The county legislature needs to fully fund public health initiatives to lift our local economy with initiatives like at home rapid Covid testing. At a time when Covid is spreading rapidly in Onondaga County including mounting deaths, spending valuable taxpayer dollars on building another sports complex is irresponsible.

I love bringing my children to softball at local fields and watching them compete. We have beautiful county facilities in East Syracuse and Liverpool already. The local population won't get to enjoy those if they are not able to be safe, healthy and have innovative public health measures like on demand rapid Covid testing as all residents do in Ohio, Minnesota, Delaware and other localities. We urgently need outreach groups to go door to door to vaccinate and test those at risk and who are homebound or otherwise unable or unwilling to get vaccinated thus far. We should aim to have the most robust public health program in the state; an aggressive program that shows we care about all our residents.

Meeting basic needs of county residents is not only humane but the most effective way to grow our local economy. When you provide for the health needs of the poor and working class, trust is built and healthy people will look for jobs. When a pandemic rages out of control, people are frightened to work, spend or get healthcare. They lose trust in government when the focus turns to corporate welfare and building extraneous sports complexes. Punishing working class families by removing modest benefits only hurts the economy and doesn't result in people returning to work.

We have a ways to go in controlling this pandemic and efforts are being made to make at home, rapid Covid testing more widely available. We need to get to the point that we all have these rapid Covid kits and test ourselves and particularly our kids frequently. Our health, safety, schools and business community are counting on us to protect each other. Without aggressive efforts to contain the pandemic now, we'll continue to develop more variants at a huge financial cost and rising body count. Our freedom will continue to be limited by our own failure to act now.

The response to this proposal will be to march out a number of figures that have been spent on the pandemic. Efforts here have resulted in successes. We can do more while we try to convince our state and federal government to fund our health and poverty needs. Until you can easily get the Covid testing you need, don't stop asking your county legislators to focus on real solutions to our pandemic and needed economic development.

If this vision of public health and pandemic management is a priority over sports stadiums, vote for candidates like me that support such a vision. We have an opportunity to usher in a legislature that won't regularly cede it's responsibilities to appointed officials like we've seen under my opponent's leadership. Your county government can focus on your needs and not those of private developers, while supporting our small, independent businesses. You can vote now by absentee, early voting on Oct. 23-30 or Nov. 2nd. We need leadership from our county legislators and I'm asking you to support those of us who want to provide it.