A challenging inaugural year
New mayor’s efforts to bridge political divisions in city drew both plaudits and criticism
Mayor Meg Kelly made it clear at her first state of the city address that she was unlike previous city leaders. After her message to the people, she stepped aside to allow each City Council member to give a speech.
Some hailed the unusual move as an olive branch to fellow elected officials locked in a 3-2 divide on the City Council for years. Ellen Kiehl, a Democratic Committee member, said the gesture led to a “a high degree of comity and civility” on display.
Critics of Kelly, however, saw a gesture of abdication, ceding authority to the senior council members who spent years repressing Kelly’s predecessor, Joanne Yepsen.
One former mayor, Ray Watkins, said this showed she is not acting independently. “The council members are steering her actions, not the people,” he said.
Either way, it’s been a tough first year for the city’s chief executive. A fire caused $10
million worth of damage to City Hall. In another matter, the public has renewed its call for an investigation into a young man’s death in 2013 after a police pursuit that left him gravely injured.
Voters rejected by a 2-1 margin a proposed city charter revision the mayor supported. Just before the vote, she leaped into a public battle with her former boss, Mayor Yepsen, over the long-disputed city charter. Yepsen criticized Kelly’s creation of a charter commission comprising only the city’s most powerful elected officials and their appointees. Kelly said Yepsen’s criticism “reassures me that what I did was right.”
Kelly tangled with Commissioner of Accounts John Franck over his resolution to freeze elected officials’ salaries at $14,500, complaining her low salary was “ridiculous” for “a hard-working female mayor.”
Those who support
Kelly say they are grateful that she quelled years of City Council acrimony, advanced plans for a City Center parking garage that had been stuck in litigation for years, and banished a controversial gun show and sale from the City Center.
“Overall, I think she has done a really good job,” Franck said. “She especially worked with the various commissioners and keeping the city council meetings in order and stopped some of the infighting. She has brought civility to our meetings.”
Most politicians would relish expounding on accomplishments and even casting their defeats as valiant struggles for what is right. Not Kelly. The Democrat prefers to keep the press at bay, sometimes even hanging up on them. She didn’t want to comment on banning the gun show at the City Center.
She hung up on a Times Union reporter when asked about City Hall renovations, saying the question “was inappropriate.” She wouldn’t discuss the charter commission.
She declined multiple requests to sit down with the Times Union to discuss her first year in office.
“I am not willing to do this story,” Kelly wrote in an email after several attempts to reach her. “I will be giving my State of the City in January. My first year will be covered.”
Kelly was a Republican before joining Democrat Yepsen’s administration in 2016 as deputy mayor and won the city Democratic Committee’s unanimous nomination for mayor after a year as Yepsen’s deputy. During the 2017 campaign, she told the Times Union she supported construction of a parking garage for the City Center in an area other than the legally disputed lot near the Mouzon House. She also backed more affordable housing and changing the city’s century-old commission form of government.
When she won the top job last November, Kelly got 54 percent of the 9,102 votes cast. She beat Republican Mark Baker even though he had more money and donors, state Board of Elections filings showed.
In office, she was applauded by supporters of banning gun shows at the City Center and creating a gun buy-back program. City Center Executive Director Ryan Mcmahon said the end of sales and the buyback program complemented each other.
In a March 11 letter from the Democratic Committee Chair Courtney Deleonardis congratulated Kelly and the council for their votes to ban the shows with “such quick and whole-hearted action on this divisive question.”
But the honeymoon with some supporters had already soured. A week earlier Kelly formed a commission to update the city charter, with proposed changes to be put to city voters as a referendum item in the November elections.
“This group is the people who work inside of City Hall and know the commission form of government and know where deficiencies are and will look at this thoroughly and update it into the 21st century,” Kelly said in her March 6 announcement.
A November 2017 referendum was defeated by 10 votes out of 9,000. Right after that, charter change advocates, who suggested reforming the city government to be run by a city manager and expanded council, were involved in court action aimed at a recount. Others considered gathering signatures to force another referendum in November 2018. Kelly’s move to have her own charter referendum in 2018 thwarted the change advocates’ petition effort.
The chair of the disbanded 2017 charter commission, Bob Turner, called Kelly’s move an effort to block those seeking to change the commission form of government. Ann Trainor, who serves on a committee that advises Kelly on policies for senior citizens, said Kelly’s move was “sneaky.”
“I thought she would carry on what Joanne Yepsen was doing,” the longtime Saratogian said. “A few weeks after the election, she went to the other side. I think she must have felt bullied by the council.”
Watkins, who led the city from 1974 to 1979 and supported changing the commission form of government, said the defeat of Kelly’s plan to update the charter rather than discard it for a more modern form of government was a referendum on her leadership.
“I feel that it was a wrong, undemocratic action. I think she lost support,” said Watkins.
Kelly presides over City Council meetings with a cool control, quickly telling public commenters to sit down if they speak beyond their bell-monitored two minutes.
“There is no BS with Meg and I appreciate that,” Franck said. “Meg is a strong negotiator, similar to (former Mayor) Scott Johnson, strong-willed, but willing to give in on things to negotiate .”
Kelly’s fans say she has accomplished much, including the Flat Rock Centre parking garage plan. Kelly is credited with uniting the City Council, the City Center and the Mouzon House on a reconfiguration of the five-story garage in the same controversial location.
“The business community loves the fact that she’s collaborated with all of the other commissioners,” said Chamber of Commerce President Todd Shimkus, who is supportive of the garage plan. “She understands the power of the mayor’s office is limited and that to get things done you have to work well with the others.”
Perhaps her biggest challenge was last summer’s fire in City Hall. An Aug. 17 lightning strike sparked a small blaze on the third floor, and the extensive water damage that followed on all floors after it was doused. Kelly, with guidance from the city’s emergency plan, helped quickly steer the move of the city’s operation to the Recreation Center on Vanderbilt Street.
“It is easy to imagine a scenario where necessary functions might have been unavailable for weeks or months on end, considering the scope of the disaster,” Kiehl said. “Instead, within just three days or so, all essential services were back and available.”
During that time, Kelly barred other city officials from answering questions from the media about the fire, and a news release from her office told the media “the mayor is the point of information to the public.”
Kelly is not answering questions on the controversy swirling around the death of Darryl Mount, a mixed-raced young man who city police said was injured when he fell from a scaffolding after they pursued him into an alley on Aug. 31, 2013.
He died nine months later. Mount’s mother, Patty Jackson, doesn’t believe the police account. She says the extensive injuries to her son’s face would not have been caused by a fall. At the time, she and others
urged police to conduct an internal investigation. But an August Times Union analysis of court records show that investigation was never done, despite the fact that police Chief Gregory Veitch told the Saratogian newspaper it was.
Since the August article, friends, family and community leaders have renewed their demand for answers from City Hall, staging a protest over the summer and a November press conference with activists and religious leaders that was followed by the group speaking at a City Council meeting. Commissioner of Public Safety Peter Martin has formed a citizen’s group to discuss police matters, but the group has no investigative powers. Hollyday Hammond, a co-chair of MLK Saratoga, which is one of many community groups involved in refocusing attention on Mount’s death said she doesn’t see Kelly as initiating anything in the Mount matter.
“We would like to see her take a strong position on this and be more vocal,” Hammond said.
Kelly has not been reticent about the gun debate in the city school district. When the school board voted to disarm its grounds monitors, parents with students in the district — which also includes parts
of Wilton, Milton and Greenfield — opposed the move. The City Council passed a resolution asking the school board to reverse its decision. While she and the council received applause for the unanimous vote, others thought she overstepped her authority.
Barbara Thomas of the League of Women Voters told the mayor and council that “it’s not appropriate to try to tell the school board that covers a much wider area than the city of Saratoga Springs what to do.”
Kelly has yet to inspire unity in a community still divided over the city charter. Carl Zeilman, chairman of the Saratoga County Republicans, said that GOP is in a good position to take back the office in November 2019.
“We do have people that have reached out who have a strong record of fiscal conservatism,” Zeilman said. “At this point, we are just starting a dialogue.”
Richard Sellers, an outspoken supporter of the commission form of government, will likely vote for the incumbent.
“Mayor Kelly works collegially and cooperatively with the entire City Council, a noticeable improvement generating better results,” Sellers said.
Franck admits Kelly’s work has caused some hard feelings in the Democratic Committee, but he gives her high marks, saying: “She bridged the gap that existed on the
City Council, working with everyone including (Commissioners) Michele (Madigan) and Skippy (Scirocco), to the dismay of a lot of people . ... I also understand the animosity with the charter people . ... But I think she has done a fabulous job.”