The Green Party is prepared to run three candidates in this November’s elections for various local offices. Local Businessman Frank Cetera will try to win the 2nd district seat on the Common Council.
Cetera says he wants more workers and contractors to have wages they could live on. He wants to expand the city's living wage ordinance, which now covers only city employees and contractors.
“We would expand that to all contractors who are working with the city for instance. We would also hope to expand that to other businesses and corporations that are currently receiving tax breaks from the city. There are lots of developers such as Destiny and COR that's working on the inner harbor. Not only do we want to see them hire locally, but we also want to see them hire locally at a living wage”
Cetera is also a community activist on the West Side of Syracuse. He’s founder of the Alchemical Nursery, an urban gardening organization. His most recent project is a garden on Gifford Street on the West Side. As a city councilor he’d try to stop oil-carrying trains from moving through the 2nd District.
“Bomb trains. Or the Petroleum crude oil trains that are coming through our city directly adjacent to our neighborhoods like Tipp Hill. Directly adjacent to the inner harbor. Directly adjacent to the Near Westside. They are called bomb trains because they literally explode if there are derailments. Anybody within half a mile on either side of those tracks is within a blast zone.”
Cetera is a certified New York State Small Business Advisor with an office on North Salina Street. He says the Green Party is working to address the underlying causes of economic inequality at the local and national level. He says a Green on the Common Council could bring ideas like reducing poverty to the mainstream.
Right now, the seat Cetera is running for is held by Chad Ryan.
Other Green Party candidates are Raymond Blackwell, who is running for the Syracuse City School Board, and Howie Hawkins, a hopeful for Syracuse City Auditor.
