employees as is but the fact of the matter is that they’re strapped and they’re spread so far thin that we need to create departments that are specific in certain areas and certain expertise. I said earlier about relying on experts, where you’d want somebody that would be a recreational leader that would be an expert in that field alone. So that way, their only obligation is focusing on recreation and I would like to see a rec department come back. I’d also like to see a rec center come back to the City of Plattsburgh … it doesn’t necessarily need to be developed on the old City Beach location. Frankly, I think we have the plot of land down at the waterfront that’s actually not a bad opportunity either.”