The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Mayor Izzo announces reelection plans
Mayor Jacqueline M. Izzo has announced plans to seek reelection for a third fouryear term as Mayor of the City of Rome.
Izzo rehashed some of her administration’s accomplishments over her past two terms and future plans should she win reelection.
“A little over a week ago, I was honored to receive the Republican Party endorsement for a third time as the Republican Party’s nominee in this year’s election for Mayor,” Izzo said in a news release. “Upon election eight years ago, we immediately began building relationships with county, state and federally elected officials as well as various state and federal agencies. These relationships have led to over sixty million dollars in investment in our city. Through strategic investments in building the foundation to increase jobs, housing and business opportunities our city is transforming before our eyes.”
The Downtown Revitalization Initiative has created dramatic improvement to the west side of the downtown superblock area with new restaurants and the relighting of the Capitol Theatre marquee and now the project moves east with the renovation of City Hall, demolition of the Liberty/james Street garage to create a surface parking lot, a summer/fall opening of Copper City Loft and, improving Erie Blvd pedestrian connectivity.
Changes have come to the Griffiss Business and Technology Park. Working together with Mohawk Valley EDGE, the city identified residential housing and amenities as missing pieces to prepare the park for future growth into the next decade.
Aircity Lofts, a $65M mixeduse residential housing/commercial community, was born. Aircity is assisting the city in achieving the goal to build Rome’s residential population. Aircity has led the way for the Woodhaven 250-unit singlefamily housing development to become reality.
“We have a great deal of infrastructure work to complete on the Floyd Avenue corridor in the next years to come with new water and sewer distribution systems, street improvements on Park Drive and Floyd Avenue and eventually a new YMCA on the Floyd Avenue corridor,” Izzo said.
Delta Luxury Apartments has been a great success and Buck Construction began building townhouse units that will be ready for occupancy later this year.
Several years ago, Izzo instituted a 311 reporting app that has been extremely successful in identifying problems from potholes to garbage. Garbage collection has experienced ebbs and flows, but not a consistent working operation week to week.
IZZO’S staff voiced our concerns with CWSI and over the last few weeks, garbage collection has begun promptly at 7:00 am with refuse work completed by 11:30 am. Recycling is then removed in the early afternoon hours.
“Our goal is for CWSI to provide this service consistently without interruption and we are monitoring this daily,” Izzo said.
The mayor spoke to the impact of 2019 bail reform laws on the city.
“Since New York State instituted bail reform, we have seen an unacceptable level of crime related issues in our city and across the state,” Izzo said. “Our police department leaves no stone unturned until the crime is solved and the perpetrator is arrested.
“However, we are not satisfied with the outcome of these cases,” she continued. “Many times the person who committed the crime is released within hours of being arraigned or issued an appearance ticket. We are working internally with other law enforcement agencies to identify issues we can bring to our state and federally elected officials to reverse some of these trends.”
Earlier this year Izzo joined the area’s elected officials to meet with the Superintendent of the NYS Police for a discussion
of other resources available to municipalities through the NYS Police.
Neighborhoods are the lifeblood of a community and Izzo said her administration has been very aggressive in ridding neighborhoods of blight with an aggressive building demolition program and a codes enforcement officer assigned to each city ward.
In the last several years, they have demolished almost 100 properties to make way for greenspace, increased neighborhood parking and in some cases giving the adjoining property owner the ability to acquire an adjoining parcel to increase the value of their real estate investment.
In 2023 the city will further relieve neighborhood blight by demolishing over 20 parcels throughout the city and we are preparing an engineering design to demolish the former Columbus School.
“More importantly through the Real Property Committee, we have sold almost one million dollars of repossessed property resulting in an eight-and-afive million dollar increase to the local property tax assessment,” Izzo said.
Activities abound in the recreation department for Rome youth to take advantage of year round, whether at local parks and playgrounds, inside Kennedy Arena all winter long with ice skating and hockey to a spring/summer facility offering basketball and box lacrosse, outdoor swimming pools and soon a new splash park at Guyer Field, outdoor movies in the summertime and other improvements.
“Quality of life activity is vital and we continue to build bigger and better programs with the addition of a Marketing/events Coordinator to work with our recreation department,” Izzo said.
Very soon, Izzo’s administration will bring our “Walk with Mayor” program indoors to accommodate the cooler weather conditions giving residents the opportunity to speak directly to me and department heads. Also returning will be “Java with Jackie,” informal coffees where residents have the opportunity to interact directly with the mayor. Details of these programs will be announced in the coming weeks.
“People around the state are noticing Rome for the first time in a long time. The interest from a business and economic development standpoint has never been higher for Rome, a far cry from where we were eight years ago,” Izzo said.
On day-one, I pledged that I would continue working as your Mayor and fighting for Rome as long as we’re succeeding and moving forward,” Izzo said. “Today, we are doing that and more — plowing forward and seeing the “New Beginning” we promised, actually come to fruition. But there is so much more work to be done and I know I am the right person for the job at this point in our history.”
Izzo said she anticipates a successful campaign.
“I look forward to knocking on doors in the coming months, hearing from city residents and sharing my vision for a Rome that our young people can return to from college or a trade school to a good paying job, establish their career and raise their family in a community that we can all be proud of for years to come,” she said.