Council candidate holds Q& A session
WATERVLIET, N. Y. » With less than twoweeks until three Democrats face off in a primary election for a vacant City Council seat, one candidate thought it would be a good idea for residents to hear the candidates face off in a debate.
City Council candidate Peg Germano said she recently sent letters to candidates Jeff Foster and FrankMcGrouty to participate in a debate at the senior center.
However, the two other candidates never formally responded back to Germano, and neither Foster nor McGrouty ended up attending the event Wednesday night.
Instead of cancelling the event, Germano decided to set- up the meeting room in the senior center for a possible three person debatewith over two dozen community members in attendance.
But when the clock struck 7 p. m., and the other candidates weren’t in attendance, Germano decided she would then participate in a question- and- answer session with residents.
Germano spent more than an hour discussing several issues that residents are concerned about, including cleaning the reservoir, city concerts, street cleaning, vacancies, the budget, bringing business back to the city, overtime, curfews, parks, increasing the size of the council, and also Germano’s annual trips to her Florida home.
The first question asked by a resident Wednesday night was why the other two candidates would not want to participate in this event before the primary election on Sept. 12?
“Letme tell you, Iwanted a debate, a lot ofpeoplehad asked for a debate or at the very least question and answers like this,” Germano said, as she answered the first question. “I went to the League of Women Voters, they host national and state level debates and they are very professional and they have it all organized very well. I called them to see if they were willing to do one inWatervliet and theywere actually quite eager to do one here.”
On Thursday morning, McGrouty said that he did not want to participate in the debate with Germano for two main reasons.
“The Democratic Chairman stated that there would be no debate, so that was one reason,” explained Mc Grouty. “Peg decided to try to set this up on her own, and I really didn’t want to get into an argument with her at a debate.”
Foster shared similar concerns.
“I had told Mrs. Germano that I would love to do a debate, but I wanted the Democratic Committee to do the debate,” said Foster. “I got a hold of Frank and he said he wasn’t going to do it unless theDemocrat Committee was going to do it, so I had said the same thing; plus, [ there was] the fact that my daughter turned 16 yesterday and we had a party scheduled for her.”
The next question for Germano had to do with what she would do if she was elected to the position.
“I’ve been looking at a lot of different things,” said Germano. “Garbage is a big one; I’ve talked about the value of recycling a lot. When we go to the garbage dump and unload it, it costs us $ 52.02 a ton for garbage, now we pay that for garbage, butwe get paid to recycle and that’s one way to make more money. If everybody was to recycle more than they do, we could make some money there. We’re [ at] about 10 percent of our garbage [ being] recycled right now.”
Another topic of discussion, and one that Germano is passionate about, had to do with the reservoir located in the town of Guilderland, which she claims has been neglected for several years.
“Our reservoir is in terrible condition and I actually have pictures of it inmy car because I show it to people,” said Germano. Germano also said the city’s budget practices haven’t been good for the past several years.
“The city budget practices just suck,” said Germano. “I think we need to handle it a lot more professionally than we do.”
Germano also brought up another topic of discussion that has become a popular question during her campaign: her yearly trips to her home in Florida.
“I saidwell I’ll come back for every council meeting and I’ll come back whenever I’m needed,” said Germano. “After seeing how really bad things are ... my thoughts are that I’ll probably spend way more of my time here. I’m not going to say that I won’t go to Florida, because I own a home down there, so I have to go down, but I won’t go down for three months straight anymore.”
Germano, Foster or McGrouty will challenge Republican candidate Andrew Williams for the City Council seat during theNovember election.