By Dave Hill<br><a href="mailto:hilld@gnnewspaper.com">E-mail Dave</a>
The Tonawanda News
December 04, 2008 05:04 pm
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A City of Tonawanda native, Matthew Renninger has his sights set on returning to his hometown after graduating in May from the Dickinson School of Law at Penn State University.
When he does come home, the 24-year-old plans on pursuing a bid to seek the city Democratic Committee’s endorsement to run for mayor next year. The field currently includes incumbent Republican Ron Pilozzi and Democratic Councilman Rick Davis.
Renninger says his enthusiasm and passion, plus his travel and educational experiences, would serve him well in Tonawanda City Hall. Renninger graduated from Tonawanda High School in 2002, and earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from St. Bonaventure University in 2006, then enrolled at Penn State. In 2004, he studied at National University of Ireland.
Renninger talked about his political aspirations for this weeks Question and Answer feature.
QUESTION: How did you become interested in local politics?
ANSWER: I’ve always been interested in it. I didn’t see myself running this early. I had always toyed with the idea of maybe coming back here. And of course during college and early in law school, you don’t know where you’re going to end up. You don’t know where the best opportunities are.
But regardless of what those opportunities are, I knew that this was where I’d like to come back. ... After conversing with friends, whether they be in Tonawanda or Penn State, it dawned upon me that this was the right time for me to do this.
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Q: What are some strengths that you would bring to the city as mayor?
A: I feel I would be a great asset to the City of Tonawanda, bringing new vision and a new outlook. I’ve always wanted to come back here and help and I feel that upon graduation, the easiest way and the best way that I could do it would be to be the mayor of the city.
I feel that being so many places so young, I believe that that gives me a different perspective on what a successful city can do.
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Q: How have your travel and educational experiences prepared you for something like this?
A: Quite simply, interaction with all types of people and being able to sell myself and convey my ideas in a way that can seem strong but not aggressive. It’s allowed me to meet people from all different walks of life and basically just gauge what people want in their lives.
Being away, it’s allowed me to gain a better of perspective of how much I love living in Tonawanda.
I could probably live nearly anywhere, but I’ve been focused on coming back to the city and trying to help it get over the hump the way some other Buffalo suburbs have over the past five to 10 years and in a way where it seems that we’re trailing them in some aspects. I don’t do anything halfway, so if I come back here to help, I’m going to throw everything I’ve got into that.
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Q: What are some of the big issues in the city that you would like to tackle?
A: There’s a couple of things that the current mayor seems to be working toward that just don’t make sense to me, and I’m sure they don’t make sense to a lot of citizens. For instance, talking about City Hall and closing down Young Street.
At a time when we’re in economic crisis ... to even spend five minutes talking about such a massive idea that would take so much time and so much money, I think that that’s just absurd. Along the same lines, any talk of moving Clint Small (Stadium) I think is just not feasible. The best part about Clint Small Stadium is its location itself.
Beyond that, we’ve got problems at Vets Park with rotting shelters, we’ve got problems with erosion at Niawanda Park. I think it’s pretty simple. The people want their roads to be fixed, they want their water to work, they want their taxes to be cheaper of course, but they’re not asking for City Hall to be moved.
They’re not asking for much. They just want to be able to live comfortably, and I think there needs to be a focus more on that than some massive move that would take years.
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Q: What are your views on Spaulding Fibre, the landfill on Hackett and the Young Street project?
A: I don’t see any benefit of closing Young Street. We have merely two or three main arteries that run north and south in the city, with Young being one of them. Especially after we’ve just finished paving and making that road smoother, to talk about closing it down now would be a complete waste of funds.
As far as Spaulding, I think it’s great that it’s finally coming down. I think that a couple of the previous administrations have made great leaps forward on getting that moving.
The landfill on Hackett, that’s been an issue for years and it almost seems like the third rail that nobody wants to address. I certainly would address it. It’s a massive project. I guess the biggest question would be, after Spaulding and everything else that we need to do, would we have funds to undertake a project like this and not have it stretch out for 10, 15 years as Spaulding did?
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Q: What are some other ideas you have?
A: We need to look into stuff that can bring money into the economy instead of worrying about penny pinching on what we can spend and what we can’t spend. Canal Fest does a great thing for us, but I think with that, we’ve seen that people will come to Tonawanda for things. I think we need to look into ways to generate some revenue with the city.
We have such a gorgeous waterfront and other than the Fourth of July fireworks down there, we really don’t take advantage of Niawanda Park as well as we could for the city ... especially at a time where we’re looking at our state funding getting cut and our county funding getting cut.
Renninger can be contacted at Renninger2009@gmail.com.
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