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Jeremy Dechario, who manages the Syracuse Real Food Co-op, will run for Common Council in the 4th District

(Ryan Delaney)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The race to replace Khalid Bey on the Common Council will soon have a fourth contender: Westcott foodie Jeremy DeChario.

DeChario, a Democrat, plans to announce his candidacy for the Council's 4th district on Monday. He joins Democrats Michael Greene, Christopher Montgomery and Latoya Allen in seeking the open seat.

The 4th district covers downtown and most of the South Side and University Hill area. It is the city's most Democratic district -- 68 percent of voters are Democrats, 8 percent are Republicans and 21 percent are unaffiliated.

Bey has represented the district for six years. He will step aside to run for an at-large seat in November.

DeChario, 31, is general manager of the Syracuse Real Food Co-op, a collectively owned grocery store in the Westcott area with over 3,000 owners. He said he admires what Bey has done on the Council, particularly with keeping homeowners in their homes and fighting legislation that might have shut down Sound Garden.

Born in Massachusetts, DeChario moved to Florida when he was young. In 2010, he came to Syracuse to be with his longtime partner, Natalie Stetson, who is now his wife. Stetson, who is executive director of the Erie Canal Museum, had come to Syracuse for graduate school.

They bought a house in the Westcott neighborhood five years ago and made plans to stick around Syracuse.

"We were going to come to Syracuse, get a degree, then go somewhere else," DeChario said. "Then something magical happened. We moved into the Westcott neighborhood and I got a part-time job as cashier at the co-op. We loved the snow, loved the seasons, and found this amazing community here that both of us had been seeking for a long time."

After settling here, DeChario became involved with several other organizations, including Salt City DISHES, where he is co-director, and Friends of the Central Library, where he is a board member.

DeChario has been regularly attending Common Council meetings to keep up to speed on city issues.

One of the issues he would like to address is food access -- making sure people in poor neighborhoods have more options than convenience stores. In 2015, he helped reopen the Eat 2 Live Co-Op on South Salina Street.

"If you can't afford a car, you're stuck eating mostly convenience store food," he said. "I want to make sure people have access to healthy food in walkable areas."

DeChario said he supports residency requirements for certain city employees like teachers, firefighters and cops, as well as community benefits clauses for developers. Those policies, he said, encourage home ownership and employment opportunities in the city.

"We have a great amount of disparity in the city and the surrounding areas," he said. "We should have people getting paid on public salaries that should be living in the city."

He prefers the community grid option for replacing Interstate 81 and opposes a merger of Syracuse and Onondaga County.