News Blog

Yesterday's announcement that the state is going to build a next-generation semiconductor research and development facility in Greece is important.

Yes, it'll create jobs. Yes, it'll help companies build better, more efficient technology (and for an idea of just how important that is, consider the research showing that certain electronic devices, including cable boxes, waste a global total of $80 billion in energy a year).

But there's another easily-overlooked upside. The new operations at 115 Canal Landing Boulevard, which is now owned by the state, replace similar activity from Kodak. In fact, that's who the state bought the building from.

The state is building a next-generation semiconductor facility in Greece that'll be shared by approximately 100 tech companies. Officials say the facility should create at least 500 jobs in Rochester. 

The facility will be located at the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering Rochester Facility building in the Canal Landing Office Park in Greece. The state and college are constructing clean rooms in the building, which will also house a previously announced solar cell research facility.

Governor Andrew Cuomo and college CEO Alain Kaloyeros announced the project this morning at the Canal Landing building. 

Kaloyeros said the project is the second part of the New York Power Electronics Manufacturing Consortium, which state officials announced yesterday at a General Electric facility in Niskayuna in Schenectady County. The idea is to advance the development and manufacturing of next-generation computer chips in New York, he said. 

I’ve been mulling over the correspondence I've received from the City of Rochester about upcoming events marking the 50th anniversary of the 1964 race riots.

Except the city doesn't use the word “riot” exclusively. It calls the events of 1964 the “Rochester Rebellion” or the “Rochester Rebellion/riots.”

Does it make a difference? After initially dismissing the idea, I've come to believe that it does. Maybe the terms have been used interchangeably in the past, although I've only ever heard what happened that weekend called a riot.

A “rebellion,” in my opinion, is a more benign term and suggests an uprising against injustice. You can get behind a rebellion — a riot, maybe not so much. Whether or not you agree with the ideas behind the rebellion or the way it’s carried out, there’s a sense that somewhere, an underdog is fighting back against an oppressive power.

Of course, that’s exactly what residents of Rochester’s inner city were doing in 1964: simmering in a hot soup of deplorable housing, lack of jobs, and the obliviousness of people who were in positions to do anything about it, until the whole thing spilled over onto the streets, causing about $1 million in property damage, four deaths, and approximately 800 arrests.

But a rebellion also suggests a coordinated, pre-planned action. And though I wasn't there, what happened in 1964 feels more like an explosion – an episode of mass projectile vomiting in an attempt to alleviate a long-festering sickness.

But you can’t fairly argue that everything done over that weekend was understandable or justified. Hundreds of stores were looted and-or damaged by rioters — rebels? — over that weekend. These were people that were invested in the neighborhoods; who knows how many left the city as a result? And a man was attacked and killed at Clarissa and Atkinson streets.

I’m not saying that there’s a campaign under way to recast or justify the events of 1964; maybe it’s just about recognizing the conditions that lead up to the riots — and that's important because, look around, not much has changed. Blacks in the inner city still struggle with joblessness and poor housing conditions, not to mention broken schools, violence, the scourge of drugs, and more. 

The City of Rochester’s Zoning Board will consider an application from Maye Development to demolish a vacant two-story house and a vacant church at 660-668 West Main Street. The company wants to put an unspecified food store on the site. The meeting will be broken into two sections. The section that includes Maye’s application begins at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 17, in City Council chambers at City Hall, 30 Church Street.

Developer Marvin Maye tried to get permission from the city in 2012 and 2013 to tear down the church for a Dollar General store. But the application faced strenuous opposition from area residents and neighborhood groups who said that the store would be a poor fit in the newly revitalized area.

The church is also a Designated Building of Historic Value in the city. It is the one-time home of the German Liederkranz Club, one of only four surviving buildings "associated with the cultural history of Rochester's large German-American community in the 20th century,” according to the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.


Representatives of Highland Hospital will hold an open meeting tonight (Monday, July 14) on the hospital’s planned expansion. The meeting is at 5:30 p.m. in the Olmsted Lodge in Highland Park, 171 Reservoir Avenue.

Highland plans a two-story, 30,000-square-foot expansion off the back of the hospital on what is currently a hospital parking lot at the end of Bellevue Drive. The addition would house six larger operating rooms and allow the hospital to expand its current, cramped operating rooms, officials say. Observation beds will also be added.

The hospital also planned at one time to use 27 Bellevue Drive, a vacant house, for office space. But that plan met resistance from residents of the close-quarters neighborhood, and the hospital appears to have backed off. BY CHRISTINE CARRIE FIEN


A Hamlin man, also an atheist, will deliver the opening invocation at Tuesday’s Greece Town Board meeting.

Dan Courtney says his invocation will center on the need for local governments to be inclusive and to focus on what brings people together, not what divides them.

Two Greece residents previously sued the town over its practice of opening Town Board meetings with prayer. Most of the prayers are Christian in nature, which gives the appearance that the town is endorsing a particular religion, they argued. But the US Supreme Court sided with Greece and said that the practice is appropriate.

Courtney signed up to offer the invocation immediately after that decision.

"I want to make it clear to the non-Christian community, the minority faiths, and nonbelievers in the Town of Greece," Courtney has said. "I want them to know that they can participate in the process."

The meeting starts at 6 p.m. at Greece Town Hall, 1 Vince Tofany Boulevard. BY JEREMY MOULE 

The 2014 midterm elections could be the most important midterms in decades, setting the stage for 2016 and well beyond. But Democrats are approaching them on tip toes when they should be wearing their iron-toed boots.

Wall Street has done well under this president. Last month’s jobs report capped several months of continuous growth. Almost seven years after a near financial collapse, the US economy is on the mend. Is everyone working who wants to work? Of course not. Millions of Americans are still enduring long-term unemployment. 

But the country’s economy is healthier than it’s been in a long time. 
What have Republicans done? Remember this was the party that was all about creating jobs and protecting upper income Americans, the so-called job creators. They've launched endless investigations and all but suspended governance.

But many Democrats have continued to distance themselves from President Obama as his poll numbers slide — as is the case for most presidents at this point in their second term. Some have been outspoken about women’s reproductive health, income inequality, comprehensive immigration reform, and climate change. But few speak with the kind of conviction and confidence heard in Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Many Democrats are sitting on the sidelines instead. And it’s hard to gauge how strongly Dems will head to the polls in November. Maybe some believe that Democratic control of the US Senate is already lost, so why bother.

If that attitude prevails, Dems are in for rough times. The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart warned in a recent column that Obama will almost certainly be impeached if the Dems lose the Senate.

But even worse than that, an era in American politics that permitted some collaboration and compromise between party leaders will end at a time when the country’s challenges at home and abroad are growing more defiant – some might even say existential. Just look at the responses from all sides to the crisis of Central American children crossing the southern border to escape violence in their own countries.

Democrats heading to the polls this November may be able to hold on to the Senate, and more importantly, give the country enough time to re-calibrate its politics of gridlock, bluster, and de-legitimizing elections. 

Local and state election petitions are in — mostly — and Rochester-area voters may have a few primary races.

The candidates who received their party's backing earlier this year don't have to worry about petitions. But the candidates who want to challenge them on those lines do. They have to collect signatures from people in their party, and those signatures have to withstand the inevitable challenges from opponents.

The State Education Department has approved a plan submitted by the Rochester school board and the University of Rochester to improve East High School.

The intervention plan puts the UR in charge of the school and the university will report to the school board. A more detailed plan describing implementation has to be submitted to the SED for approval for the 2015-2016 school year.

The voluntary partnership between the UR and the Rochester school district to turn around a troubled school is the first of its kind in New York.

In the first six months of 2014, Germany got more than one-third of its electricity from renewable sources, according to a new report.

The country's solar power production was 28 percent higher over that time than it was during the same period in 2013, says a report from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, a German research organization. Its wind power production was 19 percent higher.

A brief summary of the report on Yale Environment 360 says that on a couple of sunny and windy days in May and June, renewable energy sources generated 50 percent to 75 percent of Germany's electricity supply. The report also shows that Germany's solar power capacity exceeds generation capacity from any other source. 

American renewable-power advocates often talk up Germany's successes in boosting renewable energy production. They see the country as proof that the United States could boost domestic renewables.

But Germany, too, continues to rely on fossil fuels. Coal-fired plants are still the country's primary electricity source, though the amount of electricity that Germany got from coal was slightly lower in the first half of 2014 than it was in the first half of 2013, the report says.

 



 

A new medical journal article says programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership may help prevent premature deaths among mothers and their first-born children living in "highly disadvantaged urban neighborhoods."

Nurse-Family Partnership is a national program, but it operates in some New York counties, including Monroe. Under the program, registered nurses make regular home visits to low-income, first-time mothers. The visits start when the women are pregnant and continue until their children are 2.

The article, which was published in the JAMA Pediatrics medical journal, explains the results from a 20-year study of low-income, primarily black women and children living in Memphis, Tennessee. The women and children in the control group did not receive at-home visits from a nurse. Among the women and children who did receive home visits, none died prematurely, says a press release from Nurse-Family Partnership and a University of Rochester article on the study.

If you were taking the United States History and Government high school Regents exam on Tuesday, June 17, you would have found that Part I of the exam consisted of 50 multiple choice questions. The questions covered everything from the events that led up to the Civil War to the exploration routes of Lewis and Clark and Zebulon Pike. 

But Part II was a little trickier because it required knowledge of US Supreme Court decisions. Test-takers had to write an essay concerning two decisions and the impact they have had on American society. You would have had to describe the historical circumstances surrounding each case, explain the Court’s decision, and describe its influence.

The exam even gave some of the court’s most monumental decisions as examples of where you might begin, such as Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 or Roe v. Wade in 1973.

The exam instructions would also have told you that you were strictly forbidden from writing about Brown v. Board of Education Topeka.

The restriction has some teachers, students, and parents scratching their heads. If teachers are supposed to create culturally relevant lessons, as one city school district teacher wrote us, Brown is one of the seminal court decisions of the 20th century.

The same teacher asks: considering that nearly 70 percent of the district’s students are black what could be more relevant? And Rochester has one of the most segregated public school systems in the country — making the decision even more important.

But a spokesperson for the New York State Education Department said that the case would be too easy of a topic for most students, and that’s why it wasn’t allowed as an essay choice. Also, information regarding Brown v. Board of Education Topeka appeared in a question elsewhere in the exam, the spokesperson said, and would've give some students an unfair advantage.  

Apparently, the SED received inquiries about the exam rule, enough to issue a written statement. A portion of that statement is below:

"In recognition of the 60th anniversary of the decision, Commissioner King gave a major speech earlier this year (to which the members of the Legislature’s Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus were invited)."