Hannah Shvets ’23 to Run For Common Council Ward 5

Hannah Shvets, an IHS alum and candidate for Common Council Ward 5. Genevieve Rand

Twenty-year-old IHS alum Hannah Shvets has recently announced her campaign for a two-year seat representing Ward 5 on Ithaca’s Common Council. Endorsed by the Cornell YDSA, Ithaca DSA, Sunrise Ithaca, Ithaca Tenants Union, and New York Working Families Party, Shvets’s campaign has been developed collaboratively with the local organizations she’s been working with for years. Her top priorities are housing, labor, and green infrastructure.

 So far, two others, Deborah Fisher and G.P. Zurenda, have announced campaigns for the same seat as Shvets. Fisher, who identifies as a progressive and works as a martial arts instructor, has said she shares many of Shvets’ political positions, but argues that her nonprofit leadership and life experience make her a better fit for the seat. Zurenda, a psychotherapist, life coach, and small business consultant, is running on a more conservative platform centered around cutting city spending to lower taxes. Spending cuts would likely reduce the services the city provides and lead to layoffs for city workers.

 Shvets first got involved in local politics through the Tattler Editorial Board, where she learned and wrote about local elementary school segregation and the Ithaca Teachers Association’s bargaining efforts. Shvets saw directly how Cornell’s lack of funding for ICSD was negatively impacting students and teachers alike, and hopes to use a position on the Common Council to push Cornell to contribute more. Now a Cornell sophomore, Shvets advocates for a “more equal and mutually beneficial” relationship between Cornell and Ithaca. Cornell students make up the majority of Ward 5, and Shvets prides herself on her ability to represent both the local and Cornell-student perspective within the district.

 Since entering college, Shvets has organized with the Cornell YDSA, the Just Cause Coalition, and the Ithaca Tenants Union. She encourages high school students to look into organizations they can join as well, arguing “it’s never too early” to get involved.

Shvets’ approach to the housing affordability crisis is shaped by the community organizations she works with. To increase housing supply, Shvets supports building vertically and altering zoning laws to permit more multi-family units. In response to rising rents for tenants, who make up almost three-quarters of Ithaca residents, she hopes to institute rent stabilization policies, such as the Emergency Tenants Protection Act (ETPA).

 In terms of labor, Shvets advocates for Just Cause Employment legislation, which would outlaw no-cause firings (establishing a list of “just causes” for firing), create a Worker’s Rights Commission, and establish a standard of progressive discipline for addressing employee performance. Shvets is also interested in establishing workers protections for extreme heat and raising the minimum wage in the City of Ithaca to the living wage of about twenty-five dollars an hour, a number calculated by Cornell’s ILR School.

 Green infrastructure is the third prong of Shvets’ platform: she is running on revamping the Ithaca Green New Deal and green workforce development programs, strengthening TCAT with better pay for workers and more routes, and establishing community-owned renewable energy.

 In terms of justice, Shvets supports a Community Accountability Board to investigate the police and hold them accountable. She also asserts the importance of funding programs like GIAC and the Southside Community Center.

 So far, the main pushback Shvets’ campaign has received has been with regards to her age. In response to this, Shvets emphasizes three things: she’s a local, she has years of community organizing experience, and she is running to represent a district whose voters are primarily students. Although she is much younger than both her opponents, her age is not, historically speaking, an outlier. In fact, the Alderperson currently in the seat she’s running for, Clyde Lederman, is also a Cornell student.

 Assuming they each get enough petition signatures to get on the ballot, Shvets, Fisher, and Zurenda will face off in the Democratic primaries on June 24, 2025. The general election this year will be on November 4.