This is right up my alley. There’s a new blog about New Urbanism, Sustainable Development, urban living, mass-transit, and downtown re-development.
The blog’s called Moderate Urban Champion
He’s running the Rochester Advocates of New Urbanism meetup, as well.
Give him some love.
He’s chairman of the Assembly’s Transportation Committee, and recently killed a bill that would have allowed cameras on buses to help police bus-only lanes in NYC. Bloomberg says Gantt “Undermines the Democratic Process”
The livable streets activists are up in arms, too.
Can anyone flesh out this story a little bit?
Well, this isn’t political, but it’s still kind of fun…
As of yesterday, Google now has Street View for Rochester and our suburbs.
Have fun!
From the New York Times:
Cameco, the world’s largest uranium producer, has told the Canadian nuclear regulator that its refinery might have leaked uranium, arsenic and fluorides into Lake Ontario.
Next week there will be more than 1,000 police checkpoints set up across the state. The police officers will stop every passing car, and look at the inside of the vehicle. If you turn around, and attempt to evade the checkpoint, they will pursue you.
What are they looking for? Abducted children? Escaped convicts? Terrorists? Loose nukes? Kilos of cocaine?
None of the above. They will be checking to see if you’re wearing your seat belt. It’s “Click It or Ticket” week.
Seat belt use in New York State is at about 85%.
I’m curious as to how readers of this blog feel about police checkpoints.
The real-estate market tanked, and we emerged relatively unscathed. In fact, the market contraction is so severe that Rochester, with a projected 2.7% growth over the next 12 months, is number two of the “Ten Fastest Growing Real Estate Markets”, according to Money Magazine. Thoughts?
I haven’t really been following the Town of Greece assessment scandal - I kind of mentally filed it under “just another corrupt Republican” and then didn’t pay much attention, but this caught my eye:
From the D&C article Kickback scam trial to begin Monday, March 9, 2008
…jurors are expected to hear from Greece Supervisor John T. Auberger, who will testify about the town’s oversight of its assessor, and two lawyers — including Greece Town Attorney Raymond DiRaddo — whose private law firms incorporated businesses the defendants are accused of using to hide their assets.
OK, let’s get this straight. Mr DiRaddo set up dummy corporations for a client who used those corporations to conceal funds generated from a criminal enterprise. I’m pretty sure that’s known as “money laundering.”
The criminal enterprise in question was one that defrauded Mr. DiRaddo’s employer - The Town of Greece - of substantial tax revenue.
Part of the tax revenue was supposed to go to Monroe County as well, where Mr DiRaddo was simultaneously employed as en elected Legislator.
As a lawyer can he claim that he wasn’t aware of the purpose of those dummy corporations without essentially pleading incompetence?
Were DiRaddo and Schwab the only ones in Town Hall involved in this, or does it go deeper?
Why hasn’t Auberger fired him?
No wonder they’re trying to distract their constituents with all this legislative prayer nonsense.
There’s some exciting stuff going on over at DragonFlyEye. Carla Palumbo is now blogging there and you can read her post here. Here’s a snippet:
We also see some other issues with the budget – there is an increase in the tax levy – so that even though the County Administration is “lowering†the tax rate, people are paying more in taxes. Another little trick in this budget is that the County plans to sell delinquent tax liens — a one shot deal that will result in the County loses future income. The Budget, also gives the Sports Development Corporation $82,500 and the Greater Rochester Sports Authority $285,000 from the Hotel/Motel tax. Although we continue to ask we have not gotten a straight answer as to what this money is used for and why this money isn’t used to pay for the rent that they budget as revenue, but never collect Frontier Field.
A Public Hearing on the budget is scheduled for December 6, 2007 at 6 PM at the same time as the Ways and Means committee. Take a look at the budget online here stop into the hearing and have your say! Call 585-753-1950 to sign up to speak.
Here’s something you don’t see every day. Monroe Ave near Oxford.
I’m not trying to fluff Ron Paul - far from it. I think his brand of Libertarianism is dangerous, it’s an excuse to turn your back on your community responsibilites in the name of freedom. His brand of politics leans awfully close to anarchism in certain ways. I mean, the guy wants to eliminate the Department of Education.
Anyways, I saw the guy, I took the picture, and I thought you all would like to see it. Over and out.
Webster Town Supervisor Ron Nesbitt (R) recently suggested that it would be a good idea to look into disbanding the Webster Police Department - forcing the Monroe County Sheriff’s Road Patrol to provide police service for the town.
From R News:
“It’s never been voted on since 1928 when the police department first came on board here and I think the residents need an education,†Nesbitt explained. “I still think it won’t pass, I still support the police 100 percent, but as an elected officer I have to look at all the money details here and that’s where I’m at.”
Credit where credit’s due: Hats off to Ron for his willingness to explore this. It’s an extremely responsible and progressive position. Webster residents are getting billed twice for police services: once by the town and once by Monroe County. However, they do not receive Sherrif’s Road Patrol from the county - that’s reserved for towns without their own police departments (they do get other services from the Sherrif’s Office, like the jail, the crime lab, etc.)
Why should they pay twice? A fair solution would be for the county to charge back the towns that rely on the Road Patrol - a solution proposed by Democrats in the Legislature. Republicans refuse to discuss it. That’s not surprising, because the areas that benefit by leaching police services off of the rest of the county are predominately Republican.
Given that chargebacks aren’t likely to happen any time soon, Mr. Nesbitt is right to consider this - it could be a substantial cost savings - and he deserves credit for examining a potentially unpopular position. Too, he’s one of the few local politicians to realize that the Republican mantra of less government probably means fewer governments - especially in NY.
(Speaking of Nesbitt, you’ll remember that back in May he got in a bit of a tiff with the Webster Republican Committee.)
Update: I’d forgotten about this, but the Village of Holley is looking into disbanding their police department, too. There was an op-ed in the D&C today, saying essentially what I said: good for them, we’ve got too much government, this is a major redundancy, and we should look into ways to consolidate.
Mayor John Kenney is pushing to put the issue of abolishing the department before voters next month. If it were eliminated, police protection would be provided by the Orleans County Sheriff’s Office.
[snip]
Around Monroe County, where there are suburban police departments, there are also comparatively few serious criminal offenses. Yet town budgets are being eaten up by expenses for police salaries, health care and pensions.
In Gates, for instance, the town’s police department alone accounts for a healthy chunk of its budget. Yet the most common police calls are from shoppers at the local Wal-Mart who have locked ignition keys inside their cars.
You may remember Howard Maffucci, the superintendent of the East Rochester School District, presentation to the Democratic Caucus hearings, Well, here are some additional details on his two objections to the Brooks-Minarik Tax Grab:
From his blog:
These two facts, which need to frame the entire discussion, are simple and straightforward.
* The revenue taken from the schools by the Monroe County Legislature isn’t the county’s money to take. It’s the schools’ money. In the 1980s, a bipartisan committee developed a formula known as “the Morin/Ryan Agreement,†which reaffirmed the fact that sales tax was never intended to provide funds solely for the county government, but rather to provide revenue equitably to the county, towns, villages, and schools. This is very simple to understand.
* The county legislature’s action is illegal. State law requires Monroe County to pay the schools their amount of sales tax, no matter the circumstance. The division of the sales tax cannot be arbitrarily changed by the legislature.
As you know, ER is party to the School District’s suit against the county. I suspect that the school districts will win the suit, but what then? The county hedged their bet by including the MCC Chargebacks as part of the plan, but if they aren’t allowed to take the schools’ money, we’re going to be looking at a very lopsided budget. Again.
This latest plan is just the latest in a long line of one-time fixes. They’ve spent the tobacco settlement money. They’ve picked the low-hanging fruit of early retirements and departmental efficiency improvements. They’ve sold off all of the assets. They’ve consolidated operations. They’ve pushed employee’s health care into next year’s budget. You name it, the Brooks administration has done it - doing their best after the madness of Doyle’s refusal to raise the levy. But they still haven’t solved the fundamental problem: For years, Monroe County has been spending more than it makes.
So my question is: What’s next? More accounting gimmicks? Are there any saleable assets left? Are there non-mandated programs that could be cut without committing political suicide? Do we need to - gasp - raise taxes?
What’s next?
Anyone?
School districts are going to have to cut programs due to losses from the Brooks-Minarik tax grab.
From Channel 10:
Local school districts say they’re already looking to cut certain programs and activities because of the county’s F.A.I.R. plan.
Jeff Crane, Superintendent of the West Irondequoit School District, says schools are going to feel the pinch from the plan. He says they will have to consider everything from cutting field trips, to cutting classes like music or art.
Furthermore, he says, some schools may even have to cut jobs.
[snip]
“Greece School District is in the worst case scenario of all our suburban districts, they have a perfect storm.” (said Crane)
Greece could lose over $2 million a semester, and they’re going to have to raise taxes as a result. It’s a shell game.
Roger Boily, President of The Greece School Board, says this will impact taxpayers. “It simply takes money from one pocket and shifts it to another, what happens now is the county tax payers will see a slight decrease in taxes, in Greece and Irondequoit and other school districts we may have to raise taxes,” said Boily.
Sometimes, looking at the data visually can show things in a way that words and numbers can’t. Itchy and I put together these maps showing the makeup of the villages, towns, and county leg pre- and post- yesterday’s election. The overall picture shows baby steps towards progressives gaining power, since it only shows the 50%+1 required to win a seat. More interesting would be shades of red and blue, which would show the relative closeness of many, many of these races.
First the legend/key to all these maps:
Now the villages. Before and after shows incremental, but notable gains in E. Rochester and Fairport. (Update: villages with non-partisan elections are now shown in yellow.)
Next the towns. Above the like is town supervisor and board, below the line is clerk and justice(s). You can see how Dems consolidated their hold on Irondequoit, held their ground in Gates, and gave the Dem supervisor company on the town board in Mendon. The red, red west suburbs just got a little bluer, with Dunning winning the town super position in Chili, and Dems gaining a town board seat up in Clarkson. That’s right, Clarkson. It’s that lonely blue dude in the upper left hand of the town map there.
Finally the leg races. Of course, the two that changed hands were the 8th out in Webster, and the 6th in Greece. Basically it’s like the Dem city/Brighton/Irondequoit districts annexed Webster and part of Greece.
Baby steps, people. It’s an uphill climb, no doubt. But the good news is we’ve got our hiking shoes on and we’re gaining ground.
It’s time for a little break from election stuff.
Here’s a sketch of a cartoon I did about the Ed Board’s failure to take a stand on the sleazy, racist, fearmongering, anti-immigrant mailer.
I never got around to inking and lettering it, so it’s still pretty rough. You’re going to get either a sketch or nothing at this point, though, because I’m out of time. I guess I can add this to the long list of projects which I have brought to 85% completion….
Anyways, I hope it puts a smile on your face.
(click the image if for some reason you desire a larger version)
Riffin’ off stlo7…
Republicans nationwide are salivating over Governer Spitzer’s political misstep with driver’s license reform, and the Monroe County GOP has jumped on the bandwagon, sending out incendiary attack mail claiming that Democrats love Bin Laden, or something like that…
Ooooh!! Scary!! A brown-skinned man in a keffiyeh! Give me a break.
I call BS. It’s an outright lie. The license plan makes us more secure, not less. From Newsday:
Chertoff got a powerful governor to commit to the federal government’s post-9/11 Real ID effort to make regular state driver’s licenses harder to forge. New York becomes the largest state to do so at a time when several governors are balking at the plans as too costly and difficult to put in place.
Yes, you read that right: Spitzer’s license plan gets a thumbs up from DHS: Here’s a photo of Elliot Spitzer and his new BFF Michael Chertoff at a news conference during which the Department of Homeland Security endorsed Spitzer’s plan:
