Mayors making plans for cities
Projects are lined up for each
Watervliet Mayor Michael Manning and Cohoes Mayor Shawn Morse both are looking forward to what 2018 has to offer for their respective cities.
“Some of the highlights of 2017 were that we got a lot of infrastructure stuff done and looking forward to 2018 we’re hoping to continue that,” said Manning in an interview last week. “Last year we did a lot of paving, we did a major water infrastructure project and rehabbed the Civic Center.”
Morse is also optimistic about the direction that the Spindle City will be move in throughout 2018.
“I’m certainly looking forward to 2018,” said Morse in an interview last week. “I think Holly Brown running [Cohoes Music Hall] is about as exciting as it gets.”
Manning and Morse both also mentioned some recent grand funding that will help cover costs of several projects throughout the city in 2018.
“[In 2018] we’re going to be finishing work on the senior center and the library,” said Manning. “We are executing a grant to reformat City Hall, so it’s more user
friendly, right now we’ve got offices that people need to get in and out of on different floors, so we’re going to try to move anything that people need to come in for standard business, we’re going to try to move that all down to the first floor. In the CFA grants, this year we were awarded one to rehab our Cultural Center, which is across from City Hall. Looking forward to 2018, we should have completed major projects on all of our municipal buildings.”
“The city applied for grants based off of all of the investments we made in 2017 and because of those investments we have secured $2 million to continue with improvements and a complete overhaul to our Canal Square Park, continuing down Remsen Street with all new side- walks and new road-scaping and repaving,” added Morse.
Manning said that he does have some other goals for 2018 that he hopes the city officials will be able to accomplish. Manning said another visible change that he believes will be more noticeable in 2018 is the changes the city previously made to its finances after the city was labeled by the state Comptrollers Office in 2017 as being the secondmost fiscally stressed city in the state, and after the City Council approved a budget for 2018 that came with a 15.8 percent tax increase.
“[Our] Fire [Union] contract has not been agreed upon yet and the police expired at the end of [2017], so two more goals for [2018] are to have police and fire contracts settled and in place and hopefully [ being] able to avoid a prolonged battle there,” said Manning. “Another highlight from 2017 that will be visible once we see the numbers and more so in 2018 is that we’ve made significant changes to our financial system that allows us to track more real time spending and overspending.”
Both mayors also provided a New Year’s resolution that they hope comes true for their communities.
“My New Year’s resolution for the city is for all of our residents to have a very healthy and prosperous year in 2018,” said Morse. “It’s really all about [the residents] and that’s what I work for everyday, to give them the best life that we can and that Cohoes becomes an All-America City.”
“We would like our residents, our visitors and our businesses here to have a good 2018 and as a customer service center, which is what the city government really is, we hope to be able to provide the support and services needed to assist everyone in having a good 2018,” added Manning.