Republican Tom Babilon (pictured) faces three other candidates in the race for mayor. Credit: Courtesy of Tom Babilon

Editor’s note: If you’d like to read our other Q&As with other mayoral candidates, click the following links: Alfonso Davis, Sharon Owens, Tim Rudd.

Longtime local lawyer Tom Babilon is running to replace outgoing Ben Walsh as Syracuse’s mayor.

A Republican and one-time Stephanie Miner administration attorney, Babilon is set for a showdown with the Democratic mayoral nominee, Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens. Babilon also briefly worked in the Walsh administration.

He also faces former city budget director Tim Rudd and community activist Alfonso Davis, who are running for mayor on independent ballot lines.

A Syracuse resident for 22 years, Babilon is a senior attorney at a non-profit law firm providing appellate legal services for people that cannot afford legal representation. Before that, Babilon was assistant corporation counsel for the city in the Department of Neighborhood and Business Development. Babilon also served three years as the city’s labor and employment attorney.

Babilon is a staunch critic of the Walsh administration, which he says is riddled with incompetency. Based on his experience working at City Hall, Babilon said there’s “a million ways to save money,” and believes he has the insight to reduce the city’s spending while investing in housing development.

“It’s just time after time. The reason our budget has expanded over $100 million in the last seven years is because Ben Walsh spent the money so inefficiently,” Babilon said. “I think that we can cut the budget, actually, and still meet our budgetary needs.”

Editor’s Note: This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Central Current: If victorious, you will inherit an ever-expanding budget at a time when Syracuse needs significant investment and development. How do you plan to get the most out of the city’s dollars while maintaining affordability for constituents?

Tom Babilon: I think part of the reason why the budget has expanded so greatly is because we spent a lot of money that we didn’t need to spend, and we’ve sort of spent a lot more money on projects than necessary. I mean, you see this pretty much every day. You see this with the sidewalk project right now that they’re doing. 

Historically, land owners or properties were responsible for the sidewalks in front of their homes. So there could be in any given block, three brand new sidewalks, and two or three sidewalks that need to be repaired. The city is going through and tearing up the entire block and then replacing it with new sidewalk, regardless of whether or not that sidewalk needs to be replaced. In one block, it’s tens of thousands of dollars, you know, over a series of blocks, its millions of dollars. They’re doing this with the ADA cross walk areas and the sidewalk that they just replaced two years ago with grant money, and they’re tearing those up again.

I don’t know why they’re bidding the contracts out like this, but it’s clearly incredibly wasteful. And you see this over and over and over again with the city. You see this with the current administration. You see this with the payroll modernization project. I mean, I’m not even sure, because they can’t give us numbers. Some say it’s $8 million, some say it’s $10 million if you include the $2 million grant money they first were given. And the thing with that is, $10 million later, we have no payroll processing system, and at the same time, when this was going on, the county said we can do this for you. And the county still says we could do this to you, because I’ve been in contact with them. “We can run your payroll for the city. It’ll cost you very minimal, we’ll charge you what it costs us to run the payroll.” 

And this is something the city could have done five years ago, six years ago, but they don’t. I mean, this administration is just really bent on spending money, because they feel like it’s an endless pot. We’ve had six tax increases, so there’s a lot of money that can be saved. I was there and I would just see how inefficiently the city’s run in almost every department. Even in my department, when I first got taken in to run the housing division, they were doing things so inefficiently, it was incredible. 

We had two attorneys that were in court all the time. And I made a few corrections to that. And we had two attorneys that were in court once a month each, instead of every single day, so they could work on other things in the office instead of being in court all day. 

There’s a million things like this that can be fixed. With the trash pickup, it’s done very inefficiently, even with the new systems. The guys are allowed to leave when they finish their routes. You know, instead of expanding the routes or putting less people on the routes, we were supposed to go to less men on the trucks when we moved to an automated system. That never happened.

There’s a million ways to save money. You could also look at what they’ve done with City Hall, Commons and with the Public Safety Building. They’re basically wanting to sell away our public buildings and turn us into renters. The new Public Safety Building, I think it was going to cost the same amount to build a new building as what our rent is going to be for 10 years. Well, guess what? At the end of 10 years, we have nothing. We have no equity. So the smarter move would have been to bond for the new Public Safety Building and build that, and then we would have something after 10 years. 

But instead, we’re going to be paying rent to someone for 10 years. And it’s the same thing with City Hall Commons. City Hall Commons, they were supposed to sell two years ago and never sold. It’s still sitting there vacant two years later, and we’ve been paying rent in One Lincoln Center for the hundreds of offices that we used to have for free in City Hall common so, I mean, it’s just time after time. The reason our budget has expanded over $100 million in the last seven years is because Ben Walsh spent the money so inefficiently. And there’s, I think that we can cut the budget actually, and still meet our budgetary needs.

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 Mayor Ben Walsh’s Surveillance Technology Executive Order?

Babilon: I would look at the issue and create my own policy. Because historically, what Ben Walsh has said is not what he’s done. We had the same thing with the police cameras. We had policies on how the police cameras were to be used, and they weren’t used that way. Ben’s public voice was, “oh, well, we just review these police cameras after the fact, and if something happens, we look at them to see what happens. There’s no privacy issues.” When, in fact, he had people sitting in an office watching them during the day at one point.

So, I don’t think Ben is very honest with what he said about a lot of things in the last seven and a half years. So I would look at that my policy myself. Privacy is very important to me. I have concerns about this new drone program that’s coming out, how that’s going to be operated. I will make sure that our privacy rights are protected, but I’m not going to go off of what Ben Walsh has said or done.

CC: How would you have handled the redevelopment of public housing until now? How would you move forward with the East Adams redevelopment project? What are some potential changes you might bring to the table?

Babilon: That’s a big question, so several parts to that. One is the funding issue. We’ve got an administration that likes to take away funding. We’ve lost $30 million on the I-81 project, and we have the potential to lose several million dollars in HUD funding every year based on how the next administration acts towards the president. I’m not a person that’s going to antagonize the president and start fights with him, particularly about federal policy that the mayor of city Syracuse has no control over. 

Donald Trump is going to do whatever he wants to do with regards to federal policy. If you want to get up there and stand on a soapbox and say he’s a fascist, you shouldn’t be surprised when your money disappears. So I’m going to make sure that we have the federal money for housing, that’s incredibly important. 

Two, I’m going to make sure that we have competent people in important positions. We’ve lost money in the recent past, because of incompetency. We saw this with Blueprint 15, which Sharon Owens was chairing. She missed the tax deadline, which basically killed the Children’s Rising Center. There’s a lot of blame going around this, “This is their fault, this is their fault,” But in reality, if it’s your tax credit, you’re the one that’s responsible for that. 

We saw the same thing with the 30 million that we lost for the I-81 project, for the East Adams project. How do we lose that? Donald Trump called it back. Well, how was he able to claw it back? The state got $50 million from that same grant, and that money was not clawed that back, because they had done everything they needed to get those grant funds in their accounts. The city, on the other hand, had not started an environmental review, which they were required to do before getting the funds a year and a half after the grant was given to them. 

Now, if they had completed that environmental review, then the money would have been in the city coffers, and they would not have been able to take that money. So, we’ve got to put competent people in competent positions. When you have so much incompetency in the administration, you shouldn’t be surprised when your projects fail.

And then the other issue with East Adams, I think the question is, what would I do differently?I think it’s a great project. I think that there’s not a lot that the next mayor is gonna be able to do to change it. You know, a lot of the funding is in place. There’s $107 million for the Almus Tower. There’s a lot of state funds that are coming in. So I don’t think there’s a lot that you can do to change it. I think it’s a good project. 

I think we have to be concerned with the relocation of the current residents of the Pioneer homes and McKinney Manor, which they’ve had problems with. That’s certainly going to fall on the next mayor to make sure that they have adequate housing. But we’ve got tons of vacant apartment buildings that the city has challenged shutting down like the Skyline, and now that sits vacant. I think it’s 100 units in there. So we need to ensure that those apartment buildings come back online.

And just as far as, what would I do differently, we really need to build off of our existing successes. And that, what that means is, we shouldn’t put new public housing in the middle of the most violent neighborhood in the city of Syracuse, because, frankly, no one wants to live there. We should concentrate our new housing efforts on the edges of successful neighborhoods that are already successful, and then build outwards. So that way, we protect the investments of the people that already own property there, and we’re protecting the investments of the new homeowners or the tenants.

No one wants to live in the midst of violence. No one wants to purchase a home in the most violent neighborhood of the city of Syracuse, we’ve got to build off of where we’ve had success before, and that’s the only way we’re going to be successful in the future. And that’s the only way we’re going to, clear the blight, clear the slums, is we work outward and work in.

CC: Mayor Ben Walsh has shied away from calling Syracuse a “sanctuary city” – but that rhetoric hasn’t changed the federal government’s perception of our city. As federal agents and the US military flood major liberal cities, how will you prepare to protect Syracuse citizens from a potential federal occupation?

Babilon: First of all, I don’t think Donald Trump has his eye set on Syracuse, New York. I don’t really think it’s something that we have to worry about, as far as him sending the troops in, because, frankly, he’s what, on city number three right now, and they’re all major cities. By the time Donald Trump’s four years are up, I don’t think he’s going to make it down to Syracuse. I don’t think it’s a major concern. 

But, if he wants to send troops to Syracuse, what can a mayor really do? We saw the Mayor of Oswego come out with a statement against the ICE raid that was up there. Did it change anything? Are the people out of custody now? No. There’s really nothing that a mayor can do to change what [federal] policies are gonna do. 

But I’ll tell you, if we have a Republican mayor that works well with the federal administration, with President Trump, I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about issues like that, I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about sending troops here. I don’t think we have to worry – unless, of course, we request help. And we need help with police enforcement here,I’d love to see more federal agents. I don’t know if we need to see troops here, but federal drug enforcement agents, FBI agents, things that can help us with our crime issues. Those would all be welcomed. But to answer your question. I really don’t see the National Guard coming to Syracuse, New York, in the near future.

CC: The Columbus Statue, and the push for its removal, remain a sticking point among our community. Recently, County Executive Ryan McMahon inserted the statue into discussions with the Onondaga Nation regarding a potential land transfer that would return a parcel of land along Onondaga Lake back to the nation. As mayor of the city where the statue stands, you’ll have a unique position to work as an intermediary on this issue. How would you proceed with the Columbus Statue, and would you work to facilitate the stalling landback negotiations between Onondaga County and the Onondaga Nation?

Babilon: First off, as mayor of the City of Syracuse, the statue is going to stay. The administration is the one who makes that decision, not the Onondaga Nation and not the County Executive. I appreciate the county executive’s support, with our Italian community. 

If you want to tell history, there’s plenty of places in the City of Syracuse to do that. There is a park directly adjacent to the Columbus Statue that is vacant. There’s literally nothing there. It’s a plot of land, and it would be completely appropriate for the Onondagas to erect their own monument, however they so choose, in that location. And I’ve proposed this for years. I think that would be a great middle position for everyone. 

They can tell their story, and the Columbus Statue can remain. The Columbus Statue is a historic landmark in the city of Syracuse. To remove it, I think would be a travesty. It’s been there for nearly 100 years, and I think it needs to stay. As far as the land transfer to the Onondagas, I think that they should have it. I’m 100% behind that transfer. I know the county legislature approved it, and I think it should happen. I know there’s environmental remediation concerns regarding that area, but it’s a beautiful area, and I think it should be returned to the Onondagas. I’m 100% behind that.

CC: What is your plan to develop more affordable housing in the city?

Babilon: We need to bring these large vacant apartment buildings back online. There’s more than one of them. There’s two of them in the same block in my neighborhood. We’ve got these large vacant apartments that have nothing in them. Part of that is, we put that into our HUD application for grants monies. This is what we want to do. We want to put these new apartments online that can do a lot to alleviate immediate needs. Now, it’s probably too late for the relocations of people in the East Adams project area. But, we need housing. 

There’s the Skyline. There’s another apartment building right down the street. And we’ve had success in renovating apartments in that vicinity before, because I’ve been involved in two major renovations with state and federal funds that we use for those projects. There’s something that can come online. 

We need to talk to these owners, and we need to get these big, larger, vacant apartments back online. That’s one. Two, We need to change our zoning. We need to make it easier to create affordable housing. We need new solutions to things, like we need to be able to build tiny homes in certain areas of the city. We need to build cooperative living, co-living, where we have maybe shared spaces. We need to build more of that, like they have at the Gear Factory. 

We need to build micro-apartments, like they have in New York City, things that people can afford when they’re just coming out of college or they’re new to the area, and they want to find a place that’s affordable, just things like that. We need to look at all of those things. 

Also, we need to make sure that we have that federal and state funding for housing. Kathy Hochul  has allocated $50 million for manufactured homes. It’s great, but they’re spending $250,000 on a home. So for a million dollars, you get four new homes. So it’s not a whole lot of homes when you’re talking statewide. 

So we’ve got a lot of vacant land, we can utilize the Land Bank properties a lot better, as far as using funds for those or even incentivizing people to rehab properties more frequently in the Syracuse area. There’s going to be a land boom here. I can’t imagine, with Micron coming in that we’re not going to see the private market pick up a lot of this housing need. But we have to be there to incentivize them and to make it easier for them to build those houses.

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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...