ITHACA, N.Y.—Patrick Kuehl narrowly won a seat on the Common Council last month with a controversial surprise write-in campaign. Kuehl did not publicly disclose his policy proposals until a week after Election Day.
In a 90-minute interview with The Ithaca Voice after his victory, Kuehl elaborated on his plans for his time in office, however long that may be. To date, the Cornell University senior has not committed to serving out the full four-year term.
In the interview, Kuehl described himself as “very progressive” and a Democrat “through and through.” He said he takes inspiration from Democratic governors in swing or Republican-leaning states.
“I don’t really like labels overall,” Kuehl said. “I’m aligned to the Democratic Party in a lot of things. But one of the things I think there’s a problem with labels is that they kind of paint you into a corner of the things that you support and the things that you don’t.”
Kuehl said that one of his top priorities is to improve the emergency response system in Tompkins County. In previous school years, Kuehl worked part-time as a dispatcher and later as an emergency medical technician (EMT) with Bangs Ambulance.
He proposed a city or county-funded “community paramedicine” program — an emerging field that utilizes EMTs and paramedics to provide routine preventative care at patients’ homes.
“[Similar programs in other counties] have really supported the most impoverished people, [and provided] the ability to access health care when you cannot get to the hospital,” Kuehl said.
Kuehl said the program would be useful for people who would otherwise call an ambulance to have someone administer medication if they were unable to go to the hospital. He said the program could take some of the burden off of Bangs employees and improve emergency response times.
Kuehl said that, ideally, every municipality would have its own ambulance system, which would be treated as an essential service. He admitted it would be unlikely to happen in the next four years, but said he wants to see the city take steps to alleviate existing issues.
“Being able to take those steps to say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna start working on a community paramedicine program, we’re going to figure out how we can support people where they are to take some of the burden off the emergency management system, we’re going to work with the county and this [rapid response network] that they’re implementing to take care of some of these noncritical calls, so that Bangs can operate more effectively,” Kuehl said. “I think those are all great places to start.”
When asked about the city’s landmark police reform effort, Reimagining Public Safety, Kuehl seemed to be under the impression that the Ithaca Police Department (IPD) had already implemented a proposal to hire unarmed first responders to handle some emergency calls. It has not yet done so.
“I’ve worked in the Reimagining Public Safety world,” Kuehl said. “And I think that, from my perspective, [hiring unarmed first responders] was a pretty large jump, especially for emergency service providers, to kind of have to go into this world, I remember feeling a lot of fear for myself and my coworkers that we were not supported on calls that were, frankly, very dangerous.”
Kuehl described a situation in which he and a coworker at Bangs had expected a police officer to accompany them on an emergency call, but had a “community service worker” show up instead. When The Ithaca Voice asked Kuehl to clarify, he said he wasn’t sure about the circumstances behind the incident, but said his supervisors at Bangs said it “was part of the Reimagining Public Safety thing.” It’s not clear what program he was referring to, since the Ithaca Police Department has not yet hired any unarmed first responders.
The Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office piloted a “co-responder” program earlier this year where a mental health professional and sheriff’s deputy would respond to certain emergency calls together, but there are currently no programs where an unarmed mental health worker would respond to an emergency alone, instead of a conventional armed law enforcement officer.
When asked about community members who felt that the city’s landmark reform programs, like Reimagining Public Safety and the Ithaca Green New Deal, weren’t being implemented quickly enough, Kuehl said he wanted to see more progress and said he felt both reform efforts had over-emphasized their “connection to an ideal, rather than actual on the ground action.”
Kuehl later said that he felt that Reimagining Public Safety was a good idea “in concept,” and said Ithaca’s emergency response system has other issues that needed to be addressed too.
“I think if we’re reimagining public safety, we need to make sure our public workers are taken care of and make sure that we have adequate staffing levels,” Kuehl said.
Kuehl said that responding to emergency calls alongside police officers was an “eye opening experience” for him.
“I was in the Titus Towers [apartment complex] riding up the elevator and we had a police officer with us,” Kuehl said. “I think it was 3 a.m. And I was like, ‘Having a long night?’ And she’s like, ‘It’s just me and one other guy on tonight. That’s all we’ve got for the city.’”
Kuehl said he also wants to prioritize improving road and sidewalk conditions throughout the city — a bread-and-butter issue for many Ithaca residents.
“Something that I’ve heard from a lot of people and some of the permanent residents that I’ve talked to throughout this process […] there seems to be not enough emphasis on making sure that our roads are passable,” Kuehl said.
Superintendent of Public Works Mike Thorne has said street repairs in the Fourth Ward often take longer to complete due to steep grades. Such repairs require more skill, time and money compared to streets elsewhere in the city.
Some of those repairs are likely to begin next year, with or without Kuehl’s advocacy. The recently renegotiated Memorandum of Understanding between Cornell University and the city includes some $800,000 in yearly funding specifically earmarked for road and infrastructure maintenance in and around university facilities — much of which is included in the Fourth Ward.
Kuehl said he also wants to see municipal crews take over snow removal on sidewalks, which he said could have prevented some emergency calls when people slip on icy sidewalks.
Currently, property owners are responsible for clearing snow from sidewalks, though compliance is often spotty and enforcement is near non-existent.
Advocates have pointed to sidewalk snow removal programs in cities like Syracuse and Rochester as models for a similar program in Ithaca. Thorne, whose department would likely oversee a potential sidewalk snow removal program, said such a program in his view would be impractical and cost-prohibitive for the city.
Local mobility advocates and city staff have been at a stalemate on the matter for years. Jorge DeFendini, who lost his seat to Kuehl, was involved in the most recent push to fund a pilot program for sidewalk snow removal in 2022, which ultimately proved unsuccessful.
Kuehl has been clear from his first public statement that concerns about the Solidarity Slate — a coalition of local Democratic Socialist candidates — served as a major motivator for his campaign. Kuehl’s opponent, DeFendini, is a member of the Solidarity Slate, and fiercely criticized Kuehl for depriving voters of a competitive election by not campaigning more openly.
While the Solidarity Slate does have its share of critics, Kuehl’s unconventional campaign is arguably the most significant public rebuke to the Slate since its inception in 2021. Kuehl said he was asked to run by several community members critical of the Slate.
Some critics of the Slate have expressed dismay at the Slate’s aggressive campaign tactics, which, in addition to mailers, lawn signs and extensive get-out-the-vote efforts, have at times also included inflammatory or misleading rhetoric, like a tweet by a Slate organizer indirectly calling Democrat Cynthia Brock “conservative.”
Kuehl said that while he aligns with his soon-to-be predecessor on many issues, he does not agree with the idea of voting blocs. DeFendini and Phoebe Brown, the two members of the Slate with seats on Common Council, have nearly always voted together.
“I’ve heard this from other people, too, that you get into the situation where you are part of [the Solidarity Slate], and then you are aligned with it,” Kuehl said. “And if you don’t align yourself with [other Slate members], then you can’t be a part of it anymore.”
To date, the only person who has been removed from the Solidarity Slate is Alderperson and Cornell student Tiffany Kumar, who, along with Alderperson-elect and fellow Cornell student Clyde Lederman, played an advisory and planning role in Kuehl’s campaign.
Kumar lost the Slate’s endorsement days before she was first elected last November. A statement from two of the groups that back the Slate, the Ithaca Tenants Union and the Ithaca Democratic Socialists of America, cites “concerns regarding the candidate’s conduct.”
The post Patrick Kuehl has plans for his time on Common Council — however long that may be appeared first on The Ithaca Voice.