ONONDAGA COUNTY — Democrat Dan Romeo, a career firefighter with the Syracuse Fire Department and a member of the Syracuse City School Board, is running for the 7th District seat on the Onondaga County Legislature this fall. He will be facing off against independent candidate Josh Davis, who will be representing the People First Party.
Abutting the towns of Salina and Manlius, the redrawn 7th District contains a chunk of the town of DeWitt, including a section of the village of East Syracuse, as well as Eastwood and the Sedgwick neighborhood within the city of Syracuse. The newly carved out district connects the jurisdictions of Peggy Chase and Mary Kuhn, both of whom will be retiring.
Because he has been pleased with the respective jobs they’ve done for their districts, Romeo said he would not have thrown his hat in the race this year had Chase and Kuhn decided to stay on the legislature.
“For my political career, I’ve always said that it’s based on opportunity,” Romeo said. “I would never run against somebody that I think is doing a good job just because I want the spot.”
He said that since announcing his campaign about a year ago, he has also taken advice and learned from both Chase and Kuhn about how to connect with constituents and the way county government operates.
If elected as the District 7 representative on Nov. 7, Romeo said he would step away from his current position as school board commissioner when that term comes to a close in December, just before the next county leg term kicks off in January.
At 33, Romeo has already spent eight years on the school board, having come on in 2015 as one of its youngest-ever elected members.
That was after attending multiple meetings that consisted of too much bickering, he said, inspiring him to seek a spot on that board to make a positive contribution to the proceedings. He also said that the school district—being as large as it is enrollment-wise and in budget size—has a pull on the overall success of his lifelong home city of Syracuse.
“The Syracuse City School District has the second-biggest budget in the area outside of Onondaga County’s, and it’s very complex in terms of what the district has going on,” Romeo said. “Over the past eight years with the school board, I’ve matured and learned a lot about how politics and the government works around here, and that’s been a great growing piece as far as being prepared to be on the legislature.”
Romeo has served as a career firefighter with the Syracuse Fire Department for 12 years now, the school board offering him something to focus on during the days off that are offered by his job schedule. Previous to his full-time role with the city’s department, he was an East Syracuse firefighter, beginning duty for that village a month after his 18th birthday in 2008.
As the youngest of eight kids, Romeo was already equipped with the thick skin needed to be a firefighter, but he said the task of performing on the job during high-pressure situations is what has built his character.
“Firefighting has framed a lot of who I am,” he said. “You’re put in situations where you have to perform, and you’re exposed to people inside their homes and at times when most other people don’t get to see them.”
Romeo added that his experience as a firefighter in East Syracuse and the city of Syracuse has informed his familiarity and understanding of areas he would be covering as 7th District legislator since those two fire districts encompass several of the same parts of town.
He said he can also draw from his knowledge base as a 24-year resident of Eastwood, his attendance of both St. Matthew’s Elementary and Bishop Grimes Junior/Senior High School, and his specific vantage point living right on the border of DeWitt and Syracuse.
As far as what else he would bring to the equation as county legislator, Romeo asserted that he would be able and willing to work with the Republican caucus because he chooses not to define people solely by party affiliation.
“I’m comfortable with who I am and my ability to build relationships with people who have different perspectives than I do,” he said. “I have every intention of building a relationship with all the Republicans, just like the Democrats that are on it. People want to see the legislature members work together to make the county a better place even through disagreements.”
Romeo went on to say that he would lend a millennial perspective but also an outlook and set of values passed down from the Greatest Generation seeing as how his father was born in 1927.
From a health and human services standpoint, Romeo believes “significantly more” needs to be done in Onondaga County with regard to lead abatement and mental health assistance.
“Especially after COVID, it’s not a secret that we need more mental health services, but I think we also need to coordinate mental health services appropriately,” he said. “We’re not going to all of a sudden have all of the caregivers that we’re gonna need tomorrow, so let’s find ways that we can get solutions and be more preventative early on to address that.”
He said that includes having the county health department work more closely with area school districts and businesses to make sure they have the support and strategies they need when employees are dealing with minor or major mental health struggles, from day-to-day stress to crisis situations.
Romeo further said that he hopes to create more communication between the county level and the individual municipalities while also achieving greater transparency and accessibility by ensuring that the recordings of county legislature meetings are posted online for people to rewind, fast forward through and watch on their own time.
Another concern of Romeo’s is mass transportation in the county, but he said the introduction of Bus Rapid Transit will help people effectively get around without the need to use a car, putting in place a system that he said would be beneficial to people’s quality of life, more convenient due to its faster routes and fewer stops, and better for the environment because less vehicles would be on the road.
Other issues on his mind include preparation for and accommodation of the wave of residents projected to come to the area for the Micron Technology chip manufacturing fab in Clay.
Romeo earned his degree in business management from Syracuse University. He said, though, that his approach to life and grasp on how to run a business was first developed growing up around his family’s store, the now-closed Ludy’s Grocery that used to be located on Oak Street.
There he stocked shelves, ran the cash register, oversaw the lottery machine and connected with the diverse community of adults that stopped in.
“Growing up, that was our life,” Romeo said. “That’s where we celebrated birthdays, that’s where we spent our time after school and did our schoolwork and spent time with our family. That’s where the whole ‘we can do anything together and let’s come together’ thing was ingrained in me.”
One memory that has always stuck with Romeo: After the Labor Day storm that hit Syracuse in 1998, the refrigerators in the store stopped working, so his mother cooked up all of the frozen food in stock to prevent it from going to waste and to help feed shoppers who didn’t have power.
Because he was amongst family there, Romeo said that working at Ludy’s also made him take note of how to “disagree passionately” but then move on, go back to normal, and not take things personally—something he said has been missing from politics.
