A Capital City of Neighborhoods (S5E19)

Albany is the capital of the state of New York. What that means is the city’s population almost doubles every day. Listen to Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan explain how she manages her city.

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Executive Producers: David Martin, David Snyder, Jim Ludlow
Host/Reporter: David Martin
Producers: David Martin, Jason Stershic
Editor: Jason Stershic

Transcription

David Martin: This is the good government show.

Kathy Sheehan: I tell people that we tell the story of America from fur trade to nanotechnology.

It’s creating the expectation among the community that government should work at the lowest possible level. So you shouldn’t have to call the mayor to get a pothole filled.

I think the way that you build trust is by saying that you’re going to do something and then do it, and then doing that over and over and over again.

I got in office. I’m the mayor, and I’m I’m here to tell you, like, there are no magic powers. There was not a little magic wand in the desk when I opened the drawer. I don’t have a cape. I can’t fly around the city. And prevent bad things from happening.

I’ve always been willing to be at the table, and I think that helped to prepare me. But I never thought I’d be at the head of the table.

David Martin: I’m Albany, not New York City is the capital of the state of New York. And on this episode, I talk with Kathy Sheehan, the mayor of Albany, and she explains how Albany is more than just a giant state office building. Welcome to the Good Government show. I’m Dave Martin. I live in New York State in Brooklyn, and I’ve been up to Albany a few times for work, you know, reporting on different stories through the years.

But on this episode, we get to hear about Albany beyond the state capital, which, by the way, is a really architecturally beautiful state House. But first, help us share the message of good government by liking us and sharing us where we are on Facebook, Instagram and Blue Sky. Please share our show with your friends and don’t forget to review us!

Let’s get everyone excited about good government. Okay, so here’s a fun fact. Albany’s population almost doubles during the state legislature sessions. Doubles. That’s a lot of folks coming into the city of some 100,000 permanent residents, with many of them living there at least part time. And we talked about that. We talked about some of the programs machine has been able to start, including making major gains in renewable energy and showing what a city can do to create and meet energy goals.

And she explains how they cut down on auto thefts and wait to hear how, with the dual challenges of hosting the entire state for almost half a year, but also providing for year round residents. The mayor has a full agenda. Coming up. The mayor of Albany, New York, Kathy Sheehan.

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Welcome to the Good Government Show. I’m happy to have with me the mayor of Albany, New York, Mayor Kathy Sheehan, welcome. Nice to have you with us.

Kathy Sheehan: Thanks so much for having me.

David Martin: Thank you. I’m a New Yorker, so, thanks for taking care of the capital city.

Kathy Sheehan: Well, I try, okay.

David Martin: So you are a capital city. And I know we just talked about this a little bit before we turn the mics on, but what’s it? You know, how do you manage hosting the entire state? Half the year. Everyone coming to Albany?

Kathy Sheehan: Well, we are a city of neighborhoods. So for those of us who live in Albany, we think about the historic architecture that we have in our city, the incredible parks and neighborhoods and local restaurants. And so, you know, those of us who live in Albany think of Albany very differently than sort of the Albany that you that you think about when you think of state government.

I often remind my, state legislators when they complain about Albany that they’re really complaining about themselves. They’re the ones who come here. Okay. And, you know, they’re not complaining about my incredible, beautiful city, but we are, I think, also benefiting from the fact that we have lots of people who come to our community who really care about New York State.

They care about the communities that they represent. There are great ideas that get incubated in the city of Albany. And then go out and, are implemented across the state. And so we really benefit, I think, from being the state capital and having access to diverse points of view, and a lot of people who are really trying to be innovative and make their communities a better place.

David Martin: And you get a lot of temporary residents, I guess. So do they take Albany with them when they leave?

Kathy Sheehan: You know, we we want for those who are spending six months out of the year to think of Albany as their second home, and it’s really important that we are doing all that we can to make sure that it is a great place to come and work and live. And I have people tell me all the time that, you know, there are constituent, even though they’re only there six months out of the year, but I, I want to foster that sense of ownership.

That sense of this is a place that is important to me. We’re a city that almost doubles in population every day, with people coming in from the suburbs, coming up from New York City, to do the business of state government. But also we are home to two very large hospitals, to the University at Albany, to a lot of incredible not for profit institutions.

And so we want to really foster a sense of civic pride in the city of Albany, even if those people are just coming in to work in our community.

David Martin: I guess I would have to include myself in this mix. I’ve been to Albany a few times. I come up, I go to the Capitol, I, you know, do my reporting that I have to do, and then I leave. What would you like people to know about Albany beyond the sort of capital corridor there?

Kathy Sheehan: Well, we’re an incredibly historic city. We were first settled in 1624. We received our first charter in 1686. We’re the oldest continuously chartered city in the country, and so we still operate under that 1686 charter. It’s been amended a few times, I hope, and we are I so we and we’re a Dutch city. So again, we were we were founded by the Dutch.

And even after the British took over, we continued to have mayors of Dutch ancestry for 100 years. And so that is not Dutch. I am not Dutch. I’m not Dutch. You know, the Irish took over about. Oh, I don’t know. We’ve been in for quite a while. Mayor Weill and Mayor Jennings and now myself. So, but, you know, we we are.

David Martin: A way for people to see the website. So to go to good governance dot Covid and you’ll catch you should go ahead.

Kathy Sheehan: But we are a city of neighborhoods. People are proud of where they live. They will tell you that even though we’re only 20mi², we have people will say, I grew up in the South End. I grew up in Arbor Hill, I grew up in Westville, I grew up in Pine Hills. And people love their neighborhoods. We have people who are very involved in neighborhood associations.

That’s a big thing for us. And that’s where people go to make sure that they’re advocating for what they want for their neighborhood.

David Martin: What is let’s delve into a little bit of history here. Everyone, I think probably one of the most missed questions, you know, what’s the capital of New York, New York City. How did Albany become the capital?

Kathy Sheehan: Well, my understanding is that the capital originally was in, was south of us in Kingston, and then it moved up to Albany. You know, Albany was really the hub for New York City. I mean, you know, there are those who opine that Manhattan wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Albany because the, the, news.

David Martin: From Manhattan, who said this.

Kathy Sheehan: Is this is so that the Dutch settled in Manhattan, New Netherlands. Yes. And they sailed up the Hudson. They would engage with mainly Native Americans to go into the forests, hunt beaver. Right. They’d come back, they’d buy those beaver pelts from the Native Americans. They’d bring them back down to New York City and ship them around the world.

And so we were a very important part of the economy of the New World. And that continues. I tell people that we tell the story of America from fur trade to nanotechnology. And so, you know, being the beginning of the Erie Canal, you know, a nexus for the railroads, lots of lots of commerce had to pass through Albany.

David Martin: And it’s I wouldn’t say it’s central to the state, but it’s certainly more accessible than Manhattan for most of the rest of the state.

Kathy Sheehan: Well, certainly. And I think it’s it was new. It was New England. Yeah. It was pretty common in states that they didn’t want their big city to be the capital, that there was a compromise politically to smaller cities and to the agricultural community to choose a place that wasn’t the big city.

David Martin: Okay. I want to talk about a couple of things, that you’ve you’re doing now as mayor. Tell me about Cities Forward.

Kathy Sheehan: Well, you know, I think that, in looking at opportunities to benefit from the best ideas that are happening in other places, it’s so important to collaborate with other cities and to learn and to have the opportunity to take a deep dive into what’s working and what’s not working, in other communities. And so, you know, oftentimes people in Albany will say, you know, why are you participating in this program?

Why are you, going to this conference? And I say, I always learn and I always bring things back to our city that help to move us forward.

David Martin: We’re here at the conference of Mayors in June 2024. What are you taking back to Albany so far?

Kathy Sheehan: Well, you know, we are really focused on the investments that are being made by the Chips and Science Act and making sure that we are doing all that we can to and continue to grow that ecosystem, not just in the city of Albany, but we’re part of a capital region. You know, I say we’re part of a region that’s four cities, four counties.

We have, the University at Albany, we have, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, we have actually in our MSA, we have 21 colleges and, and community colleges. And so we have the ability to continue to attract investment. We have a chip fab just a bit to the north of us, the Albany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in our city.

And so really working to have the relationships so that we can attract that investment and continue to build and grow, that industry is going to be really important to the future, not just of the city of Albany, but to the region. And those folks are here at this conference. And so that’s another one of the reasons why I come here, so that you can create those relationships and have them put a face to a name and have the conversation about why this is so important to, to me and to the city of Albany.

David Martin: And you get to call up someone and say, listen, how did you fix this?

Kathy Sheehan: Well, absolutely. And I love seeing what really works in different communities. And I think every community has to find their own Y and their own thing that is really, important. You it can’t be artificial. And so, you know, we talked yesterday, with a bunch of cities about their secret sauce. And every every city’s secret sauce is different, and it should be.

But there were some really good ideas on how to elevate that secret sauce. How do you you know it? How do you market it and then make it accessible to people who are coming to your community either wanting to locate a business you know, they’re looking for a place to expand or coming as a tourist or a visitor, or deciding that they’re going to come to a university or a college near you.

How do you make sure that they understand that brand and and that you’re then delivering on that brand value?

David Martin: I understand you’ve made some inroads in renewable energy programs in your city. Tell me what’s going on.

Kathy Sheehan: Well, you know, we have an Office of Sustainability that is really phenomenal. And, you know, it’s one of those things that, you know, I’m such a nerd. I really I get very wonky about these things. But when I first became mayor, we inherited a, an energy plan that had been done for us by, the New York Power Authority and Nyserda, which is another entity in New York State where they took the five biggest cities outside of New York City.

And they helped us create an energy plan and a way of ensuring that we were doing all that we could to hit targets with respect to carbon reduction. And I inherited that. It was my first year in office. They presented the plan. We had a big celebration about it.

David Martin: You know, oh my, what have I got myself to do?

Kathy Sheehan: Well, but I sat down with them and I, they said, how can we help in the next phase? And I said, I don’t have a single person who works for the city of Albany who can implement this plan. It’s not in anybody’s portfolio. This job does not exist. And we’re broke and we were broke. Oh, and by the way, and by the way, we’re broke so you could pay.

David Martin: You were the treasurer before you were married, right?

Kathy Sheehan: Right. I know you’re broke. Yeah. I was hoping I would find, you know, little caches of money somewhere when I became mayor. But, you know. Yeah. But I said I need a person so you could fund a position for me that would be responsible for helping us to implement this.

David Martin: So sort of an omnibus overseer, right? Coordinator.

Kathy Sheehan: And. Yeah, to my great delight, they said yes. Oh, and so and I said, if you pay for this position for three years, you’re telling me we’re going to have all of these savings, so then I’ll be able to absorb the position because I’m going to have all of these savings. And that’s how it worked. But it was it was me saying, this is going to just sit on a desk unless I have a person and I can’t afford the person.

So for a very small investment, we have taken incredible amounts of carbon out of the environment. We’ve saved millions and millions of dollars to our for our residents, and we’ve created not just this director position that was created, but now he has a staff, we have fellows, and we are really moving the needle with respect to what a city can do on ensuring that we meet our energy goals.

By 2030, we have 2030 goals. 2050 goals. And and that happens because you’ve got to have the right people and you’ve got to have them, have the ability to actually implement and move this forward. So, I mean, our sustainability office has helped us with our regulations around white right roof, white roofs, you know, I mean, just, you know, we’re an old city, right.

Just taking roofs and instead of having the black, you know, we have a lot of flat roofs, right? Painting those white does a tremendous amount to reduce energy consumption. So, so from the little things to the bigger things, building out our electric infrastructure for electric vehicles, I have commissioners that are really looking now at the the bigger trucks.

Right. How do you you know, it’s one thing to have electric cars. How do you have an electric garbage truck. So these but this is this is the type of you have innovation. We don’t yet. Okay. We do have electric street sweepers. Okay. But.

David Martin: You know, are they working?

Kathy Sheehan: They’re great. But again, it’s, it’s making sure that that that is part of what you’re thinking of, throughout the organization. So sustainability, reducing our carbon footprint, that has to be not just this person that we were able to hire on sustainability, but he’s been successful and we’ve been successful in in building that into the culture of all of our departments.

David Martin: This sounds like good government to me. So let me get let me make sure I understand this. You had a plan to save energy. You said, I can’t do this alone. Pay for somebody to do this. And with the savings after three years, we will be able to fund this. And that’s exactly what happened.

Kathy Sheehan: That’s exactly what happened.

David Martin: That’s pretty good. And now you have, And so with the savings, you’re able to actually build out of staff and it’s paid for it. It’s part of the budget. And you’ve made money on the whole deal.

Kathy Sheehan: Absolutely. We bought our streetlights from our utility from National Grid, and we, converted all of them, to, you know, LEDs. And the savings continues to be roughly between 2 and $3 million a year.

David Martin: Which is a hundred staff.

Kathy Sheehan: More than enough. It’s and it’s enough for me to not have to raise property taxes as much as I otherwise would have.

David Martin: Okay. And I’m sure that everyone loves that. So you have, you have been the mayor for, I think you said 11 years and you’ve decided that this is your next year’s your last year. Many questions about this. Why did you decide to step down?

Kathy Sheehan: I think that everybody has a shelf life. Okay. And I also think it’s important that we as leaders recognize that there will always be work to do, and there will be people who will want to do it differently or see things through a different lens. And that’s good for our community. And so I love what I’ve done, and it is incredibly demanding and I nobody forces me to do it.

I’ve loved doing it. And it’s time. And I think that recognizing that even though somebody might not do it the way I did it, it’s going to be okay having trust in democracy.

David Martin: And are you going to be able to let go?

Kathy Sheehan: And yeah, I mean, having faith that, you know, the voters are going to decide this and I don’t know who they’re going to elect, but, I, I believe that I have created, a lot of good foundational changes in how we operate as a city that those changes will carry forward. And so it’s creating the expectation among the community that government should work at the lowest possible level.

So you shouldn’t have to call the mayor to get a pothole filled.

David Martin: Okay. But they do.

Kathy Sheehan: They do, yes.

David Martin: But they stop you with the story.

Kathy Sheehan: I can I can point to the data that shows that if you use our app. So you click fix and you, you tell us that there’s a pothole, I can track how long it takes us to fill that pothole, and I can track how many potholes we’re filling, and I can communicate that back to our residents. And so it should work at that.

That level that you’re calling my garbage didn’t get picked up this morning. That phone call shouldn’t have to come to my office. It should be able to go to our Department of General Services, and it should get addressed and fixed. And that happens more times than not. And that’s because we’ve empowered people to do their jobs and to do it in a way that takes into consideration the entire city, not just certain neighborhoods or certain people.

David Martin: What have you learned in your almost 12 years as mayor?

Kathy Sheehan: What have you?

David Martin: What have you learned about the job and what surprised you?

Kathy Sheehan: Oh, wow. I mean, what I’ve learned about the job is that it is really important to hire people who are really good at what they do. So I don’t have a clue as to how to deploy plows in, snowstorm where we’re going to get 36in of snow, however, but I have I’ve hired someone who’s really good at it.

David Martin: Okay. And so is that hard to find, especially in a city like Albany?

Kathy Sheehan: I’ve been able to find really good people, and I have some commissioners who have been with me since day one.

David Martin: Okay.

Kathy Sheehan: And that to me has been really gratifying. I have folks who are passionate about our community. They’re doing what they’re doing because they want to make a difference in our city. And that’s really a wonderful thing to see, because then that also creates a culture that that makes its way down throughout the entire organization. And so for me, it’s making sure that we have the resources in place for them to do their jobs.

I don’t want to ask somebody to do something and then not give them that, the resources that they need to do it. And so one of the things that I have done and try to do as a leader is to say, I’m asking you to do this right. We need to build a community center before I’m done in 2025.

But I, I don’t just then walk away and say, get it done. I say, what do you need in order to accomplish this? Do you have the right people? Do we have the right resources? Do we have what do we need to make sure we have in place so that you can accomplish this?

David Martin: When you step down, what do you think you’ll be doing next?

Kathy Sheehan: I have no idea. And I don’t want to think about it. I want to give myself some space to really, consider what might be next. Elective office is is challenging, and it has, I’m sure, gotten way more challenging over the last few years. And those of us who led through Covid, I think all kind of where our battle scars.

Yes. And I I’m I’m looking forward to stepping away from that a little bit because I do care. And, you know, people are of a mind that they think that the mayor should have the power to fix everything, right, and that if something goes wrong, it has to be the mayor’s fault. And I understand that sentiment and I don’t shy away from it.

I want to be accountable to people, but I, I look forward to kind of stepping back and thinking about what the skills and experience that I’ve built up over the years, how I can channel that in a different way to help my community.

David Martin: There is a certainly increased distrust in government and in political leaders. And over 12 years you’ve probably seen a an almost sea change. How do you manage that?

Kathy Sheehan: I think it’s really relentless communication. You know, people are going to assume.

David Martin: So get on podcasts, tell your story, things like that.

Kathy Sheehan: Well, you know, we we we’re big with, public meetings with making sure that we’re engaging our neighborhood associations, community based organizations. And we want them to know that, you know, I’m not walking into a room with a foregone conclusion. I’m asking you because I really don’t know the answer, and I want to know what you think the answer should be.

And so we’re we’re, as I said, building a new community center in West Hill, the most under-resourced neighborhood in the city of Albany. It’s going to look very different from a community center in a suburb. It’s going to look very different from, suburban model YMCA. It is going to address the needs and the desires of the people who live in that neighborhood.

And I think for, for so many years, folks who lived in formerly redlined neighborhoods, felt as though they were made a lot of empty promises. And I think the way that you build trust is by saying that you’re going to do something and then do it, and then doing that over and over and over again. And that’s what I’ve done.

And people are still suspicious, right? They still worry, right? They love their neighborhood and they worry they don’t want somebody coming in and gentrifying their neighborhood or bringing something that’s going to be harmful to the neighborhood. And that distrust is earned because bad things happened in the past. There was a, a facility that literally I can see from.

I live in Arbor Hill. I moved to Arbor Hill, and I can see it from my home that used to spew wood burn garbage as a burn plant, and it would spew ash into this predominantly black and brown neighborhood. And so, yeah, bad things have happened in the past. And so building that trust and making sure that people see themselves as a partner in their own governance is something that takes a tremendous amount of effort.

And it can be exhausting. And when you think you had.

David Martin: Let’s head see one more year.

Kathy Sheehan: When you think you’ve had too many meetings about it, you find out that you have it right. Yeah. And so that but but that I think, is what good government really is.

David Martin: Okay. We’re going to talk more about good government. We’re going to take a break and we’re going to come back.

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David Martin: This is our good government show questionnaire. We’re going to get to the heart of your philosophy of government. Are you ready?

Kathy Sheehan: I’m ready.

David Martin: All right. You just said this. Define good government.

Kathy Sheehan: Again. I think good government is that government works where the people are at its lowest level. You have people who are empowered and have agency to do their jobs and to respond to whatever the needs are and the concerns are of our residents.

David Martin: So after 11 years, how do you judge your success and how do you do it on a daily or weekly basis.

Kathy Sheehan: So you know, what gets measured gets done. So we do measure a lot of things. So one of my goals was diversifying our workforce so that it really reflected the demographics of the city in which we live. And so every month I look at our numbers who are we hiring? Are we recruiting? Are we figuring out how we can tap into the incredible talent pool that we have in the city of Albany, so that we’re hiring people from the city who reflect the demographics of our city.

We look at, we have a, an app that we use called Cyclic Fix. Some people used to call it C click ignore. So there were growing pains with it. Okay. But I have a team of people who they give me data every month telling me what what type of complaints we’re getting, how long it’s taking us to respond, and then we sometimes take a deeper dive.

Right. So why are we going to clean up lots on the street every month? And can we proact be doing something different? And that’s where I bring in our planning department, or I’ll bring in our codes department so that we can really focus on a problem area and be proactive with it instead of reactive with it. So we’re we’re measuring these all the time.

Crime I mean safety is a huge issue. If you if your city isn’t safe then you know, nothing else matters. And so looking at, you know, we had a spike, during Covid as everybody did 2020, 2021. We started to see the numbers go down. We’re driving them down, but we’re doing it very intentionally. And I always asked the police chief, what’s working?

Why? Why have we cut automobile thefts by 47%? What are you doing? And part of that was a huge public information campaign. Because you know what? People’s cars get stolen because they leave them running for the keys in them while somebody runs into the store.

David Martin: When people leave their.

Kathy Sheehan: Address. So. So we did a huge campaign where we we would give people a nice warning. And then if it happened another time, we ticket them so and we but we told people we were doing that. So really looking at measuring what are the outcomes you’re looking for and then asking that deeper dive of okay, yeah, this is moving in the right direction, but why do we know why?

And I think that’s a really important question to ask as well.

David Martin: If your people, the citizens of Albany don’t feel like they’re getting good government or the government they want, what would you like them to do?

Kathy Sheehan: I want them to vote. I’ve said over and over again, I would rather lose an election with an 85% voter turnout than win an election with a 20% voter turnout. And it it does.

David Martin: How was the turnout last time?

Kathy Sheehan: It wasn’t great. And it continues to go down in our local elections. I think part of it is that we’re an off year election. Part of it is that we are a predominantly Democrat city. And so the election happens in the primary.

David Martin: Right.

Kathy Sheehan: And but people don’t participate. And and I think, you know, in the national elections, we do participate. We have pretty good voter turnout, actually. We were the voting city in the 2020 election in New York state. All right. But, for for local elections, people need to realize that they’ve got to show up and that the, the people that are representing you on our common council or in the county legislature or in the mayor’s office are probably more important to your day to day life than who you’re electing to send a car.

Does that make you crazy? No. I mean, I just, you know, I mean, I probably I’m crazy, but, that’s another whole podcast.

David Martin: Okay.

Kathy Sheehan: Sorry, but but it it I do encourage people to to participate, show up at the meetings, go to your neighborhood association meeting. You know, work advocate. I’m here to serve you. And so if I don’t know what it is that you need in your neighborhood or what the challenges that you’re facing, I can’t help. And so I do want to hear from you.

David Martin: It drives me crazy when people say, I don’t vote. All the politicians are all the same. They’re all corrupt. No, man, you got a vote? Yeah. So you were, treasurer and now you’re mayor. 11 years. Certainly a government insider. What would you like people to know about government?

Kathy Sheehan: Well, I came to government from the private sector. I never thought that I would run for public office, but I’ve always been involved in my community. And that was an example that my parents set for me. Whether it was participating in the PTA or, you know, being part of our neighborhood association. My parents always participated. And so I just came naturally to me.

Whether it was being involved in my church, I was, commissioner for Pop Warner Football. My husband was, on the board for soccer.

David Martin: Or football player. Football.

Kathy Sheehan: My. No, but my son played my son. Okay. All right. So, but so I’ve always been involved, and that’s a great way to really get to know your community and to know the people and to get an understanding of where resources are being funneled and where they’re not being funneled and where there’s need. And so, you know, for for me, the thing about, about government is that it’s us, right?

It shouldn’t be a mystery. And really, whether you’re the mayor or whether you’re just, a resident who wants to make sure that the park that their grandchild plays in doesn’t have needles in it. Right? Yes. You have you have an ability to impact that and to influence that. It’s you can’t just sit back and say, the mayor ought to do this, right?

I mean, there was a, conversation that happened online about somebody talking about garbage on a particular street, that they saw somebody throw garbage on the ground, and they immediately started criticizing me and the governor and somebody jumped in and said, well, wait a minute, did Kathy Sheehan throw the garbage on the sidewalk? Like, did the governor walk down the street and she threw it on the sidewalk?

Come on, people, you know this won’t work if we just sit back and say, government needs to fix this, we have to fix it. The people. And so for me, that’s, you know, I got in office, I’m the mayor, and I’m, I’m here to tell you, like, there are no magic powers. There was not a little magic wand in the desk when I opened the drawer.

I don’t have a cape. I can’t fly around the city. And and prevent bad things from happening. I can have good people in place and policies in place, and work really hard to ensure that young people have opportunity. Those are all things that I can control, but ultimately, or I can influence, I should say. But ultimately, it comes down to us, the people being good citizens, teaching our kids not to throw garbage on the street and taking agency in making our neighborhoods and our communities a great place.

David Martin: What’s the best part of being mayor of Albany?

Kathy Sheehan: I love going into schools and talking to kids. I love reading to them. I love when they ask me questions. Kids ask me questions that are way harder than the questions you’re asking me.

David Martin: I’m sorry.

Kathy Sheehan: And no, I mean, they’re great, right? I mean, I have third graders who care about homelessness. They care about jobs. They care about litter.

David Martin: I’m trying to think of harder questions there.

Kathy Sheehan: But but they, you know, they really kind of stump me sometimes, but it’s I love being able to go in. I love that there are still kids who say our late, our mayor is a lady. It’s it’s it’s just. And then they really want to know how how did you become mayor? Because they want to be able to see themselves right in, in that future.

And so I love that piece of it.

David Martin: What’s the hardest part of the job?

Kathy Sheehan: You know, that call at 3:00 in the morning that, there’s been a shooting and you know that you’ve got a get up, 17 year old child who’s been killed, and you’ve got to talk to mom and dad, and, and then you’ve got to have a community who’s understandably upset and scared and want to know what you’re doing about violence.

Or, you know, you get the call and, there’s a massive fire, and you show up and there are 40 people that are standing on the sidewalk because everything that they own is just burned in an apartment building. So those are challenges. They they also require leadership. So they require action. And I’m very action oriented. So I’m, I’m doing in those situations.

But after the fact it’s hard. It’s really hard. We have a young woman who was attending New Albany. She was at I, I think it was a party outside and some folks on dirt bikes came through and they were doing wheelies and being very reckless, and they hit her. And she was in a medically induced coma for weeks.

And, you know, her parents blame me, right? I didn’t do enough, even though we outlaw dirt bikes, we have, all kinds of, different, ways that we track them. You know, you can’t chase them. That makes people more unsafe, right? But we follow them with drones. We’ve we’ve we’ve done lots with enforcement.

We’ve reduced greatly the number of dirt bikes being driven in our city. But just as drunk driving is illegal, and we have people who are killed by drunk drivers, this young woman was gravely injured. That’s hard. You know, it’s hard to, to to take action and to be empathetic and, and, you know, you bring that home with you.

Which is why I come to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, because. Yeah, it’s therapy. Okay.

David Martin: Do you read about yourself in the paper? Do you read you don’t you the opinion columns? Nothing.

Kathy Sheehan: I don’t follow headlines even.

David Martin: Where do you get your.

Kathy Sheehan: Well, my my staff does and there are sometimes things that I have to respond to because they’re, they’re wrong. So, but I, I gave up a long time ago, trying to, you know, the control, the narrative for certain reporters and certain opinion writers. You know, I just do my job, and I work really hard, and I do the best that I can.

And I think that I connect a lot with people. And most people provide me with positive feedback. And where do you.

David Martin: Get your news from? What do you read? Do you get the times.

Kathy Sheehan: Yeah. Oh no, I, I, you know, I read the The New York Times. I don’t get the Times Union at the front door because they can’t deliver it on time. So, I used to be one of those people who, my husband and I loved getting the newspaper. And, you know, we’re at work by the time it would hit our stoop.

So we gave up on that. We get it on Sunday. Okay. But, I, I read the the New York Times, I, you know, I keep up on breaking news, from our local media and it’s not that I don’t care what the newspaper writes, but I can’t allow it to govern my day to day. And and, you know, I think, you know, people are going to have their opinions of me there.

And so I don’t play to that. I just do what I think is the right thing.

David Martin: Who’s your political hero? Who inspires you?

Kathy Sheehan: Oh, wow. You know, I think, you know, Nancy Pelosi is a rock star to me, okay. Because she is somebody who not only is she does, she, I think, do work this work for the right reasons, but she’s super strategic and she knows how to build coalitions. She knows how to count the votes.

David Martin: Yep.

Kathy Sheehan: I wish I were better at that. She’s she’s. I really admire her.

David Martin: I talked.

Kathy Sheehan: Yeah, I’ve met her. I’ve met her. Yes. I don’t think she would know who I am, but I’ve met her. I and I’m I’m a big fan. I think that there are also, though, people who aren’t in elected office who really inspire me. There’s a woman, Barbara Smith, who very early on supported me, and she was a civil rights activist.

And, she’s she I mean, she disagrees with me a lot. But but but but again, we can we can disagree and not be disagreeable. Right. But, you know, she’s somebody who constantly challenged me. There was another woman. She’s since passed away. Vera michelson. Everyone called her Mike. You need that. You need your conscience. You know, you need.

You need the folks who are going to say, I don’t really like this decision that you made, and and here’s why. Or have you thought about the impact that this is going to have on, single mom who doesn’t have access to transportation? So, you know, those are people who inspire me too, because, again, it comes back to I think governance is it doesn’t happen at the top.

It happens to me from the ground up.

David Martin: You said before you didn’t really see yourself in politics, but growing up, were you active in your student government? Did you did you think someday you you.

Kathy Sheehan: I, I gave up my political career in third grade. I ran I ran for class president. My opponents were David Webb and Shelley Watson.

David Martin: Wow. This is a approach that’s got out a lot.

Kathy Sheehan: And, you know, and Shelley and I, you know, we divided the girl vote in the class. All the boys voted for David. And and that was it. That was my lesson, you know, that was that was my Nancy Pelosi moment. I didn’t count the votes. So, you know, I, but I, I always could.

David Martin: Have flipped a coin with.

Kathy Sheehan: Every. Right. Right. I should have worked it out with Shelley. Exactly. Back to her. You know, she’s right. We could have we could have. We could have done something.

David Martin: Lesson learned. A third grade lesson learned.

Kathy Sheehan: But I always took on leadership roles in various organizations that I was a part of, whether it was my sorority in college or, I was part of a, an organization called the Women’s Press Club because I used to be in media myself. Good. And, you know, took on a leadership role. So I, I’ve always been willing to be at the table, and I think that helped to prepare me, but I never thought I’d be at the head of the table.

I, I always liked the supporting role, however. So this, this, this got me out of my comfort zone.

David Martin: All right. As I said, I’ve been to Albany a few times. But I want to come up before your your your mayoralty ends. Take me out to Albany. What’s the dish of Albany? What’s what are we having? Where are we going? What’s your what’s your favorite thing to eat in Albany? Oh.

Kathy Sheehan: You know, so first of all, I can’t pick. It’s like picking your favorite child. I only I only have one. And I haven’t even picked him. But, he but we have great restaurants. We have a really great local restaurant scene. There was a guy who used to try to. He never got on the ballot, but he always tried to be a writing candidate for mayor.

And I think his campaign slogan was, he wanted an Olive Garden in Albany. You know, we have chain restaurants all around us.

David Martin: Just go.

Kathy Sheehan: And yeah, you.

David Martin: Just I’d have my vote.

Kathy Sheehan: But, you know, I, I like the fact that we have an incredible small business ecosystem of people who really care about our city, that I can pick up the phone and I can call and I can say, hey, I have this idea, are you on board? And they’re on board when I when I needed help figuring out how we were going to spend our American Rescue Plan dollars, I was able to get 40 people at the table from our arts organizations, from our local businesses, from our not for profits and and have people provide amazing input to help ensure that we were investing in our community in ways that really were going to

be transformative. And so that’s what I love. It’s a city where people care.

David Martin: Just Albany have a local cuisine. Do they have a local dish? Something you can only get in Albany.

Kathy Sheehan: You know, there are many folks who would say that we have the best of a lot of things, but that’s really hard when, you know, you’ve got this little town called New York City. That’s. Yeah, 2 to 2 hours and 20 minutes by train. But, you know, I think that what we bring to our cuisine is heart and, it’s, it’s just it’s it’s it is our secret sauce.

David Martin: You’ve got a year and a half to go as mayor. Tell me something you want to make sure you implement before you leave.

Kathy Sheehan: So, I have four things that have to be done before I leave. One of them is really boring. Our historic city hall needs a new roof.

David Martin: Okay, that is boring.

Kathy Sheehan: That is boring is also $15 million.

David Martin: But it’s also.

Kathy Sheehan: It’s really boring. But it’s practical. Are. We have an H.H. Richardson designed city hall, so it’s historic. At the time that it was built, it was one of the ten greatest examples of American architecture. So it’s a special place. But we are also, replacing a 100 year old pool in our Lincoln Park with a new facility that’s going to have a zero entry pool, a lap pool, a splash pad with a slide.

It’s going to be awesome and amazing.

David Martin: And are you going to take the first high dive?

Kathy Sheehan: I don’t know about the dive. Okay, I may I may go down the slide. I may go down the.

David Martin: Slide on the.

Kathy Sheehan: Slide. But so and we’re, we’re completely renovating our South end community center, and we’re building a new community center in West Hill. And all of those I hope to have done before December 31st, 2025.

David Martin: Before you go, Mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York, it has been a pleasure talking with you. Everyone said that I should talk to you, and I’m certainly glad that I did. I have a feeling you don’t spend a lot of downtime.

Kathy Sheehan: No, no, no, no, I’ll find something to do.

David Martin: I’m sure. I’m sure you will. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming. And it was great to meet you.

Kathy Sheehan: Thank you.

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Good government in action in Albany to review Kathy Sheehan saw problem. She got a sustainable energy position created and funded. And then with the work she directed, the city saved enough money to create an entire program. That may be the secret sauce she looks for in other cities, just right there in her own city. Machine is stepping down after the end of her term this year.

Sounds like she did a good job delivering good government in a city that really needs it. So well done machine and good luck with retirement. But with luck, the next year we’ll build on what she’s done. City government is a challenge, she said. Well said and well done. Well, that’s our show. Thanks for listening. Please like us and share this with your friends and with us right here.

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**This transcription was created using digital tools and has not been edited by a live person. We apologize for any discrepancies or errors.