The Syracuse NAACP is helping voters get ready for the upcoming primary election. Democrats running for the 129th State Assembly Seat were asked at a recent candidate forum how they would help local residents.
Incumbent Bill Magnarelli started out the forum looking back and explaining how he helped pass measures at the state level to help city schools transform.
“Every single school in the city of Syracuse has been renovated totally. Some of them have been renovated more than once. So I think that had a big bearing on people of color, people who had challenges in their daily lives, being able to come to schools, that were at least facility-wise ready to handle them,” said Magnarelli.
Looking ahead, he says the changing job market needs to support opportunities and shared prosperity, “to make sure … that the people in the city of Syracuse have the education opportunities to make sure they're going to be available for those new jobs.” Magnarelli, who has 28 years tenure in the assembly, also said he supports “workforce development programs across Onondaga County.”
Challenger Maurice ‘Mo’ Brown told the gathering his past work has helped disadvantaged people with their housing needs, “as a member of the Working Families Party, I worked as a member of a coalition statewide that got the housing justice full package passed. It was also what eventually was able to let municipalities opt in to good cause (eviction.”
He said those efforts helped prevent substandard housing and abrupt evictions. The current county legislator said if elected, he’d help build more affordable housing that would help solve lead exposure as well.
“We're seeing a lot of our children have to deal with, you know, if they open their window, their brain takes the same damage as a car crash. Like that's so unfair for that child. And the state of New York has the ability to build housing at scale. When you build housing at scale, it's going to tell landlords, hey, if you don't fix up your properties, if you don't set the bar, we're going to go live here,” said Brown.
He added the efforts are called Invest Syracuse locally and the Social Housing Development Authority at the state level.
Brown faces Magnarelli in the Democratic primary. Early voting starts Saturday, with election day June 23rd.
