There’s a fine line between a gold rush and renaissance
Earlier, airbare8 wrote about the news that Mayor Duffy was urging Governor Patterson to get involved in the selection of the next president of MCC. There’s a lot more news about Duffy’s comments, via the Channel 13 news blog. First off, as commenter davesnyd suggested in the coments,
Mayor Duffy said he has reason to believe his ties to Dennis Kessler, and thus democrats, led some members of the republican board of trustees to vote against Kessler last month.
Now, why do Republicans care so much about having a Brooks loyalist as president? The answer may have to do with the 200 million dollar elephant in the room:
More importantly perhaps, a multi-hundred-million dollar downtown Rochester project hinges on the input of the next president…Renaissance Square. The next president is one of four votes on that committee; and make no mistake that’s an important vote because of the money involved.
It’s nice to see this put plainly, as reporter Sean Carroll does here:
Is this a search for a new college president? Or is this a gold rush for the hundreds of millions of dollars that come with MCC’s involvement in Renaissance Square?
So far, I’m inclined to believe the latter more than the former…
Update: You can see Duffy’s comments on video here. He is angry. “This is not a proud moment for our community.”
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He’s speaking very strongly on this: “This is a vestige of the old way of doing business - which is holding us back… I hate it. I’m sick of it. You know what? I’m going to use every bit of power and influence I have in my office to change it - and I hope Maggie Brooks will do the same thing.
If Renaissance square is in any way going to erode into a partisan project, then people will know very quickly what my position will be on that one.”
I’d kind of taken it for granted that the Republicans were trying to get their boy (Smith) in there because of the Ren Square connection. Get an outsider in there and you never know what’s going to happen - they might not understand that these things have already been decided…..
[...] apparently, the MCC situation has gotten under his skin. H/T to RochesterTurning for bringing this video to my attention, wherein Duffy lays out in stark terms his displeasure with [...]
[...] apparently, the MCC situation has gotten under his skin. H/T to RochesterTurning for bringing this video to my attention, wherein Duffy lays out in stark terms his displeasure with [...]