The Onondaga County Legislature is due to vote Tuesday on County Executive Ryan McMahon’s proposed $1.4 billion budget. They are wisely taking more time to digest, dissect and discuss McMahon’s plan to build an $85 million aquarium at Syracuse’s Inner Harbor and a $25 million sports complex at Hopkins Road Park in Salina.
Such major investments demand the proper due diligence and opportunities for the public to express their views.
McMahon announced the aquarium plan Oct. 4 and would appropriate the money in his annual budget, released a day later. The compressed timeline owes to the fact that the county executive only needs nine votes — a simple majority of the 17-member legislature — to pass the budget. He would need 12 votes to borrow the money, which is a more typical way of financing a major project.
Republicans hold 11 seats on the legislature. Even so, the Republican county executive was not sure he had the nine votes necessary to approve the aquarium, he told the editorial board Oct. 14.
On Oct. 15, in a rare show of bipartisanship — perhaps mixed in with some fear of antagonizing voters just a few days before an election — Republican and Democratic lawmakers agreed to park money for the aquarium and sports complex in a contingency account.
“There’s a public process that 460,000 people expect to be undertaken with these types of initiatives,” Republican Floor Leader Brian May said. “We take that responsibility very, very seriously.”
We agree. The legislature is designed to be a check on the executive branch of government. It too often has acted as a rubber stamp.
McMahon makes a good case for the soccer/lacrosse complex on county-owned softball and baseball fields at Hopkins Road. It would serve local teams, attract tournaments and boost spending on hotels and restaurants in northern Onondaga County. It also could help make up for lost hotel business from proposed changes to the path of Interstate 81 around the city. Relocating the softball and baseball fields to Carrier Park, in DeWitt, would “finish out” that facility, McMahon said.
In his meeting with the editorial board, McMahon responded to critics who say the county should not be spending money on an aquarium in the middle of a pandemic. “Every department is getting shored up,” he said, pointing to increased spending on public health, anti-poverty initiatives, mental health, water and sewer infrastructure, and broadband internet in underserved parts of the county.
He argued that painful budget decisions during the Covid lockdown, plus an infusion of $89 million in federal relief money, put Onondaga County in a position to make strategic investments in its future.
We look forward to a robust and spirited debate about that, now that the pressure is off to decide on these major projects by Tuesday.
About Syracuse.com editorials
Editorials represent the collective opinion of the Advance Media New York editorial board. Our opinions are independent of news coverage. Read our mission statement. Members of the editorial board are Tim Kennedy, Trish LaMonte, Katrina Tulloch and Marie Morelli.
To respond to this editorial: Submit a letter or commentary to letters@syracuse.com. Read our submission guidelines.
If you have questions about the Opinions & Editorials section, contact Marie Morelli, editorial/opinion leader, at mmorelli@syracuse.com