PEEKSKILL, NY Mayor Mary Foster has issued a strong response to the Mayor of Newburgh over comments made about her city, but the Newburgh mayor said the article got it all wrong.
The statement is in the most recent New York Magazine where the mayor is quoted saying Peekskill, like Poughkeepsie, his city, is in a state of decline.
"We're not unique," Newburgh Mayor Nicholas Valentine told journalist Patrick Radden Keefe in a lengthy article about the city's high murder rate which can be found here. "It's happened to many communities up and down the Hudson," Valentine said. "Poughkeepsie. Peekskill. Things die."
Foster insists that while there is still work to be done in her city, Peekskill does not belong on that list.
"Peekskill, like many former industrial towns along the Hudson River has experienced difficult times in the last three decades," Foster said. "However, over the last few years we have reclaimed our reputation as a regional destination by keeping our tax base stable, promoting a lively growing music and arts scene, stepping up law enforcement, and making strategic, modest investments in our infrastructure and building stock.
Foster went on to talk about the business and cultural successes the city has had in recent years and that she would like to show Valentine around and talk about Peekskill's goal to be a cultural, entertainment, dining and business hub of the region.
But Valentine said the article as written did not accurately reflect what he said in his one hour interview with the author and said the finished article was much more critical of his city than he originally thought it would be.
"I had one line in a 700 word article and he [Keefe] took everything out of context," Valentine said. "If anyone should be upset, it's Newburgh"
Valentine said he made the "things die" comment while discussing the economic troubles of the 1970s and '80s that saw many river cities like Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Beacon, Kingston and Peekskill fall on hard times. He said he had no ill will towards Peekskill and actually wanted to copy the success of the city's Paramount Center for the Arts with its historic Ritz Theater in order to draw in visitors to the downtown.
"I envy, in some ways, what they've done in Peekskill," Valentine said.
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