Patrona Jones-Rowser, candidate for Syracuse Common Council's 4th district Credit: Courtesy of Patrona Jones-Rowser

Democrat Patrona Jones-Rowser is running for re-election to represent the South Side on the Syracuse Common Council, hoping to parlay the lessons learned in her first term into a prosperous second term.

Jones-Rowser, who owns an event planning company and serves on several advisory boards for housing-focused local organizations, will appear on the ballot under the Democratic party line. Jones-Rowser is seeking a second two-year term representing the fourth council district, which she says falls in line with her plan of serving at least two terms on the council. 

A second term, she said, would allow her to apply her newfound understanding of city government to make a difference in her community. 

“It is hard to accomplish what you set out to do as far as legislation or even planning, nothing can be turned around within a few months,” she noted. “It takes months of gathering information.”

Jones-Rowser is running unopposed.

Central Current asked her five questions about the issues facing the district and the city as a whole. Below are Jones-Rowser’s responses:

Central Current: How would you vote on good cause eviction legislation if brought to the council for a vote tomorrow? 

Patrona Jones-Rowser: I would vote no. “Good Cause” is redundant to other legislation already in place. 

The two two parts that Syracuse residents seemingly believe that could make a huge difference for them isn’t what they believe. So for some reason, there is this notion that there will possibly be some type of rent freeze attached to this. And we do not have rent stabilization like the way downstate has.  

I have talked to many landlords and they are willing to, once their properties become vacant, absolutely raise their rents to the highest market rate that they can to avoid having to deal with being stuck at a lower rate. They’re saying that they’re going to take their properties off the market or sell. So it’s going to be more harmful to our tenants than it’s going to be helpful. The “7D” [Tenant Dignity and Safe Housing Act] petitions passed just over a year ago. 

That is the best protection that the tenants can have, because with good cause, you’re going after every landlord to punish the bad landlords.

CC: How will you find millions in revenue to address the potential multi-million dollar fiscal cliff the city could be facing this next budgetary cycle?

Jones-Rowser: I think we projected that in our recent budget cuts, we knew that there was going to be a lot of cuts happening with the administration, and that trickle down effect to our city alone. So that was a part of our conversations. I do believe that we got ahead of that to try to account for that in our projections for this year. 

So hopefully, with the savings of the budget for 2025 going into 2026 we won’t be too far behind, and we have a good little cushion right now to work with. So I think that it’ll all pan out. Hopefully the administration and others will see that and appreciate it a little bit more.

CC: The city has a backlog of properties in the foreclosure process that could help the Greater Syracuse Land Bank and other housing partners rehabilitate and build new housing. How will you help speed this up?

Jones-Rowser: So as far as, like, speeding it up, I don’t know if that’s really the term that we want to use, because we need to do our due diligence, making sure everything is done properly. That’s, that’s one of the things that we have to be assured of

The city sends out letters to try to make contact with the residents, or whomever is listed as the homeowner, and sometimes they just don’t get a response the way that someone like myself, who’s in the neighborhoods particularly, would get. I may know some family members, or something like that, to help me get in contact with these individuals. 

So sometimes those letters get lost in the mail. Not everyone reads every piece of mail. And when you’re already struggling to pay your bills, the one thing that you don’t want to see is another bill. So we should just try to see where we can assist with people getting into tax trust, or figuring out if they can in some fashion come current. Do they have somewhere else to go? At the end of the day, we’re already in a housing crisis, and to now remove people from their home as a homeowner or a renter, we’re just adding to that housing crisis.

CC: Mayor Ben Walsh established protections and policies aimed at safeguarding Syracuse residents from over-encroaching surveillance technology in his 2020 Surveillance Technology Executive Order. 

The protections, though, are not codified into city law, meaning that a future mayor could strip the safeguards and set the stage for unrestricted and potentially intrusive and dangerous use of these technologies. Will you codify the protections and policies established in Walsh’s Surveillance Technology Executive Order?

Jones-Rowser: As far as codifying it into law, I think that’s something that the entire council will have to look at to see how we utilize those protections and in what way. I do think that we have been working toward making sure that advice from that group is adhered to in some fashion. 

This is my first term, so even being knowledgeable about those things is important, because it doesn’t just pass down. We just have to make sure that whoever is over in that committee is keeping that at the forefront.

CC: Now that the dust has settled, how would you evaluate the Council’s decisions during this year’s budget battle with the City of Syracuse? Do you stand by the cuts the Council made?

Jones-Rowser: Yes, I absolutely do stand by the cuts that we’ve made. Again, we looked at the past four years and we took into account the numbers that were projected versus what was spent. 

Our budget was what we came up with, as well as taking into account the possible effects of government funds being cut. 

I do wish that we could have had better conversations with the administration. Even when the mayor came back with his amendments, if it could have been somewhat a little closer to what we had already done, then that would have been more favorable to me, but it was just significantly not enough.

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Eddie Velazquez is a Syracuse journalist covering economic justice in the region. He is focused on stories about organized labor, and New York's housing and childhood lead poisoning crises. You can follow...