Mayor: Laying the Groundwork for the Future in Fulton
By Stefan Yablonski
There is a lot going on in the city of Fulton, according to Mayor Jim Rice.
“We appointed a new DRI advisory committee. We got the DRI moving along at a much faster pace. Some of the projects are getting started and completed this year,” he said. “Looking ahead on the DRI, I am optimistic that I think we will be able to get the library project out to bid and going.”
As far as some of the things that they did last year to lay the groundwork for this year, the mayor said the city passed 26 laws last year. “I think that’s a big accomplishment,” he added.
They passed an abandoned building code last year. “With that we onboarded a fire marshal to take over that program. We have around 50 vacant homes,” the mayor said. “The problem just went unaddressed for I don’t know how long. The vacant structure law was actually proposed, I believe, back in 2022 and just never went forward.
“The fire marshal is coming on and we want to start addressing this significant problem. We are going to start attaching fines. Some of these buildings the taxes are current on them. So we aren’t too worried about having to grab them in foreclosure. With the taxes being current on them we need to start holding people’s feet to the fire and hopefully we can get these houses repurposed — as you know we are in a housing crisis.”
They also passed a new conservation code to clear up the neighborhoods from the litter and debris.
“We have a city attorney taking care of day-to-day business,” he said. “Along with that we got codes back up and running. We have a monthly codes court calendar now that takes violators to city codes court and enforce those laws. We’ve done a lot in the last year and want to keep moving forward this year. I think we have laid the groundwork for the year ahead.”
He likes to go out on weekends and do ‘ward walks.’
“We had some turnover in our code enforcement department this spring. We had two resignations. The person that stayed has become the bureau chief and we have hired two new code enforcement inspectors,” he said.
They do a team building event once a quarter for city staff. People working together might not always know each other, from different departments, he explained.
“Another thing that we’ve done is we’ve partnered with Oswego County Workforce to get free training for some of our employees at no cost to our taxpayers and no cost to the employees. In one scenario if someone wanted to move up to a different position they’d have to spend around $6,000 on their own for training. So this partnership gives people a chance to be able to move up without the financial burden,” he said. “I’m pretty proud of that. No cost to the taxpayers — I think that is pretty significant.”
There’s a lot of good stuff going on, Rice said.
“It’s stuff that people don’t necessarily see, but it helps the city. I think we’ve done a lot and we’re going to do more! We’ve done a lot of good things,” he added. “We hope that continues.”
They are continuing to try to market the Nestle site.
An old grant that was awarded in 2017 but for some reason it just sat there and nothing was happening with it, he said.
“So we are engaged now to hopefully get it going and get a phase two going trying to make the site you know more marketable,” he said. ”I think if something gets built there on the one corner that will help to get some development engaged in what’s left of the rest of the site.”
Fulton has got a problem and it’s bigger than a ‘city problem,’ the mayor said.
“It’s homelessness. I’ve engaged with Victory Transformation in Oswego about a project in an empty building. It was moving forward but the neighbors just pretty much said, ‘not in my back yard.’
“I’ve got a problem and I’m trying to fix it. So not being able to get something done about that is probably my biggest disappointment since I took office. But that doesn’t mean I am going to stop trying to fix the problem.”
