From left to right: Kwanswella Harris, Victor Torez, Tony Ebraims, Adrienne Winfield and Michael Brown (Marie Claudet)
“My main concern is the crime that is going up in the city. The government needs to do more cracking down on drug dealers and things like that. Also, there are a lot of sex offenders in the neighborhoods with the children and near schools and I don’t think they should be allowed near children. I actually live in a building with a sex offender right now.”
(Kwanswella Harris, 31, of Syracuse, unemployed, Independence Party)
“Homeless people, there are a lot everywhere. They live in these vacant homes and they stay on their corner asking for money and that’s not good. I wish somebody could do something about that. Build bigger shelters maybe so that they can feed them and help them get jobs.”
(Victor Torez, 36, of East Syracuse, car dealer, Democrat)
“Taxes are going up every year. It seems that we have no control on taxes. God bless Obama, I think he’s doing a good job but New York State is the worst for taxes. We have the highest capital per household for taxes. It’s insane.”
(Tony Ebraims, 39, of Camillus, vice president of Fast Track Wireless, Democrat)
“There is a huge problem with inner-city schools, at the elementary level. Schools are closing down and they are changing the grade level within each school and I think that that needs to be more organized and they need to have less students per teachers because classes are often overloaded so I just think the inner city school is something that should be addressed.”
(Adrienne Winfield, 22, of Syracuse, student at Syracuse University, Democrat)
“Locally, I think that the tax dollars could help to support people with addiction problems and alcoholism problems maybe to fund treatment centers and maybe officials can look into providing more treatments as opposed to jailing people.”
(Michael Brown, 43, of Eastwood Syracuse, cook in Franco’s pizzeria and deli, Republican)
(Marie Claudet is a broadcast and digital graduate journalism student.)
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