"Dead when my administration took office"

Carmella Mantello’s campaign lists five things her first term delivered: the new Lansingburgh firehouse, the Knick Aquatic Center, Prospect Park, Kinloch Park, and more than 700 lead pipes replaced.

All five were built, and she was mayor while they were. All five were also funded, designed or under way before she was sworn in on January 1, 2024 — and the city’s own archive says so, in press releases and ordinances the city published itself.

She did not only take the credit. She said the projects had been dead until she arrived.

Station #1

a project that was dead when my administration took office

On March 10, 2026, a city press release put it two more ways: the project “had been sitting dormant for years,” and “a project that was once dead in the water is finally moving forward.”

The clearest account of what was happening before 2024 was written by her own administration. Resolution 139, on the September 19, 2024 council agenda, records that Ordinance No. 103-2021 established the capital project for relocating the firehouse, that $1,000,000 in ARPA funding was appropriated to buy an alternative site and complete construction documents, that the city obtained three appraisals of the J&J Auto property in 2022, and that “since 2022, two Administrations” had been negotiating with its owners.

Two administrations. Her own resolution says so.

Before that, in April 2021, the Madden administration announced the architectural assessment and feasibility study weighing the existing site against Second Avenue and 117th Street.

Ground was broken under Mantello. That much the accomplishment list has right.

The Knick Aquatic Center

The Mantello Administration is proud to have put this project back on track after years of inaction

The years in question: November 2021, when the city announced $1.5 million for the Knickerbacker Pool in its first ARPA round, listed coordination with CHA, the Knickerbacker Association, Planning, Parks and Engineering on final construction documents, and projected bidding in early 2022 with construction starting that summer. Another $6 million was planned for the second tranche.

Council Resolution 166, December 2024, confirms the appropriations: Ordinance No. 103-2021 and Ordinance No. 65-2022, with $2 million of that earlier money still unspent in 2024.

The old pool was demolished in 2023. The February 2025 release describing “years of inaction” is the document that tells you so.

Prospect Park

under the Mantello Administration, the city has made significant upgrades at Prospect Park, including brand-new accessible playground equipment, resurfaced tennis courts, and the addition of pickleball courts.

Five days before she took office, on December 27, 2023, City Hall published a release titled “Madden-Era ARPA Investments to Improve Parks in 2024.” It states that the city had already released an RFP for the first phase of improvements at Prospect Park: installation of a new playground, and total renovation of six tennis courts.

The pickleball courts are not in that release.

Kinloch Park

the Mantello Administration upon taking office in January 2024, immediately took decisive action to fix the long-standing drainage

On June 21, 2023, City Hall announced that Kinloch Park would close beginning June 26 for ARPA-funded upgrades to sidewalks, drainage and parking.

Lead service lines

Two city releases, April 29 and June 5 of 2025, describe the replacement plan as one “that has been aggressively underway since 2024” and a “comprehensive strategy” that “has been underway since 2024.”

The city’s own Lead & Drinking Water page says the Department of Public Utilities “will be scheduling lead service line replacements beginning spring 2023 in conjunction with annual paving and resurfacing work.” On October 18, 2023, Mayor Madden and the department announced that “the lead water service line replacement program will continue on Excelsior Avenue,” and discussed holding the funding, management and staffing needed to keep it going.

The count of 700-plus pipes is a separate claim, and these records do not speak to it. A year-by-year replacement count, or the city’s address-level ledger, would.

What the record shows

Ground was broken. The Knick opened. The playground went in and the courts were resurfaced. Kinloch got drainage work. Lead pipes came out of the ground. All of it happened while Carmella Mantello was mayor, and she is entitled to say so.

She said something else. She said the firehouse was “dead when my administration took office,” that the Knick followed “years of inaction,” that lead replacement had been “underway since 2024.” The ordinance, the appropriations, the appraisals, the RFP and the press releases with the earlier dates were all published by the City of Troy, which is the same city she runs.

She could have said she finished them.