OSWEGO – In its annual meeting last Wednesday, July 14, the nonprofit Operation Oswego County awarded Mayor Billy Barlow the 2021 Martin Rose Economic Development Merit Award, recognizing him for his work in furthering the Oswego community.
Barlow was the 35th recipient of the award after the organization pushed the 2020 awards back due to COVID-19.
“He would have gotten the award in 2020 but we couldn’t do it because of the COVID thing,” said L. Michael Treadwell, the executive director of Operation Oswego County. “Our annual meeting [in 2020] was a meeting to do just what we had to do, there was no recognition … at that meeting. We deferred all the awards to 2021.”
The award is named after Martin Rose, a founder of Operation Oswego County. According to Treadwell, Rose was an “exceptional person” who Operation Oswego County wanted to honor with an award in his name.
According to the organization’s website, the award is given to someone who “is not a professional economic developer” and has a record of exhibiting outstanding leadership, support and/or cooperation in furthering economic development efforts in Oswego County.” Over the last five years as Mayor, Barlow has certainly met that criteria, as he worked with New York State to win several grants for the city such as the REDI and DRI awards, while working with a variety of partners in the city itself. Barlow specifically thanked several partners including the Department of Public Works, the economic development team of Nate Emmons, Tim Stahl and Amy Murphy, as well as the Common Council that has supported Barlow in his efforts.
“The Common Council has been entirely supportive of almost every project I bring before them,” Barlow said. “Politics is a weird game, no matter how much of a no-brainer or a positive something may be or could be, in politics people say no to say no. I am fortunate to have a group of seven individuals who truly care about the community and work in a cooperative manner to get things done.”
Treadwell spoke extremely highly of the mayor, explaining that he “exceeded all the factors” considered when voting on the award.
“I’ve been here since 1983. I have not seen anything that is comparable in terms of leadership of moving a city forward,” Treadwell said. “The City of Oswego, its face and image has improved so dramatically … Oswego [won] DRI funding from the state, a $10 million award. Many of these projects that are still under construction or now finished and operating, they were sparked by that pool of funding. That $10 million pool of funding has resulted probably in about $40-50 million of total investment in the city.”
This funding and other developments spear-headed by Barlow has revamped Oswego’s waterfront, bringing people to Breitbeck Park and the newly renovated Wright’s Landing, two of Barlow’s favorite accomplishments.
“I’m enormously proud of the work we’ve done along the waterfront from Lakeside Park on East tenth-and-a-half street to an improved Harbor Trail along the bottom of Breitbeck Park to the scenic trail and fire pits in Breitbeck, the improvements in Wright’s Landing and the splash pad and basketball courts,” Barlow said. “On any given weeknight, you can see a couple hundred people congregating at Breitbeck Park to watch a sunset now, that has never happened before.”
Aside from the economic development award, four other awards were given out. The Richard S. Shineman Foundation was recipient of the Ally Award given to an organization that contributed to economic development, Wiltsie Construction won the Business Excellence Award for a private sector organization, ConnextCare won the Job Award for making an impact in creating or retaining jobs in the county while Rebekah Alford won the Dee Heckethorn Entrepreneur Award.
While Barlow has already won the Martin Rose Award, he continues to look ahead to the remainder of his time as mayor, waiting for his “favorite project” to be completed which is expected for the Spring of 2023.
“If the International Pier turns out the way I see it in my head, that’ll probably be my favorite project looking back on my eight years,” Barlow said. “I think that has the potential to be a completely transformative project. It’s just a matter of making sure the final product looks like the way I see it when I close my eyes.”
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