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Jean Kessner Saying 'Good-Bye' to Common Council still Concerned with Crime, Housing

WAER file

As the year ends, so do the Common Council terms of several well-known faces.  Councilor-at-Large Jean Kessner ends an eight-year run.  She hopes she’s remembered more for helping people than for any specific bills or laws she helped pass.

“When you go to ban-the-box or section-8 housing (measures), or any of the other things that we’ve passed, is that we just want to give people opportunity.  We don’t have money to hand out, but we can provide a level playing field.  That’s really, really important to me.” 

Thoughts from Outgoing Councilors All This Week on WAER FM 88.3

She often stood up against more police cameras in neighborhoods, just to pacify residents.

“What I’ve always wanted and advocated for is to have community policing.  If you’re going to put up a camera just to watch people, I don’t want that.  What I want for them is not just to feel safe, but to actually be safe.  And I never thought that got a fair airing.”

Kessner helped create and support the Syracuse Land Bank, to take care over and improve vacant properties.  But she worries current practices might make it ineffective.

“The Land Bank, in my opinion, in order to succeed, cannot be saddled with every bad property in the city, not much of an operating budget, and a very small staff.  There’s always been (a call for) ‘more properties, more properties,’ but what we want is another tool to make the city a more livable place.”

Kessner says she plans to stay active on civic issues.  She couldn’t seek re-election due to term limits.  Democrats Tim Rudd and Khalid Bey won the 2 Councilor-at-Large seats in November’s election.  Tomorrow will hear from Joe Nicoletti as he leaves his time on the Council.  

Chris Bolt, Ed.D. has proudly been covering the Central New York community and mentoring students for more than 30 years. His career in public media started as a student volunteer, then as a reporter/producer. He has been the news director for WAER since 1995. Dedicated to keeping local news coverage alive, Chris also has a passion for education, having trained, mentored and provided a platform for growth to more than a thousand students. Career highlights include having work appear on NPR, CBS, ABC and other news networks, winning numerous local and state journalism awards.
Scott Willis covers politics, local government, transportation, and arts and culture for WAER. He came to Syracuse from Detroit in 2001, where he began his career in radio as an intern and freelance reporter. Scott is honored and privileged to bring the day’s news and in-depth feature reporting to WAER’s dedicated and generous listeners. You can find him on twitter @swillisWAER and email him at srwillis@syr.edu.