Two Democrats running for Glens Falls mayor met Wednesday to discuss their approaches to the role and make their cases to voters ahead of June’s primary.
Mayor Bill Collins was first elected to lead the Warren County city in 2021. A city native, Collins had previously served two four-year terms on the common council and worked for the New York Special Olympics.
Diana Palmer has been the city’s Third Ward Councilwoman since 2018. She also works as a therapist and is vice chair of SUNY Adirondack’s Board of Trustees.
Speaking to a capacity crowd at the Charles R. Wood Theater, the candidates discussed a number of key issues facing the city, including the need to update the city’s zoning codes. Here’s Collins:
“It's still illegal to park your cow on city streets. So let you know, yes, we need a zoning court. Matter of fact, I was asked, before I was on the council, to be on a committee to update our charter. It's an overwhelming task, and many mayors get caught up in the day to day and then never, never get it accomplished. It's like parking: it's needed to be addressed for at least the length of my life, and it continues to need it and definitely should be updated,” said Collins.
Palmer recently renewed calls to redraw the comprehensive plan, for which the city received a $150,000 state grant to get the ball rolling.
“When I first introduced the resolution to apply for the grant for the comprehensive plan, I said that we really needed to follow that with a zoning code overhaul. Our zoning code as the mayor mentioned, you know, it's really outdated. The zoning code and the charter are two different things, but one of the reasons I care so much about the zoning code is because we need to do a couple things. We need to remove unnecessary barriers to development, but we also need to beef up Architectural Review. I don't want to create a separate Architectural Review Board here, so that we have a whole other layer of bureaucracy, but I do want to create design standards that are embedded into our code,” said Palmer.
Collins’ campaign boasts the first zero-percent tax increase in more than two decades in 2025’s budget. But critics, including Palmer, have been critical of the budget’s initial $3 million deficit.
“The council was able to reduce that by about a million dollars. But when I think about one of the responsibilities of a mayor and of a council is to try to reduce that structural deficit and balance the budget,” said Palmer. “One of our biggest expenses, as you mentioned, is health insurance, and I have been trying to think about what we could do to work on that. As I mentioned, I'm a trustee at SUNY Adirondack, and I saw how the college moved from traditional insurance plans to self-insurance, and saved a lot of money. I had also heard that Warren County had made that same move and saved a lot of money, so at budget time last year, I brought that up and said, can we please consider doing this?”
Collins, who agrees that the city should look into self-insurance to save costs, explained some of the city’s deficit budgeting.
“Well, because in the building and codes department, for the last four years, you haven't had a North Country winner. So you've come in every year $600,000 under budget. Should you lower that budget? No, I don't think you should, because this year we'll see how well that plays out and how close it is to actual, actual spending. You also had 148 employees back when I when we came out of COVID, we were 24 employees vacant. We also were I think eight fire—eight police officers down, and seven firefighters down. So, you need to budget for those as though you're going to fill them. That's what every municipal government has done and that is what you do,” said Collins.
Last year, the city broke ground on the construction of a $5 million, Downtown Revitalization Initiative-funded, Event and Marketplace to support a neglected corridor.
The space was pitched as a potential host for the city’s farmers’ market, though one resident at the forum questioned the city’s commitment.
“Back when the original DRI was developed, the market center was part of it, but it wasn't all of it. And so, the fact is that we're building a $5 million year-round pavilion. For better choice of the word, the first draft of that pavilion had much more to it and was much bigger, but had $8 million in budget. We couldn't afford it. We want the farmers’ market to always have a home in Glens Falls. As a matter of fact, when I met with them, geez, now almost a year ago, at one of their meetings in west winds falls. I said, nothing would make us happier than them to be not just the tenant there on Saturdays, but also Sundays and the farmers market folks weren't interested in doing Sundays, but we'd like to have more than that as well,” said Collins.
Collins added that the farmers’ market will not move to the new pavilion before July.
