Commissioner remains faithful to hometown

By SHAWN ANDERSON
Observer-Dispatch

John Wesley Daniels Jr. watched his longtime friends depart Utica for so-called greener pastures.

He never felt the urge to follow them, though, so he stayed put.

Daniels lives in the same Butterfield Avenue home in which he grew up. And the newly appointed commissioner of jurors for Oneida County and former chief of staff to Utica Mayor Tim Julian is in no hurry to leave Utica.

"It always amazed me how people could grow up in a place and leave without compunction," said Daniels, 35. "I could never be John Wesley Daniels from Pittsburgh, Pa."

Daniels brought that love of the city to his job as Julian's chief of staff, his colleagues said. As chief of staff, he offered advice and wisdom to Julian, but he also was a troubleshooter, trying to solve problems residents brought to him - a missing stop sign here, a codes violation there.

That hard work, along with his many volunteer efforts, earned Daniels a 2005 Accent on Excellence award.

"I think John epitomizes everything the award's about," said Julian, who won the award in 2004. "He's a young person who's truly taken his life under his control and made all the right decisions to educate himself and move up the ladder."

Daniels isn't finished educating himself. In addition to his full-time job, he's pursuing a master's degree in public administration from Binghamton University. He majored in philosophy and political science at Binghamton as an undergraduate.

Co-workers praise Daniels for his easy-going friendly nature.

"He's the kind of person you could walk up to in a bar, and he'd buy you a beer and talk your ear off," said Walter Bellstedt, a City Hall maintenance employee.

Corporation Counsel Linda Sullivan Fatata praised Daniels for his forthright personality.

"John, no doubt about it, is real," she said. "When he says something, he really means it."

Daniels, the father of two girls, joined Julian's administration in March 2004. Before that, he worked as an Oneida County probation officer, where he monitored 35 to 50 people. He's also been a substitute teacher in Utica and New York Mills, and for much of the 1990s, he worked for the U.S. Postal Service.

For all his ambition, Daniels cannot - at least yet - predict the future. He said he doesn't know what he'll do down the road, but the odds are high it'll be in Utica.

"Utica has been nothing to me but good," he said.