"Dead when my administration took office"

Carmella Mantello’s campaign lists five things her first term delivered. They are 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. 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.

The firehouse was funded and appraised before she took office

a project that was dead when my administration took office

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

Her own administration wrote the clearest account of what was happening before 2024. Resolution 139, on the September 19, 2024 council agenda, records four things. Ordinance No. 103-2021 set up the capital project for moving the firehouse. The city set aside $1,000,000 in ARPA funding to buy another site and complete construction documents. The city got three appraisals of the J&J Auto property in 2022. And “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 an architectural assessment and feasibility study. It weighed the existing site against Second Avenue and 117th Street.

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

The Knick pool had money in 2021 and came down in 2023

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

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

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

Where the pool and every other ARPA project stood at March 31, 2026 is listed in the 2027 budget review.

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

The Prospect Park upgrades went out to bid before she started

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 put out a request for proposals, or RFP, for the first phase of improvements at Prospect Park. That phase was a new playground and a total renovation of six tennis courts.

The pickleball courts are not in that release.

Kinloch Park closed for drainage work in June 2023

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 pipe replacement was scheduled to start in 2023

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

The city has its own Lead & Drinking Water page. It 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 City of Troy published the ordinance, the appropriations, the appraisals, the RFP, and the press releases with the earlier dates. That is the same city she runs.

She could have said she finished them.