No tax increases, better quality of education and green jobs for the young, and state responsibility for the Van Duyn nursing home are the stands on some key issues for Republican candidate Danny Liedka in the race for Onondaga County Legislature District 15.
Liedka, the mayor of East Syracuse, is running against Lorene Dadey, a former East Syracuse mayor and the Democratic Party’s candidate for the District 7 legislature seat. The two are seeking the seat vacated by Thomas Buckel, D-Syracuse, who is running for the state Supreme Court’s Fifth Judicial District.
District 7 is in the central region of Onondaga County, including a small northeastern part of the city of Syracuse, most of the northern and western parts of DeWitt and all of East Syracuse.The election is Nov. 8.
Democracywise posed three questions on key issues to the candidates in the contested open-seat races for the County Legislature. Here are the responses from Danny Liedka:
Taxes:
Q: What, if anything, do you think should be done about county taxes? Please be specific on tax proposals or budget cuts. How would you get the money required to provide public services? Raise taxes? Which? Increase fees for services? Which? What, if any, specific services or programs would you cut to balance the county budget?
A: “There’s no reason to raise taxes. What we need is private and public partnerships — like at the Oncenter. Get employees off public payroll and onto private. What people don’t realize when they see their taxes going up — it’s complicated. It artificially covers up problems.”
Young People
Q: Keeping and attracting young people is a long-standing concern for our region. What, specifically, do you think the Onondaga County government should do make the area more attractive to young workers and their families?
A: “We need to start by keeping our own here. Go to the largest employers, colleges and hospitals and try to find a way for them to work in conjunction with the high schools. We should meet with the school districts and be a liaison between the two to start programs to train and educate local youth.
“We also have to make it affordable to live here and we do that by cutting taxes. A lot of the burden is on the state level, so there’s not much at the county level we can do.
“We should also capitalize on green technology — we’ve become famous for that. We need to encourage small businesses to start up. Tax breaks for new businesses have been abused. A truly new business moving into a depressed area looking to revitalize it — absolutely they should have a tax freeze. But a company which moves from one area to another should not.
“We can do a lot of this through consolidation of government services — eliminate a layer of government. There has yet to be a sweeping assessment of services, and we need that.”
Van Duyn Home and Long-Term Care for the Elderly:
The county-owned Van Duyn nursing home provides long-term care to many of the county’s elderly. But Van Duyn is in deep financial trouble. Last year, taxpayers absorbed about $5.7 million of Van Duyn’s costs and taxpayers are expected to absorb another $3 million this year. As of March 1, 2011, the state also cut off Medicare and Medicaid payments for new admissions to the nursing home, citing unsafe conditions there. And since March, county officials and Upstate Medical University have been negotiating for Upstate to take over the home. But Upstate has not yet agreed, citing concerns about whether the state can subsidize Van Duyn. If the home closes, it’s unclear what will become of Van Duyn’s residents. At the same time, the county’s population — like the rest of the nation’s — is aging and many will need long-term care.
Q: What if anything do you think the county government can or should do to keep Van Duyn from closing? What else, if anything, can or should the county government do to meet the long-term care needs of our aging population?
A: “We need to find a way to get Van Duyn over to the state and out from underneath the county. They will get more funding at the state level that way. As far as shutting down the facility goes, until you have another viable option, whether public or private, you have to hang on as long as you can. You can’t displace those people.
“For our aging population, we need to adapt our infrastructure. In East Syracuse, we had a vacant elementary school, we found a private company to take it over and make it low-income senior housing.”
(Danny Liedka’s sister works at Van Duyn.)
(Rebekah Jones is a senior with dual majors in geography and newspaper and online journalism.)
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