A reader sent this in:

In a surprise move, County Executive Maggie Brooks announced new plans to calm county residents’ fears about taxes, school cuts and secrecy in government. Titled the H.A.P.P.I.E. plan, Ms. Brooks stated it is intended to respond to recent concerns expressed about the F.A.I.R. plan. Ms. Brooks commented, “The F.A.I.R. plan will save the county’s finances, the S.A.V.E. plan will help families, and the H.A.P.P.I.E. plan will ensure that residents understand how their government is working for them.” When questioned about the title, “H.A.P.P.I.E.” plan, Ms. Brooks responded that the name stood for “Helpful Acronyms to Pacify Petrified and Ignorant Enemies.” She added, “I would like to add that the Monroe County Executive’s Office is adding a new staffer, with the title of ‘Special Counsel in Charge of Naming.’ She indicated that the search committee had narrowed the field of candidates to three. None of the three, Steve Minarik, Karl Rove, or Voldemort, could be reached for comment.”

HAPPIE HALLOWEEN

Well, you can see the latest in the Clean it for Beaver series right here at Rochesterturning. Or like the flyer I recently got said , you could go the the Little and see the World Premier 1 November for a $30 donation. Yep the Clean it to Beaver series and the movie 13 days. Follow the link to the MCDC web site calendar but you won’t see it posted (at least not of this writing) - and my flyer is long in the recycling bin.

So, a fundraiser and 2 new clips - 5 days before the election.

For a refresher, you can see clip 1,

Clip 2 and Clip 3 cover our hero, Beaver, as he continues to learn more about the Water Authority. Between the 2 clips he talks and enlightens his teacher and Wally.

***spoiler alert***

The secret ninja society should be busted by Eliot Ness because governments shouldn’t steal money.

I’ll defer detailed comment because frankly I have more important things to do like process video from last night’s Webster Town Hall meeting regarding the unFAIR plan or figure out how to extract audio of Maggie Brooks saying nothing is guaranteed. But there is always the comment section and the eager anticipation of the the final clip.

Ok - my take -

We spent 8K total -the new clips get released 6 days before the election.

What is the topic in the news? The unF.A.I.R. plan and the associated tax increases across the county. In fact, there is the local blog that has maps and analysis on school tax increases or MCC chargeback increases. Or thereis the teachers union who released this ad in relatively short order.

Then there are all the attack ads. The one against Eckel is especially brutal. But the one against Gumina and Beebe are not far behind.

8K dollars for 4 youtube video clips.

How many lit pieces is that?

Specifically, counterattack lit pieces.

With all the anti-immigrant furor in the air, too many people lose sight of the fact of the terrible ordeals many immigrants go through. Over at the Messenger-Post, Bryan Roth has a great piece on this topic:

 Because of strict laws pertaining to how immigrants are detained by authorities, local attorneys say family members and friends can get stuck in an informational vacuum, sometimes unable to get details about their loved ones, even such basic information as whether they’re still in the country.

“Most of the time, I get calls from families whose members have been detained and they don’t (get) information,” said Roberto Resto, founder of Rochester Alliance for Immigrants’ Rights, a local advocacy group with members throughout the Rochester area. “Even if you’re going to post bail, most of the family is running around saying ‘Where are my children? Where are my family members?’”

Resto said that’s what happened this summer, when 13 men were detained during arrests at The Cheesecake Factory in Pittsford. After Monroe County sheriff’s deputies drove by and noticed the group at the construction site, they called U.S. Border Patrol, which took the men and handed the case over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an investigative branch of the Department of Homeland Security.

From there, Resto said, it was anyone’s guess where the men went. Because of privacy laws, it can be hit or miss as to whether immigration agencies release any information.

Read the whole thing.

After a reader sent these in to me, I felt like I needed a shower. Steve Eckel is running for re-election to the county leg this fall He represents the 26th district:

And his constituents have been among the lucky recipients of the forest-gutting flood of GOP attack mailers. I thought I’d seen the worst with Dave Malta’s sleazy attack mailer going after disabled kids, but this is a whole different level of crap. They’ve put out no less than 4 attack mailers against Steve in the last couple weeks, and they’re all very, very negative.

The GOP must be very freaked out about this race– going hard negative is kind of like using a tourniquet to stop bleeding, it’s a last resort. (At least that’s what I learned in Boy Scouts. About first aid, not campaigning.)

Anyway, put on your hazmat suit, and let’s take a look at the first one:

They’re being cute here. The legislature has passed about 2 or 3 “laws ” in the last couple of years. The rest are “resolutions”, etc.

But this has been the GOP strategy all along– kill any Dem-sponsored legislation as quickly as possible to ensure they don’t get to a vote, because then they would have to spin even harder to create campaign mailers like the one above.

I think the City paper said it best with their image of an elephant crushing a donkey.

More anti-Eckel negative mailer dissection soon.

Unfortunately Mr Malta is in all the wrong places. He is hiding from public comment about the unF.A.I.R. plan.

Here is isn’t Dave Malta at the public forum in Webster last night:

You would think that someone as knowledgeable as Mr Malta who voted for this plan would be in a position to explain it to his constituents. Unfortunately, despite repeated attempts to contact him, he was a no show.

But this wasn’t the only time he was a no show -

Here he is isn’t at the open hearings where members of the public came to ask or seek additional information on what is known about the U.N.F.A.I.R. plan.

We got some new numbers in about the MCC chargeback aspect of the Brooks-Minarik F.A.I.R. plan, and guess what?

Surprise, surprise, it’s the West Side that takes the hit again…

The F.A.I.R. plan initiates a system of chargebacks for MCC attendance. This means that Monroe County will send each town a bill for their MCC students’ tuition.

Now, like everything else about this plan, it’s so complicated that you need an accountant to figure it out. Bear with me while I try to walk you through it. I’m going to use Greece as my example.

Greece has an MCC enrollment of 2,966 students. That’s 15.94% of the total enrollment at MCC. 15.94% of the total chargeback ($14.3 Million) is $2.28 Million - the total amount that Greece will have to pay back to the county for their MCC students.

How much extra in taxes will the average homeowner in Greece have to pay for the chargeback? Well, the 2006 real property full valuation for Greece was $4.55 Billion. Divide that by their chargeback bill ($2.28M) and you get a per-thousand rate of $0.5009 - about an additional fifty cents for each thousand dollars of assessed value. Those are the numbers shown on the map, and represent a kind of a ‘raw’ tax increase.

We can put it into more concrete terms: The average home in Greece is assessed at $111,500, so the average owner of that average home would have to pay an additional $55.85 in Town taxes to make up for the tax “cuts” in the F.A.I.R. plan.

How do some other average homeowners fare? The East Side comes out OK, not surprisingly. The average home in Brighton faces a tax increase of $35.72; in Pittsford, it’s $36.77.

But what about the West Side?

Parma: $70.67
Riga: $75.44
Chili: $77.31
Ogden: $80.97

Democrats, we can’t stress this strongly enough: It’s a shell game. The F.A.I.R. plan doesn’t lower taxes at all - it just pushes them off onto lower levels of government, and it does so in a way that pits one municipality against the next.

Remember that Dick Yolevich and Ray DiRaddo voted “yes” to these tax hikes, and did so against the best interests of their constituents. West Siders, these men aren’t representing you. They’re only looking out for their political careers - they’re afraid to cross Brooks and Minarik, and are unable to think for themselves. If they really had their acts together, they’d investigate the impacts of proposed legislation on their districts.

What if the County Executive and Boss Minarik hand them some legislation, and say “don’t worry… just sign it…. but do it quickly! We’ve only got 45 minutes to review it before the vote!” They should say no. They should stand up for their constituents - and stand up for democracy as well - and demand proper time to review the impacts of the proposed legislation.

By the way, this isn’t the only aspect of the Brooks-Minarik tax grab that disproportionally effects the West Side - or the only area where Yolevich and DiRaddo got screwed by the East Side cabal. Look below the fold to see how the School District map looks.
Read the rest of this entry »

A reader send this in from an email they received from a contact at the Spencerport Schools

we are already feeling the impact of this “fair” plan. The print shop at the District yoffice lost $ 800,000. we rely on them to make copies of all of our worksheets and handouts for students.

I’m guessing that this means since the budget cuts to our kids start in January - the Spencerport Schools are slashing the Printshop budget January forward.

So, what does that mean? Well centralized production is cheaper than decentralized production. This ends up being a penny wise, pound foolish. What are we going to do print out hand-outs on small personal Ink Jet printers?

I suppose there is always Siemens to the rescue. Remember the obscenely long term Siemens contract Monroe County entered? 12-year, $13 Million contract for leased copier management services.

Didn’t see that addressed in Maggie’s Budget yesterday did you.

On the backs of our Children.

We just got back from the Forum on U.N.F.A.I.R. in Webster.

So, guess who wasn’t there tonight. I know, big surprise- our illustrious, caring, involved legislator from the 8th district, Dave Malta.

Everybody else was there. Pictured from left to right: Carmen Gumina, Dr Jane Fowler-Morse, Jody Siegle, Adele Bovard, and not Dave Malta.

Adele Bovard, superintendent of Webster Central School District gave a Power Point presentation which we will cover in a future post, explaining the unF.A.I.R. plan, and how it specifically affects Webster School District, including the 1.4 million dollars that they will lose this year and the cumulative effect over a 10 year period of 28 million dollars, whew!! Heavy sigh. She especially took exception to the fact that Maggie refers to the reserve funds, that the schools need, as “slush funds’.

Next on the agenda was Jody Siegle, Executive Director of the Monroe County School Boards Association who talked about checks and balances, Maggie’s unrelenting media campaign and the reality of the 2.8-6.1% raise in property taxes as a result of the U.N.F.A.I.R. plan. What struck us was when Jody said, “Community solution requires community conversation”. That quote sums up EVERYTHING this U.N.F.A.I.R plan is not. It is backroom politics at its worst.

Carmen Gumina spoke as a candidate, not as a school principal (principal of State Rd Elementary School) . He talked of how the plan is dependent on a static economy where the intercept increases as sales tax revenue increases and we only benefit if the sales tax revenue stays the same or increases very little. He discussed the permanency of the plan and that Monroe County was the only county to take advantage of the intercept.

Finally, he had a few words to say about Maggie and her political stunt giving a press conference at his school’s playground.

Last on the agenda of speakers was Dr. Jane Fowler-Morse, expert on Education finance reform. She is a post, all by herself. She embraces an holistic approach to education. Every word from her mouth, a pearl of progressive wisdom.

At the end of the speaker session, questions were taken from the audience. Most were asking how this plan really works because Maggie says one thing via her unrelenting media campaign and the speakers said another. In the end, the school representatives provided facts and figures to Maggie’s talking points, half-truths and innuendos.

We will post some videos in the next day or two.

Many of you commented on the tidbit (from the D&C) that the FAIR plan will improve the county’s woeful credit rating. Some have suggested something nefarious here with Fitch (one of the two bond ratings agencies — the other is Moody’s) removing the negative warning on county bonds. I’m skeptical there’s something fishy going on — obviously bonds issued by a municipality that has balanced budget will have a better rating than those issued by one that runs a huge budget deficit.

I’ve wondered all along if bond ratings are a big part of the reason we were hit with the FAIR plan all of a sudden. Minarik can run the county into the ground and no one will notice (certainly the D&C won’t) except us and the City paper and…bond ratings agencies. Here’s a bit from the City paper last July that suggests that bond ratings played big role in the implementation of the FAIR plan:

Analysts at Finch say the intercept plan could be a major step in restoring the county’s credit rating, says Christopher Hessenthaler, associate director.

But while the move could boost the county’s ratings, it could hurt those of the city, towns, and villages, Hessenthaler says.

In other words, by basically shifting the medicaid burden to the schools, the schools will probably end up with worsening credit ratings.

As Exile mentioned, there is a special session of the Monroe County Legislature.

Special Session of the County Legislature

Wednesday, October 31
4:30pm
County Office Building
39 West Main Street, downtown Rochester
Call 753-1950 to sign up to speak

What would one speak about ? OH, the UnFAIR Plan? keeping taxes @ 8% whatever is on your mind.

I do have a question however - food for though if you will.

Why do we have special session or emergency session scheduled tomorrow?

I mean is the Republican majority who runs this legislature so incompetent that they have to call an emergency session to ramrod the unF.A.I.R plan? I mean that could not have been done in a regular session?

How about tomorrow - whatever they will discuss? You would think some emergency is happening (some natural disaster, or serious resignation or whatever) but I’m told it is about the tax rate or the budget. I mean HOW IS THIS AN EMERGENCY? Can’t this stuff be handled via normal process? Frankly, we know the Budget needs to be put forth. We knew that in January. We knew that the 8% tax rate needed to be reviewed - we knew that in January as well.

So I ask again - why can’t these routine matters everyone knows are coming be handled via normal processes? Why does this require a special session?

Answer the question in the comments? Frankly I want the Dem minority to ask that question tomorrow.

This is the ad Exile was referring to. Check out the links below.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/7RekMvElKbY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Also check out this link from the Monroe County School board Association. Then head out to the Town Hall meeting in Webster where this will all be discussed.

Update: And here’s the press release that accompanies the the ad.

A teachers’ group is running an anti-FAIR ad on RNEWS, reports tell us. Has anyone seen any other anti-FAIR ads on television? I’ll try to have more on this later.

Update:Â You can watch the ad above.

A reader tells us:

The press conference lasted only about ten minutes. But in that short time, she announced a new plan: Project SAVE. I have no hard numbers on this program, but it’s my understanding, based on her statements, it will gut a ton of money from the County Human Services department. That’s the department that handles public benefits. If my notes are correct (they were admittedly rushed), she is cutting $1.5 million from the Human Services Budget. All the usual suspects were present, except for Steve Minarik. Don’t worry, though. I’m sure he had his hand tickling those puppet strings.

Update: The D&C has more.

Just a reminder there is a Town Hall Meeting in Webster to discuss the Brooks’ poorly titled F.A.I.R. Plan.

Tuesday, October 30
7:00 pm
Willink Middle School
900 Publisher’s Parkway, Webster

Here is a Map to the school

Guests and invited speakers:

• Dave Malta, County Legislator for the 8th District
• Jody Siegle, Director of the Monroe County School Boards Association
• Carmin Gumina, Democratic and WFP Challenger for the 8th District
• Dr. Jane Fowler-Morse, expert on education finance reform

Remember this map? How will Webster be affected.

I wonder if it will appear tonight as well.

Who says the D&C doesn’t cover the westside? Okay, I think it was me (and nearly all of our westside commenters) that said it. Today, at least, we’ve got this:

Greece teachers, parents and school board members are holding a press conference at 4 p.m. today to speak out against County Executive Maggie Brooks’ plan to reduce sales tax revenue shared with local school districts.

The plan uses county sales tax to pay for the county’s Medicare bill, and cuts sales tax sharing with schools by half, or about $29 million per year.

Under the plan, the Greece Central School District alone is expected to lose an estimated $4.3 million annually, and will face a $2.2 million budget shortfall this year.

Local residents filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to halt the plan. The Monroe County School Boards Association, on behalf of 22 suburban school districts, filed a lawsuit over the plan last week.

The conference will be held at the Greece Teachers Association headquarters, 3670 Mt. Read Blvd.

Update: commenter realgreecer tells us “according to the d and c this was canceled.”