Voters in Common Council District 2 are limited so far in their choices at the voting booth in November.
As of April 1, incumbent Pat Hogan D-Syracuse is running unopposed for the district’s Common Council seat.
“I’m running again. My focus is to maintain services in the city, to keep them affordable and efficient,” he said.
Hogan and Ed Ryan, the Democratic election commissioner, said they hadn’t heard of any possible Republican challengers. The Republican Party didn’t respond to requests for information about a possible candidate. The general election is Nov. 8.
Before entering politics, Hogan worked in the city’s parks department for 31 years. In 2002, he was fired as the deputy commissioner of parks by then-mayor Matt Driscoll. Hogan sued the city and the suit was settled in 2009. He then worked as a teaching assistant in the Syracuse city school district before becoming a member of the Common Council in 2005.
That year Hogan defeated incumbent Marty Masterpole in the Democratic primary by just 21 votes.
In a strange twist of events, both the Republican and Democratic parties endorsed Hogan for the general election, where he again ran against Masterpole. Masterpole ran under the Conservative party line.
In the November 2011 election, Hogan is seeking his fourth term representing the Common Council District 2, It includes the Tipperary Hill neighborhoods, parts of the North Side, the near West side as well as the area around Onondaga Lake commonly referred to as the lakefront.
Democratic voters dominate in Hogan’s district. District 2 has 5,705 registered Democrats — or 49 percent of the total registered voters — compared to just 2,096 registered Republicans.
The Common Council is the legislative body in charge of approving the city’s budget as well as passing new city laws. The council is made up of the president and nine members. Five councilors come from districts within the city. The other four are elected at-large, representing the entire city. The Democrats have eight council members, compared to just two Republicans.
On the council, Hogan is the chairman of the Airport Committee and a member of the Finance, Taxation and Assessment Committee; the Neighborhood Preservation Committee and the Parks, Recreation and Youth Programs Committee.
One of the things the council has struggled with during his three terms is balancing the city’s budget without raising taxes, Hogan said. “Our tax structure is inequitable. We can only tax 50 percent of our assessment because so many properties, like Syracuse University and the hospitals, are non-profit and exempt from property taxes,” he said.
His recent work on the council has dealt with saving and revitalizing neighborhoods in his district, especially those around St. Patrick’s church in Tipperary Hill. The Catholic diocese of Syracuse closed the school there several years ago because of low enrollment. The building has been sold to a developer who plans on turning it into an apartment building, Hogan said.
“It’ll be market-rate apartments,” said Hogan, “and I think it’ll be a big draw for young people looking to stay in the Tipp Hill area.”
(Stephen Hughes is a graduate student in magazine, newspaper and online journalism.)
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