Top row (left to right): Emmanuel Flowers, Korena Bradford, Michelle Burke; Bottom Row (left to right): Paula Harwood, Steven Morris (Justin Sondel)
“Giving people a class where they can learn how to write grants so that she doesn’t need to give them as much money, where they can write business plans that can foster the open doors. Because if you can write abusiness plan the banks will do the work. If you can write a good business plan there are a lot of extra interest groups that will look at financing that can do it. That would be, that would be an open door.”
(Emmanuel Flowers, 34, of the Bellevue Avenue and West Onondaga Avenue neighborhood, chef, unaffiliated with a political party)
“I think, number one, that the new mayor should pay in-depth attention to the downtown city of Syracuse because too many people are moving out. There’s no invitations for people moving in. And with all the beautiful historic districts in the city of Syracuse, there is no attention given to help them.”
(Paula R. Harwood, 55, of Franklin Square neighborhood, artist, unaffiliated with a political party)
“There’s a lot of potential in Syracuse for getting around without cars because it’s pretty compact. But they just sort of need to improve the facilities a little bit for that.”
(Steven Morris, 26, of Wescott neighborhood, business owner,Republican)
“Our school systems stink. That could be the biggest improvement because childhood education is very, very important. Without an education, you’re going to work a job like I got. I quit in the eighth grade and I’m a parking lot attendant.”
(Korena Bradford, 60, of North Syracuse, parking lot attendant in downtown Syracuse)
“The police force — there’s a lot of men patrolling. But, it seems like it’s always too late. Someone’s shot and dead and where are they? They’re never there on time. They’re always there after the fact. So, we need help here. Especially south side of Syracuse. There’s a lot of crime over here.”
(Michelle Burke, 24, of the South Side neighborhood, clerk at Donz and Divaz beauty supply, Democrat)
(Justin Sondel is a graduate student in magazine-newspaper-online journalism.)
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