VILLAGE OF MANLIUS — Two incumbent trustees, Janice Abdo-Rott and Tom Pilewski, are running unopposed for reelection to their seats on the Manlius Village Board. Manlius’ current justice Marla Raus is running to reclaim her seat as well, while Hank Chapman is running for the mayor’s seat being vacated by Paul Whorrall after his 12 years as mayor. The village election is today, Tuesday, March 18 from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Manlius Village Centre.
Janice Abdo-Rott
Abdo-Rott became a trustee for the village of Manlius in 2009.
Over these last 16 years, she’s served as liaison to parks and recreation, public works and the village planning board. For a time she was also deputy mayor.
She had prior experience with small civic groups like the Jaycee’s, which she started a Fayetteville-Manlius chapter for, and was ways and means director in the city of Syracuse. She also was a charter member and vice president for Manlius’ first chamber of commerce.
She previously headed up restoration and development projects in Manlius as well, and she went on to serve as chairperson on the village’s parks and rec board and the chair of the municipality’s beautification committee.
Because of her visible involvement within the village, Abdo-Rott was asked by multiple mayors to fill a trustee seat on the village board but she didn’t feel it was time until later on, when she felt she had what it took to facilitate communication between not only the parks and rec board and the village board, but also among the village’s various departments.
“Communication is everything, and if you don’t have it, you’re not really cohesive,” Abdo-Rott said.
During her time on the village board, Abdo-Rott has lent her help with the restructuring and modernizing of the village of Manlius’ DPW, which included supplying that department with new equipment and meeting other pressing needs.
She has also sought to clear the business district of trash cans so bins are behind the buildings to make the Main Street less unsightly, while bringing the number of trash collectors on the the garbage trucks down to two and then one with a mechanical arm so that hired employees can be redirected to other tasks and there’s less liability and cost associated with picking up and reaching into trash totes.
Abdo-Rott can also count among her accomplishments her overseeing of a $1.5 million project for the renovation of the windows and doors, HVAC, and security system at the Village Centre.
She was also involved in the redoing of Mill Run Park’s entrance and the redesigning of other park areas, as well as the dredging of the village swan pond to remove plant matter and fix its fountain and bottom.
Abdo-Rott is the founder and owner of the home and garden décor shop The Station 603 on East Seneca Street in Manlius, the site of an old train depot along the former Syracuse and Chenango Valley Railroad line.
As a Manlius resident for over 40 years and the owner of a village business—a historic one at that—Abdo-Rott said she cares deeply about preserving the village’s history, holding onto its character and quality of life, growing it economically and otherwise, and prioritizing financial responsibility by keeping taxes as low as possible while building up the best services with those tax dollars.
Being a businesswoman, she said she’s brought to the board a firm grasp of what local businesses need and the financials municipalities have to keep track of, from expenditures to proper budgeting.
As a landscape designer by trade, Abdo-Rott said she gets satisfaction out of seeing projects through from beginning to completion, and she’s focused on what the village looks like aesthetically because she views the world through an artistic lens.
“I’m driven by my desire to make things better than they already are,” Abdo-Rott said. “That’s where I found my calling to work for the village, because I wanted to make it an even nicer, more beautiful place to live, work and play.”
Abdo-Rott said she appreciates the village of Manlius’ walkability, its many parks, and its small-town feel.
“It has a very strong community,” she said. “People in this village—they love their village.”
Abdo-Rott said that’s the reason for raising her son and daughter there and why she runs The Station 603 in the village alongside her husband, John.
Going forward in her trustee role, Abdo-Rott seeks to fill in empty storefronts and refurbish the village veterans memorial she designed and installed years ago.
She said she also hopes to involve the village’s businesses more in municipal activities and make sure whoever’s brought on as the new full-time parks and rec director has a modern-enough and broad-enough skill set.
Tom Pilewski
Pilewski came on as trustee for the village of Manlius in the spring of 2013, at the same time Paul Whorrall became mayor.
Pilewski recalls arriving at the decision to run for the village board out of an interest in learning how small villages in New York State operate. After giving the idea a couple months’ thought, he started attending the board’s meetings and he saw how he could do his part to continue making the village an ideal place to raise a family.
Early on in his tenure as trustee, Pilewski pushed for the village to switch to a less expensive telephone service he said functions just as well, and he championed the conversion of the village street lights to LED and IT services from a private vendor to BOCES, resulting in significant, permanent savings in both cases.
“Those are typical of my desire to make sure we’re using our limited budget in the best possible way,” Pilewski said. “I’m always striving to have us make the best use of resources and make sure we as a municipality are using money as wisely as possible.”
Over the last 12 years, Pilewski has been the village’s recreation board chairperson and liaison to the Town of Manlius Police Department, the village’s fire department, and village court. He has also chaired the town’s police committee over the past year, and since day one as trustee he’s sat on the village of Manlius’ finance committee.
Pilewski said serving in those capacities has taught him about what different departments need in order to do their best work and how the separate departments rely on one another.
Outside of being trustee, Pilewski has worked as an associate professor at SUNY Morrisville in the division of business and hospitality for 18 and a half years. There, he teaches introductory courses on subjects ranging from business math and marketing to consumer behavior.
Pilewski said teaching business and having done so for as long as he has brings a unique perspective to the board, in the same way the others on the board bring in their own unique backgrounds.
“I believe that businesses and villages run somewhat similarly in that you have a limited amount of resources that have to be used most efficiently and most effectively to achieve a mission,” he said. “Our mission at the Village of Manlius is to provide excellent service in terms of DPW, fire protection, ambulance service, recreational programming and parks, and our goal is not to earn a profit but to be efficient with the taxpayers’ money.”
Pilewski said he takes that responsibility very seriously, evidenced by his insistence on questioning any expenditures he doesn’t understand and whether the village is getting the best value with its purchases before voting them through.
Going forward, he said he seeks to keep taxes as stable as possible and make sure residents feel they’re getting value out of their tax payments.
Pilewski said he will also continue to support the village’s “world-class” staff in every department so they can “effectively provide the outstanding service we’ve all come to know and appreciate.”
Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Pilewski and his wife of 33 years, Lisa, moved to Manlius in 2007 after living in Fayetteville and Eastwood. All four of their kids went through F-M schools, and he said he appreciates the village of Manlius because of how “homey” it is and how “friendly, caring and considerate” its people are.
Marla Raus
Marla Raus is running for reelection to her role as village justice in Manlius this week.
Raus was appointed to the position in February 2024, replacing Chaim Jaffe, who had taken a federal law clerk position.
In the year or so since assuming the role of justice, Raus said she has enjoyed working side by side with others in the village such as Manlius’ court clerk Jenna Spendle and learning from the acting associate village justice Joseph Greenman.
Though the Village of Manlius holds court twice a month on the first and third Thursdays, Raus remains in contact with Spendle multiple times a week as she goes through files beforehand, sets fines, reviews motions, discusses such things as the different correspondence that comes in, and signs various warrants the Town of Manlius Police Department asks for after making sure there’s adequate evidence—in other words, that the warrant is warranted.
Greenman retired in recent years from being the main justice after 42 years of service to the village, remaining in the appointed backup role to provide assistance and guidance and to fill in when necessary.
Though Raus has handled the conducting of all court proceedings since her appointment as justice last year and thus hasn’t needed him to step into the judge’s seat for any appearances, she said she has enjoyed having the opportunity to learn from Greenman, whom she called “such an amazing resource” to reach out to and learn from on a regular basis.
Raus said becoming village justice was not initially something she had ever planned on. When Jaffe was stepping down, she was thought of to be appointed in his place because the municipality knew she was an attorney who lived in the village.
Raus said she immediately saw it as a great opportunity to get more involved with the village and use her skill set.
“Learning the court system more, expediting things, seeing where people are coming from, the different defense attorneys that are there—it’s all been very interesting,” she said.
Apart from her role as justice, Raus is a partner with the Syracuse-based Porter Law Group.
Since graduating from the Wake Forest University School of Law in 2016, Raus has primarily focused on personal injury law. She said she has done defense work in the past but that she now represents solely plaintiffs in mostly medical malpractice actions, so mainly injured individuals or their family members.
Mostly taking “high-value cases” where the individual being represented is a person of good character who has had something severe happen to them medically, Raus said speaking with physicians and experts through her firm’s work while learning about different areas of medicine and where that intersects with the law has been
enlightening.
She said her career as a personal injury attorney differs from her village justice role because in her general practice she’s advocating for a client and looking at a case from that angle with the serving of that person’s interests in the forefront of the mind, whereas as a judge it’s more clearly about being completely objective and unbiased, even though that’s always the goal, she clarifies.
“Obviously I have a lot of courtroom experience appearing before different judges and different courts, but it’s an interesting perspective having people appear in front of you, sitting up there and hearing both sides, and trying to do the right thing,” Raus said.
Since she was appointed by the village board the first time around, this will be Raus’ first time running in an actual election. For the four-year term she’s running unopposed and she’s self-funding her campaign.
Since she’s not making policy or altering the law, Raus said there aren’t a lot of specific goals to speak of at the moment as far as her role as justice goes, but going forward she said, “I think my main goal is to just keep doing what I’m doing: to do the best job I possibly can, to be as fair as I possibly can be, and to move things as expeditiously as possible.”
Raus lives in the village of Manlius with her husband, Andrew Phillips, and their two young sons.
“I’m very honored to serve the village and have this position,” Raus said, adding that she’s grateful she was given the opportunity in the first place.
