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Poverty is always on Miner's mind, even if she didn't mention it

Ryan Delaney
/
WRVO file photo
Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner after her State of the City address Jan. 29, 2015.

The mayor of Syracuse says her city’s high poverty rate is always on her mind, even if she didn’t mention it in her 2015 agenda.

A third of Syracuse residents live in poverty and half of Syracuse’s children are poor. That has ripple effects like a high school graduation rates that hovers around only 50 percent.

Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner did not mention the high poverty rate or discuss programs targeted to reduce it during her recent State of the City address. She was asked why not following that speech.

"It is consistent through every single thing that I talked about," Miner told reporters.

Even though she didn’t specifically mention the city’s poor, Miner said they’re part of her agenda. "It’s part of what we do every day and we think about it with each of our programs and how to make it better."

Miner says poverty is an aspect of other ills the city faces, like graduation rates crime and homelessness. They’re not a "distinct phenomenon," she said.

"It would be foolish to think that you could talk about the city of Syracuse without recognizing that we have a poor city," she said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed in his plan for the year to create a poverty task force, but its focal point will be Rochester, a bigger city that has nearly identical poverty rates as Syracuse. By some metrics though, the Rochester metro area has worse poverty.