Ithaca's new mayor reflects on first days in office, priorities and more county collaboration

While juggling a day full of meetings, Ithaca’s newest mayor, Robert G. Cantelmo, made some time Friday to speak with the Ithaca Journal about his priorities for his time in office.

At the beginning of 2024, much of Ithaca’s council seats were turned over to fresh faces who have not been largely involved with city politics prior, which will bring new ideas and varied perspectives to the table.

According to Cantelmo, one of the biggest strengths of the new council is its enthusiasm.

“We’ve got so many new folks bringing passion and perspective to council that I think we will get a lot of interesting work done and a lot of new ideas on the table,” he said. “The ‘throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks’ mentality is definitely something that will be explored.”

“Hearing what people who have been outside of the government think about the direction of the city, or think about ideas that might not have been represented by older voices at the table is also really valuable,” he said.”

Changing the way things operate

Cantlemo said that with a new council, an opportunity has been raised to change the way the council operates. As he said in his State of the City address, the city is looking toward a new legislative process model that the new mayor envisions to be a more inclusive one-committee structure where all city committees can work together to create new policies.

He noted that oftentimes, proposed policies make their way to the Common Council after being pondered by city committees, only to have the council raise concerns about things that were not discussed by other governmental branches of the city, which can slow down the implementation of impactful policies.

“We want to make sure that our policy is timely in addressing the needs of the community and so exploring and experimenting with new methods of doing things, I think is a really good opportunity,” Cantelmo said.

Cantelmo’s prior work with the city

Like many who come to Ithaca, Cantelmo came to the city in 2017 to progress his doctorate in government.

“Like a lot of other people, I fell in love with the community,” he said. “We bought a home and before you know it, we had one, then two little ones. Sometime around 2019, I was really interested in finding a channel through which I could do some applied work.”

Cantelmo’s political training gave him a background as an economist and political theorist, which he said interests him deeply, but it’s not really something that touches people’s lives.

Then mayor of Ithaca, Svante Myrick, offered him a position on the city’s Public's Safety and Information Commission later that year, giving him a chance to make changes in the Ithaca community.

“I served on that for a year, and then the mayor asked me if I would chair that commission, which I agreed to do. I started chairing that commission in January of 2020, so we met for about two and a half months, and then the world fell apart.”

Through the coronavirus pandemic, Cantelmo was still able to work with committee members to finish up projects for the council and Myrick.

“Things obviously slowed down, those commissions still have to largely be stood back up,” Cantelmo said. “The sustainability and climate justice commission is currently meeting, but for the others, we’re developing a strategy to now recruit new commissioners and get their work started again.”

“At about that time, I learned my alderperson was not going to seek another term, and she encouraged me to explore whether I would be interested in throwing my hat in the ring,” Cantelmo said. “I ran for the two-year seat, was elected in 2021, and right before mayor Myrick left, he made me chair of the city Administration Committee which oversees public finance, workforce and budget.”

During his time on the administration committee, Cantelmo looked at the new transition of government to a city manager government — also known as a “Weak Mayor” form of government in political academia — and saw an opportunity to take reform the city mayor position.

The separation of policy implementation, operational responsibilities, the day-to day logistics and management from policy-making, community visioning, and community relationship management, culminated in the creation of the city nanager position and ultimately, the hiring of Deb Mohlenhoff for the position.

Cantelmo said he learned during his time on council that making community relationships to inform policy making was one of the things he found most rewarding, despite the time commitment.

“I knew that one of the major responsibilities that the mayor was going to have was going to be articulating a major policy vision and helping to lead the council in a unified direction whether it's towards housing needs, transit needs or economic development needs.”

Breaking down Ithaca’s biggest issues: transportation

Cantelmo said one of the way’s Ithaca was hit hardest by the Coronavirus Pandemic was the decline of public transportation due to health concerns, and other issues.

TCAT had 90 drivers as of 2018, but pared down its staff about 45%, down to about 60 full time drivers, according to the organizations most recent staffing report, released in October of 2023.

This has caused several bus routes to be abandoned in favor of servicing more populated routes, a sacrifice that has caused much frustration for those living without their own means of transportation in the city.

“We’ve gone through a really disruptive period of time as a country, but locally we see that most significantly in TCAT, whether its been supply chain issues, or the ability to recruit mechanics and drivers, that’s been a major challenge and has had impacts,” he said.

Cantelmo said that he’d like to see increased commitment from the city, Tompkins County and Cornell to support TCAT. Cornell took a step in that direction in October of 2023, when the university and TCAT came to an agreement on a four-year payment plan that would subsidize student riders, representing more than $12 million in funding from the university over the next four years.

Another possible solution is tying the city’s transit strategy to its housing strategy, Cantelmo said.

“Frankly, one of the best ways to ensure you have good, ridership is to have people using the bus,” he said. “One of the ways to do that is to say ‘hey let's look at where we can be strategic about density and we can promote more ridership’ and therefore we can maybe extend service in places that need it, so that if you're getting off of a second shift somewhere downtown and you miss a bus you're not stranded overnight.”

Cantelmo also mentioned lowering the barriers to ridership, applauding free busing for children that TCAT already provides.

“I do think it’s important to balance that against the service, because if the bus is free but it only comes once every 10 hours, you’re not going to use it.”

Cantelmo said he plans to increase city investment in and incentivize Ithaca residents to utilize what he called “micro-mobility,” which refers to alternate means of transportation, like bike trails, more walkable neighborhoods, and further support for Ithaca Bikeshare.

“Ultimately, transit is a housing issue,” he said. “If you have a place for people to live but there’s no way for them to get to the grocery store, to work, or to the pharmacy, you’ve only done half the solution.”

Encampment Pilot program plans and outlook

At the end of 2023, Ithaca’s former common council authorized a pilot program that would change the way camping enforcement is handled in the city, in regards to its homeless population.

The pilot program would institute a camping “Green Zone” in an area where many of the city’s homeless have already set up encampments, in which the city would provide increase amenities for those individuals, including proposed restrooms, showers, warming stations, and phone chargers.

“I'm an evaluator by trade and I think pilots are useful in that they help you collect data about. ‘Hey, is this intervention meeting the objectives that we set out for it?’” Cantelmo said. “I do think we have to have a conversation about better integration between the city and the county. I can't say too much about what directions things might go, but I certainly think there's a willingness to partner on both sides.”

Cantelmo hopes to address the challenge that's facing Ithaca’s unhoused community, as a long-term one, which means lowering the barriers to being sheltered. To do that, the city will need county partnership and an increase in city housing stock, a multipronged approach to combating home affordability, homelessness and a lack of social services for unhoused residents.

Addressing Ithaca’s law enforcement staffing challenges

Cantelmo officially swore in the new Ithaca Police Chief Thomas Kelley Friday, and spoke about staffing challenges at IPD in an interview about two hours prior.

“Overall it’s been a tough time to recruit for IPD, I think the new union contract will help that, but it’s been a tough time to recruit for other city positions as well. The council has heard the needs of our Workforce and for the first time in at least a decade — definitely longer — the city has no lapsed Union contracts,” he said. “I think that helps send a signal that we value our Workforce, we want to recruit people, we want to retain people and we want to continue to provide high levels of service whether that's in public safety, public works or elsewhere in the city.”

The Ithaca Police Department has about 38 officers currently, and eight officer vacancies are already funded.

Ithaca police have additional funding set aside for the hire of several new officers this year according to former mayor Laura Lewis, who discussed the department's funding during city budget meetings at the end of 2023.

The department's hiring process has historically been slow, so it’s possible that that funding will go unspent.

This article originally appeared on Ithaca Journal: New Ithaca mayor Robert Cantelmo discusses his priorities