The Common Council will vote tomorrow night on the Carousel Center expansion agreement (see the post below for more info). As such, there's not time to mail this; I'll be heading downtown on lunch to drop it off. Feel free to join me in Council chambers with your own letters.

Syracuse Common Council
City Hall
233 E. Washington St.
Syracuse, NY 13202

22 June 2006

Dear Councilor:

I’m writing again to encourage you to vote against the proposed Carousel Center expansion settlement.

I sat at the public input session on Tuesday, unable to voice my opinion in front of television cameras due to an employment policy. And while I’ve written before to let you know my feelings on the mall expansion, I wanted to chime in again before you hold a vote.

I want to focus primarily on the arguments we heard Tuesday. Those who are in favor of this expansion deal seem to have been given talking points.

You heard laid-off Destiny employees encourage you to “vote for Destiny.” Destiny is not the project before you. It is a mall expansion, and the developer has refused to put in writing a commitment to hire back those laid-off workers.

You heard someone tell you that the public perception of what Destiny will be is incorrect. If this is truly a public project, we shouldn’t have to form a perception – we should have every detail necessary to know precisely what it is. And again, you are not being asked to approve Destiny USA.

You heard more than one person tell you that the guaranteed money the city will receive from the Carousel expansion is better than property tax money from small businesses, because small businesses are unstable and frequently go under. The truth is, the more small businesses a city has, the more likely it is to thrive, and small businesses beget other small businesses. Malls beget parking lots – and the parking lot on the rendering we were handed Tuesday replaces much of the oldest neighborhood in the city.

You heard someone tell you it was her lifelong dream to buy a car, and her maintenance job at Carousel has allowed her to do that. I understand that it’s important for people to reach their goals, but most jobs at an expanded Carousel will be retail positions and will not afford people the opportunity to purchase new cars.

You heard people tell you that mall jobs are great jobs for single mothers and for their children to grow up in. A gallon of gas costs what most mall employees take home in exchange for a half hour of work. A meal at the mall the worker eats on his or her break will cost at least a full hours’ take-home pay. The price of these goods will rise faster than retail wages in the coming years. These are not good jobs that will help people live well throughout their lives.

You heard people tell you that people are leaving Syracuse because of a lack of opportunity. You heard people tell you that their taxes are too high. According to the rendering, the city will be required to take an awful lot of homes in the North Side by eminent domain. By doing so, you’ll be taking homes away from people who live here, and taking their properties off the tax rolls when you hand them to the mall developers. The city will not be able to afford to offer those displaced people incentives to stay in Syracuse; the city will not be able to afford to not raise taxes after taking so much more land off the tax rolls.

If the Carousel expansion is to go through one way or the other, it needs to not have the city’s explicit stamp of approval. The mall is good for the developer – it is not likely to do any good for the city.

I can’t think of a worse way to harm the future of Syracuse than to approve this deal. Please vote no.