North Tonawanda, N.Y. (WBEN) - While there are a number of key races to follow on Election Day this year, one of the more significant races in Western New York is set to take place in the City of North Tonawanda for the Mayor's Office.
Incumbent Democrat Austin Tylec is seeking his second term in office as mayor, while former North Tonawanda Police Chief Tom Krantz will challenge Tylec on the Republican line.
Tylec feels his four years to date in the Mayor's Office has brought the city some great progress and prosperity.
"We have structured our budget, increased our reserves, improved our credit score. We have a record amount of grant funding that has come in - over $35 million - major projects, Oliver Street walkability enhancements," noted Tylec in an interview with WBEN. "We will be starting early next year downtown improvements, new bike path connections. We supported probably over 100 businesses at this point, and even with a lot of those grant dollars, we saw about 300-plus new jobs in the last four years with the city partnerships and businesses. And we've addressed infrastructure, we've started on major community projects like the new aquatic facility at Payne Park. We're designing a community center to centralize our senior center, our rec offices, youth programs.
"We've accomplished a lot, and I'm excited about the next four years, assuming tomorrow goes well."
As for Krantz, he's been going door-to-door in North Tonawanda, where he says people have been very receptive to his campaign.
"They are concerned about our taxes and some of the other things that have come up," said Krantz with WBEN. "Reassessment has been brought up in the past, and I know it's been talked about as recently as the beginning of this month from the current mayor. And people are not willing to go along with that. They're not interested in having their homes reassessed with the way the housing market and everything is right now. So it's been going well."
On the reassessment point, Tylec says any chatter of such action is untrue, and there's no plan for reassessment.
"And in my office, I don't have the authorization to initiate a reassessment. That would have to fall on the Common Council," Tylec noted.
"Two years ago, when the Council approved that $600,000 bond to start the process, a couple public meetings happened and there wasn't really interest. Basically we gave the money back, so there's no money appropriated to even do it. Some of the members have changed since then, but all-in-all, I don't see any interest."
While Krantz acknowledges Tylec can't commence any reassessment on his own, he feels it could still be a possibility down the road.
"If [Tylec] gets some of his counterparts to unseat the incumbents right now, then I think that would certainly be something he'd be looking at. He won't be able to do it with the Council that's currently in there," Krantz said.
What else is a main talking point for each candidate ahead of Tuesday's general election? For Tylec, it starts with the city's finances.
"That's a critical foundation of our economy, to make sure that our numbers are balanced, that we're healthy. And with that, then we can thrive and we can start working on all these projects," Tylec said. "We've done a lot in the last four years. People care about infrastructure, we've invested over 10 million in various infrastructure projects. We have really focused on neighborhood blight too. Certain grants allowed property owners to make improvements on their properties. We replaced thousands of sidewalks, which is huge when we talk about walkability. We have a great DPW, great departments in general. People really have seen North Tonawanda as a destination."
Tylec feels the downtown has been a huge economic driver, while other sites in the city like Mid-City Plaza are investing millions in property improvements to help make North Tonawanda a place to be for the community at large.
"We've increased housing stock by hundreds of residential units, with more on the way. People seem happy, which is good to hear. We want a healthy, happy, thriving community," Tylec added.
Meanwhile, Krantz says the residents he's talked to during his campaign are not happy with the increases in taxes.
"We're up, I think, 14% or a little over 14% in the three years that he's run budgets. He's looking at almost another 4% this year, and we've got some older people here that we don't want them priced out of their homes. And then we have new younger people who are looking to buy their first homes and stuff, and their taxes are high. It creates a little bit of an issue with them, with the mortgage rates up and everything else. So a lot of it comes down to affordability and money," Krantz noted. "They want to be able to live here in North Tonawanda, they love North Tonawanda. It's a very safe community, we've got a lot of benefits living here. But if they can't afford it, then they're not going to be able to live here."
Another issue Krantz points to is taking action to help address the issues with the crypto-mining factory Digihost along Erie Avenue.
"That noise level over there probably two, two-and-a-half miles surrounding that facility is a huge quality of life issue that the residents over there are very concerned about. Thus far, we have not been able to quell that for them, so I'd like to do that," Krantz said.
Krantz also wants to take a deeper look at the neighborhoods in the city that's not downtown, that may need some attention paid to them to get absentee landlords to do what they need to do to improve quality of life for many residents.
So what's the final message from both candidates for voters that may be heading to the polls Tuesday?
"I really hope to have their support. We've really changed the perspective of our city in the last four years. People recognize it throughout the state, region as really a destination to have a family, to work here, to have fun here, and enjoy great food, our waterfront - which we've been capitalizing on - all the public spaces that we have. And we have a clear direction. We've had a clear direction the last four years," Tylec said. "We've ran a very clean campaign on integrity and the progress we've made, and I hope that voters see it tomorrow. I'm excited about the next four years, and we're going to continue moving forward with all the progress we've already made."
As for Krantz, the message is quite simple:
"If they want to see change in the city and they want to see fiscal responsibility, then they need to vote for me," he said.