Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh was sworn in Thursday for his second term in office in front of a small crowd at Syracuse’s Landmark Theatre.
Walsh said the challenge and excitement of being mayor is part managing the moment. In his first term meant dealing with a pandemic, police reform and an unpopular statue of Christopher Columbus. But it also meant having an eye on the future. That’s where Walsh sees much of his second term building on the first, with many existing projects in the pipeline.
“We are building a lot of new housing,” Walsh said. “We have some exiting development opportunities, continuing to invest in city services, public safety, infrastructure. All of that will continue and we’ll look for new opportunities as well."
New opportunities include boosting existing business corridors to offer opportunities to residents but also encourage business from outside the area to plant roots in the Salt City.
“We don’t have to beg companies to invest here. We don’t have to give away the store,” he said. “We just need to put our best foot forward and continue to make those investments, and show we are a dynamic growing city, and I believe we are.”
And Walsh wants a continued emphasis on some of the things that attract companies, like fixing roads but also boosting the city’s digital and technology infrastructure.
This will be Walsh’s last term as mayor, because of the city’s two-term limit. That in itself will make this second go around a little different from the first.
"Not having an election looming in four years I suspect will be a positive thing for me,” he said. “I’ve always said politics is a means to an end. The end is governance. It’s doing good. It’s serving the community. So the politics I can put behind me, and I can focus on the job."
