Newly elected Newburgh Mayor Judy Kennedy said she first started thinking about forming a series of Community Action Teams while walking around the city streets talking to residents during her recent campaign.

“These residents started talking to me about things that they were very passionate. They told me, ‘We need to do something about the youth;’ ‘We need to do something about cleaning up the city.’

“As I talked to business people, I would ask: ‘Do you have any support here?’ ‘How does the City support you?’ ‘What kind of interaction do you have with the City?’

“They would respond, ‘Well, we don’t have any interaction with the City. All we do is pay our taxes and they raise them.’”

Kennedy said she started keeping track of “these various ideas” as she went from house to house and business to business during her campaign. We sat down recently in the mayor’s office to discuss her thoughts about the Community Action Teams and how they might lead to a better Newburgh.

She said city residents have a history of contributing ideas to city programs.

“We had the Lyceum a couple of years ago, people adding their input back then. There have been a lot of attempts for citizens to do something in the community, but there have been no really organized “let’s take action” moments.

“There have been lots of idea generation but no [specific] ways in which we can take action – thus the reason behind naming these the Community Action Teams.”

Kennedy said she isn’t trying to reinvent what the city has already done.

“I’m inviting anybody who’s already doing something in any one of these 14 given areas right now to come to this community meeting on Jan. 26.”

The 14 proposed Community Action Teams are:
• Broadway Transformation
• Clean & Beautify Newburgh
• Creating a Safe City
• Transportation
• Friends of Seniors
• Landlords & Tenants
• Youth
• Newburgh Heritage and Art Festival
• Building Business/Newburgh Business Association
• Marketing the City
• Job Creation
• Adopt-a-Block
• Bring the Remains Home (Remains at SUNY New Paltz from the Colored Burial Ground at the Courthouse.)
• Emergency Planning

Kennedy said she hopes to probe “the hurdles that tend to deny change.”

“Change, in and of itself, brings up fear and hope at the same time,” she said. “People want change, they talk about change, they say they want change until you talk about something personal to them.

“Then the fear enters the picture.”

“Wait a minute,” they say. “How is that going to affect me?”

“So, we’re going to have to figure out how to work through this change and deal with our fears at the same time.”

With the repaving of Robinson Avenue/Route 9W came a totally new look for that section of the City of Newburgh.

What followed was a series of property owners improving their houses along that stretch. All of a sudden the whole street was looking better.

“That’s the other aspect of change,” Kennedy said, “While 25 percent of the people grab hold of the vision and push and pull for change saying, ‘let’s go, let’s go.’

“Then, there are about 50 percent of the people who say, ‘I don’t know about that. And then there are about 25 percent of the people who will really pull back – ‘it’s a mess; we don’t want to try to do it.’”

Kennedy said that as change starts in the City, it’s going to bring up kinds of things like this.

She said she is interested in appealing to the people who want to get on the bandwagon and are eager for progress.

“Some will be asking themselves: ‘Is it really going to happen this time?’ “We’ve had a lot of failures,” she reminded us.

“We’ve had a lot of failures and incidents where we just haven’t gotten off the dime with anything,” she said.

“The real key to driving change is to take off bite-size pieces,” she suggests, “and have incremental success rather than try to eat this elephant all at once.”

She said that she has been talking with Police Chief Michael Ferrara about how to make Broadway a safer place. She said she has suggested putting a walking beat on Broadway to help make the street safer.

“We start making the street safe; we start making the sidewalks safe; and with the cleanup group, how do they focus on Broadway and start developing an ongoing plan, not a once-a-year plan, to keep it clean.

“I kind of have this idea that as we pick specific areas, this leads into the adopt-a-street idea and we start focusing on making that area safe, that area clean, working with either the neighbors or working with the businesses on the street to help bring that area under control.”

“That’s kind of the idea,” she said, adding that she feels that coming at a problem from several very focused directions can bring results.

“I believe that there are a lot of people out there – people who have been calling me and asking, ‘How can I help?’ People who say they used to live in the city and that they still have a passion for the city. I want to help.’”

Kennedy said that there are people who say they want the City of Newburgh to have its glory back – and that they want to help see that it happens.

The organizational Community Action Teams meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26 at the Newburgh Armory Unity Center will be a good opportunity to test the wills of these volunteers.

For anyone with questions about the Jan. 26 meeting, contact the mayor at jkennedy@cityofnewburgh-ny.gov and a website that should be up and running in the near future: www.NewburghConnections.com.

By ALLAN GAUL
agaul@tcnewspapers.com