Lysander residents will have two candidates to choose from when filling the town councilor seat left vacant by Brian May in January after May became an Onondaga County Legislator.
James Hickey, a registered Republican, was appointed to fill the vacancy after May’s departure and is now running on the Conservative and Democratic party lines in the upcoming election. His opponent, Russ Johnson, is also a Republican running on the Republican and Independence party lines.
Eagle Newspapers recently interviewed the candidates to get an idea of what each candidate represents. Their answers are featured below:
James Hickey
Community Involvement:
I was appointed to serve on the Town Board of Lysander this past January for 2012. I have also served on the Board of Directors for Beaver Lake, Junior Achievement, The Volunteer Center and I am currently a Cub Scout Leader for my son’s den in Pack 248 of Baldwinsville. My wife and I are very involved with Saint Mary’s Academy where both of our Children attend school.
How do you plan to ease the financial strain on the residents of Lysander?
The board is currently working in several areas to reduce the financial strain. When the new board took office in January, it became apparent that the previous board had not solicited written competitive proposals from 16 out of the 21 professionals who provide many different types of services to the town. These professionals had received payments totaling $1.8 million dollars from Jan. 1, 2010 through Oct. 31, 2011. As a result of this finding, we have implemented a process to receive competitive proposals for these types of services. Through this process we have hired a new town attorney and we have hired a staff engineer instead of an outside engineering firm. This will result in the savings of tens of thousands of dollars moving forward as well as reducing the overall cost of development within the town of Lysander. We will continue to look into all of these areas to ensure that the town receives the best services at the best possible cost.
What is the primary issue facing Lysander? How do you intend to resolve the issue?
There are many governments within our area including the Town of Lysander, the school district, the Village of Baldwinsville, the Town of Van Buren and the many fire districts. We have been working with several of these governments to determine areas we can consolidate and/or enter into mutually beneficial agreements to reduce redundancies and reduce costs while maintaining or increasing the level of services we all currently provide. One very important step to move this process forward is changing the elected highway superintendent position to an appointed position. With an appointed highway superintendent we will have the ability to enter into highway department consolidation talks with the Town of Van Buren and the Village of Baldwinsville that can go much further than inter-municipal agreements can achieve.
What goals do you hope to accomplish should you be elected?
I will continue to focus on ensuring that the services provided to the residents of Lysander are the best possible for the best cost. I am committed to the efforts of consolidating areas of our government to reduce redundancies and gain efficiencies that will result in the lower cost of delivered services while maintaining and improving the overall level of service.
Why should voters vote for you?
I have lived in Central New York my whole life. I grew up in North Syracuse and then moved to the Liverpool area when I married my wife Linda in 1991. We moved to Lysander eight years ago to raise our two children, Nina who is 9, and Ayden who is 7. We are very proud to call Lysander home and raise our family here.
I earned my Bachelor of Science degree from SUNY at Buffalo in 1989 with majors in finance, marketing and management information systems. I worked as a marketing product planner at Crouse Hinds from 1989 until 1993. I then went to Rome Cable where I was the market manager for the Utility Cable Business, Mining Cable Business and a joint venture with ABB High Voltage Cables in Karlskrona, Sweden until 1995. In 1995 my wife and I became partners with her father Chuck in the family business, Charles Signs. Chuck fully retired in 2002 and my wife Linda and I continue to run the family business today.
I bring a very strong business background to the position of town councilor. I bring this experience to the town to represent all the residents of Lysander and to create and maintain a consistent vision for the future of our town, regardless of political affiliation. I respectfully ask for your vote so we can keep Lysander first.
Russ Johnson
Community Involvement: Youth basketball coach in my sixth consecutive year. Committee member of the Lysander Republican Committee through which, in addition to supporting local, state and federal candidates, a portion of money raised throughout the year is donated to various community organizations and special needs events.
How do you plan to ease the financial strain on Lysander residents?
The financial strain on Lysander residents is much like the financial strain on all of us here in New York State and within the United States. We know that in our current economy, family incomes have either been totally eliminated or significantly lowered; causing families today to make unsustainably less money than they did just four years ago, all the while prices for consumer goods, health care and cost of living expenses continue to rise. Case in point on a local level: Several months ago my friend, a good family man who was the sole income provider, lost his local job of nearly two decades. This hardworking, middleclass man not only lost his income, but also the family health care coverage for his exceptionally nice family of four. COBRA insurance was just too expensive to purchase. His spouse worries every day that her chronic illness may become aggravated, which would create an even more severe financial hardship. He has not been able to find work since and there is no doubt that he continues to chip away at his savings to provide for his family through an austerity budget. Sadly, this is a story we hear about all too often, not only locally, but all across America.
So what can we do to ease the financial strain for a family like my friend’s as a mere elected town official? It’s actually quite obvious – treat the taxpayers’ money like it is being taken from my friend’s bank account. Why? Because it is! We must say no to any unnecessary spending. We don’t take our family to the movies when we can’t afford to buy groceries, so it only makes sense in government that we don’t spend taxpayers’ money on things we truly don’t need, even if it is something that has already been earmarked in the budget but we know we can do without.
We are fortunate in Lysander that our bond rating is high, and that we have enjoyed a relatively stable budget for many years. For example, in January of 2010, Standard & Poor’s rating service raised its long-term rating on the town of Lysander’s general obligation debt to “AA” from “AA-“. This is exceptional and was based on Lysander’s “very strong financial profile,” according to an S&P credit analyst. But we need to know that the noose is now tightening. With budgetary reductions in part because of the loss of county sales tax to the town (approximately $400,000), and the recent payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) agreement with Anheuser Busch that had the net effect of an of approximate $10,000 reduction in revenue, we are forced to come up with ways to mitigate a continued loss of revenue, yet we must still pay for increased costs in fuel, employee health care and state pension contributions among other obligations. (It is important to note that I am proud of Anheuser Busch’s commitment to remain in Lysander and the much needed, highly important jobs it offers our residents, so the reduction in revenue is worth it.)
It is an incredibly difficult task to continue to balance the books while not gouging the taxpayers – and it is something that I am no stranger to doing effectively. As a former county legislature chairman, having significant involvement in the construction and implementation of an approximate $170 million budget, I am proud to have led the charge to significantly cut property taxes for three straight years during my four-year chairmanship (the first year was held to a zero percent increase) when many other municipalities were raising taxes. Most politicians will tell you that they “will” cut taxes; very few can say they already have.
I learned firsthand that it takes strong cooperation from Democrats, Republicans, department heads and employees alike to bring down what some may think is an already barebones budget. That is what we must do here in Lysander. I will be actively engaged in the fiduciary responsibilities of our town and intend to have regular individual meetings with our town supervisor, board members and especially our town comptroller to make sure we are effectively monitoring the flow of our budget and making sound financial decisions throughout the entire year. We will strive to cut and reduce where we can, and save money throughout the year with open market, competitive bidding for goods and services where needed so that when the next year’s budget process begins, there will be no surprises of staggering proposals for increases in property taxes. If you do not constantly balance your checkbook, how do you know how much is in it?
What is the primary issue facing Lysander? How do you intend to resolve the issue?
The primary issue I see facing Lysander, consistent with what I have heard from an overwhelming number of town folks with whom I have spoken to during the last few months, is not so much a collective concern that our locally elected officials have individually forgotten us as constituents, but rather that our local government as a whole has seemingly disconnected itself from us. I have seen where this sometimes happens when government actions become too secretive with an urgent sense that it must maintain secrecy for the bigger good at the risk of alienating the people. I understand that. However, unless there are issues involving personnel matters, disciplinary procedures, civil lawsuits against the town, terminations, and in-progress contract negotiations with our union for example, we must remember that good government is required to make all issues public so that we have the opportunity to offer our input during the process.
I am hopeful that my campaign theme to “Restore Pride” has effectively delivered the message to the voters that I intend to be genuinely transparent as your elected official, and that I will be actively involved in making our citizens proud of our government and community so that the perceived ‘shroud of secrecy’ is unveiled and our residents can feel a sense of ownership and pride in the future of our town.
What goals do you hope to accomplish should you be elected?
Great question! My short term goal obviously is to restore pride in our government and within our community. We will do that by having an open government focused on transparency while being unwaveringly exceptional stewards of our tax dollars.
But there is also one other goal that I would like to accomplish that is somewhat “outside the box” of the traditional function of a governmental norm. If I am chosen to be the next elected town councilor, immediately after election, I intend to begin dialogue with my fellow board members and our fantastic school district, with the goal in mind of creating a local government mentoring program for our kids. Our own town clerk, Lisa Dell, has already committed to helping us with this. The objective here is to give our kids the opportunity to learn how local government operates during the course of its important business, while forcing our elected and administrative officials to behave during the process (kidding with that one, of course). We know that our kids are our future! We do the best job we can to raise them to be honorable and productive citizens in and out of our community. Why not give them the chance to see how our town government operates from a front row seat with a real-time lens, sitting side-by-side our elected and administrative officials? The prospect of that is very exciting!!!
Why should voters elect you?
The voters should elect me because they will get a town councilor with a powerful and proven track record in public service. I have the important experience of working with an approximate $170 million municipal budget in a fiscally conservative fashion, and doing so cooperatively with Democrats and Republicans alike for 14 years. Additionally, I have loads of energy and a high degree of passion for building strong public policy by being a creative and independent thinker, while always living by the self-imposed rule of leaving my political party affiliation at the front door of good government’s home. Most importantly, being a family man and resident of Lysander, I care about where our town is now and will be in the future. I want to help our town board members make absolutely sure we are protected with a reasonable and predictable tax policy for many years to come.
