Mayors express optimism at virtual event
REGION, N.Y. » A “Meet The Mayors” discussion, hosted by the Rensselaer County Chamber was held virtually, Thursday morning.
There was optimism abound that this might be the last virtual installment of what is typically an in-person panel talk. Featured on the quartet panel were Green Island Mayor Ellen McNultyRyan, Rensselaer Mayor Michael Stammel, Troy Mayor Patrick Madden, and Watervliet Mayor Charles Patricelli.
The four mayors touched on how their respective municipalities have weathered the pandemic and their hopes for a return to normalcy on the horizon.
“I find myself feeling more optimistic over the past couple of weeks, in part because I was able to get a vaccine. And I read about more and more doses becoming available. We were also delighted to see the COVID relief package pass in Washington, D.C., that’s important to our local communities,” Madden remarked.
“Things are looking up. More and more people are becoming vaccinated. We’re beginning to see, at least in New York, some responsible relaxation of the restrictions,” Madden noted on being able to open up more.
“I have to say that during this COVID I have the utmost respect and appreciation for our employees who have really come through. And all of the other mayors, we’ve all worked together on things,” McNulty-Ryan said.
“I get emotional when I talk about our employees because I’m the smallest municipality here, we have about 50 employees, we had 14 of them that tested positive and 28
were quarantined, so that’s a big part of our workforce. The ones that could do their job from remote worked while they had COVID, and never stopped working and the ones who couldn’t do their job remotely, the rest of their teams pitched in and helped out,” McNultyRyan explained, along with being able to deliver 6,000 meals to seniors.
“Our biggest thing happening here in Green Island right now is Starbuck Island. It’s a $60 million plus project, 268 apartments in it,” McNulty-Ryan noted on construction.
McNulty-Ryan added they have also already booked nine bands for their concert series on Wednesdays in July and August.
“We were going guns blasting in January and February and then all of a
sudden in March like everybody else it was a dayby-day or even an hour-byhour conversation,” Patricelli commented on how Watervliet shifted during the pandemic.
“We all went through the same trials and tribulations and are doing our best now to try and come out of it. I as well had a number of COVID situations last year that came up in my city, trying to adapt to having some employees work from home, other employees who were essential to be here definitely took a toll on my police and fire department for a short period of time,” Stammel noted on making adjustments.
“We’ve gotten through it. I was an advocate for having people do what they need to do on a regular basis as long as they did it safely. We had music in the park and things of that nature to get people out. Amazingly enough, our music in the park was attended
more by seniors than anybody else, they brought their lawn chairs down and separated themselves from everybody else, and really enjoyed the opportunity to get out, so they knew it was important to socialize and I hope we can be able to continue doing that,” Stammel added on attempting to create more normalcy in the city.
The four mayors also spoke about what they’d like to see as the area moves toward herd immunity through vaccination.
“One of the things I would love to see happen is at our seniors we do lunches four days a week, Monday through Thursday, and I think our seniors have really missed that,” McNultyRyan opined.
“I’ve been trying to stay away from asking the businesses to support anything except for the ones that are doing very, very well because of the struggles they’re all having, especially the ones that do it all the time, like restaurants and the taverns, they’ve always
been very supportive of a lot of the community programs and activities, so we’ve been really trying to focus on them,” Patricelli said.
“We did a lot of publications for our restaurants in the beginning. We relaxed some of the codes for them to be able to participate like the tent down for the Arsenal City [Tavern], and whatever else we could do for any of the others,” Patricelli noted on keeping businesses afloat.
Patricelli added the city just successfully held its restaurant week and is looking forward to hosting clam fest in another month or so.
“We’ve been in constant communication with the small businesses. As you know, what makes Troy so unique is the number of small businesses and they suffered throughout the past year,” Madden explained.
“We worked with them last summer and last fall to open up our streets for the restaurants, for the brewpubs.
It was a lot of fun to come to downtown Troy on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday night and see the activity, see the streets taken over by people. You get a glimpse of what it would look like if we didn’t have cars, it was very nice,” Madden noted on getting creative with events.
“We’ll be doing that again to the degree that the business community wants to pursue that again this year. We’ve also worked closely with the businesses with small grants to assist them to make modifications to keep their workers and their patrons safe,” Madden added.
“I’d really like to see some across-the-board relaxation of some of the COVID rules and regulations because every time you try to start something up you have a naysayer in the background trying to shut you down because it’s unsafe,” Stammel comments.
“So I’d look for a little bit more consistency from the federal government and the state government to relax some of these COVID rules that will make it easier for us to get out and utilize and kids out on the field and playing sports again. That’s an activity, seeing kids out at schools being able to play sports, that’s an activity, these are activities where people intermingle, talk and participate,” Stammel noted on the importance of having that social interaction with live events and activities.
“Even a lot of public meetings are all done on Zoom now and you don’t get a chance to meet with the public as much as you’d like to face-to-face. That’s when you shine, that’s when your city shines when you can still shake hands and talk to people face to face without a mask on. So I’d like to see some relaxation sooner than later,” Stammel added in hopes of returning to normal in the near future.