Onondaga County 7th District Legislator Mary Kuhn, on July 25th at 12 noon, held what was billed as a “No Aquarium” protest and press conference.
According to Kuhn,” Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon continues his curiously persistent campaign to lobby politicians for support for his Aquarium. It is expected to be considered at a Legislature Ways & Means meeting on Tuesday, despite bipartisan opposition and the lack of community support.”
Kuhn continued, “Recently the County Executive announced an additional “Science Advisory Committee”, as if more committees were what was needed. We are gathering today to expose this charade as the County Executive refuses to listen to the voices of the taxpayers of Onondaga County.”
The proposed aquarium has become controversial as advocates want more resources allocated to human services. The County Executive has maintained in statements that the project would be good for Onondaga County.
That being said, Mary Kuhn called for those that are against the aquarium gather at Columbus Circle.
The suburban legislator capsulizes her opinion in one sentence, “This is not a sustainable project, this is theft of tax payer dollars”. – Mary Kuhn
The following is a portion of statements by Legislator Kuhn during the press conference.
“We have a poverty we have 14% of our our citizens in the county live under the poverty line. 20% or one in five children live in poverty. 25% of our families earn less than $30,000 a year. so here’s something we could consider; a child tax cut, Republicans are always talking about tax cuts, right? how about a child tax cut that is modeled On the federal child tax credit.
Data proves that this kind of support for families helps reduce poverty. Everybody knows what’s happening with inflation right now. Groceries are high, gas is high, rents are out of control, clothing is out of control. We have one opportunity here to really address issues of poverty.
The Republican Party in this community has a very bad track record when it comes to what, this aquarium supposed to be, “transformational”. This is going to be transformational; it’s going to change everything in our community. we’ve had several of these, let’s look at a couple. How about the carousel center?
Our County Executive was on the City Council at that time and was supportive of that. That was fun for a couple of years, but then we needed to expand it, we need to be bigger, we needed to have a Disneyland down there. With an expanded destiny, I think we all know what happened to that.
Right now, we have a mall that’s valued at about $170 million, that is in debt for over $300 million. That’s what happened to that. Then there was a hotel near the mall that was supposed to also . Now people can come and stay right there and go shopping, right there.
That hotel is now standing on land that is in bankruptcy. Oh, then there’s the film hub, you remember the film hub?
The film hub’s gonna be transformative, and recently a national publication had us in the top ten of government boondoggles. In other words, the waste of the taxpayer dollars. We have the Solara light bulb factory. We’ve had a very bad luck with our republican transformational projects and this aquarium will be one in a long line of that…”
For the entire clip go to our You Tube link or Urban CNY News
Kuhn’s District is large, mostly suburban except for a sliver that touches parts of Syracuse. See Legislator District Map – Onondaga County 7th District
