Rita Paniagua, pictured, is running to be president of Syracuse's Common Council. Credit: Courtesy of Rita Paniagua

Rita Paniagua likely has big shoes to fill in City Hall. 

Paniagua is the only candidate to succeed outgoing Common Council President Helen Hudson, who has served since 2017 as council president. Term limits prevent Hudson from seeking re-election.

Originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Paniaugua came to Syracuse in 2003. She joined in 2005 the Spanish Action League as executive director, and served in that capacity for 10 years. In 2016, Paniagua was elected to serve as a Commissioner of Education for the Syracuse City School District. Following her term at the district, Paniaugua in 2019 won a race to be a councilor-at-large seat. She has served in that role since.

With a variety of experience from involvement with different non-profits and public initiatives around the city — such as Jubilee Homes, CNY Arts, Interfaith Works, and the Small Business Committee for The Syracuse Economic Development Corporation — Paniagua hopes to strengthen collaboration between the Common Council and the new mayor’s administration.

“I’ve had a great experience under Helen Hudson, she has been a good leader for us,”  Paniagua said. “I think that at this point we need to bridge better the communication and definitely the work that we do with the mayor’s office and the different departments that run the city. We need to be able to work together.”

Paniaugua said she wants to expand the Council’s presence and visibility, both physical and digital, to make it easier for residents to communicate with councilors, and vice versa. One idea that Paniaugua thinks will help in that pursuit is creating social media pages for the Common Council.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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

Rita Paniagua: I supported Good Cause Eviction from the beginning, and I would be completely supportive of it today. Why I say that is because I think that we find ourselves at a threshold where we’re trying to fight homelessness, and at-risk families and children, and I think that this is a tool that could help us definitely bring this around.

Central Current: 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?

Paniagua: Well, I think that what we just as a council voted on, which was the reduction of the budget, a lot of it was based on the empty non-filled positions in the city that keep weighing in the department’s budget. And I think that just by doing that, we were able to recapture a good sum of the monies that we’re trying to find.

One of the things that we’re working on, that’s something that I’m working on with, with (Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens) and also other council members, is to create this commission where councilors, the mayor’s office, and definitely the people that need to be at the table with the Commissioner of Finance and Budget and all of those important departments, we’re going to have a more realistic (budget(. 

But one of the problems with the council is that sometimes we don’t have a real-time budget review, a definition of where we are with it, and that it’s sometimes difficult then to make sound decisions, because the information comes to us a little late. 

So by doing this committee, we’re hoping will bring everybody together to discuss numbers in real time, and it will allow us to identify revenue sources also in real time and review the reality of what’s presented as a budget when the full budget is presented. At that point, we can revise the influx of what’s really being (earned) from the different sources that were identified from the beginning, and then continue to identify new ones.

Central Current: The city has a backlog of properties in the foreclosure process that could help the landbank and other housing partners rehabilitate and build new housing. How will you help speed this up?

Paniagua: Well, going back to the other question, before we get into this: by bringing these properties to the log, there’s a revenue right there, because they’re taxable.

So that is something that, definitely, I would agree upon. Everything needs to have a plan behind it. We cannot continue to do things blindly. So whenever things are presented to council, it’s a matter of, okay, so what’s the plan? 

So it needs to be realistic, and it needs to be something that we have a chance to absorb and be able to comment and think about it, so that we’re able to make sound decisions for the city. But to answer your question, that is definitely something that I would support.

Central Current: How would you look to speed up the foreclosure process?

Paniagua: That is something that varies with each department. We would have to go back to the department and look at what’s (slowing) the process from it being more effective. 

I’m not so sure what would be the answer to that, but I think that just evaluating with the departments the different aspects of foreclosure would be a first step. And then, see where the shortfalls are, and see how we can fix it.

Central Current: Mayor 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 Mayor Walsh’s Surveillance Technology Executive Order?

Paniagua: When all this started, there’s a group that was created to review and assess on how we move forward with this particular. So I think that it’s very important that we listen and let them participate, because they are the experts that could tell us, and find the best ways to handle this new technology.

So I think it’s very important that we’re all, again, working on the same team, to be able to have an informed decision, as they are assessed by the experts. Even though they were in 2020, preliminaries, at this point, we’re five years from that, and technology in five years has also changed. 

There’s new things out there that we’re trying to figure out how it would be the best use of them. I am not against using them. But we do need to have legislation, and we need to see the legislation from the departments that will be driving these initiatives before us before we even move anywhere.

Central Current: 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?

Paniagua: I definitely stand by the cuts that we made. I think that was a decision that was not made lightly. We met time and time and time, to get to the decisions we finally made. 

I stand by it, and I think it’s the best thing that we had to do.

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...