Comment Archives: stories: News & Opinion: Last 30 Days
Re: “Medley Centre's long odds”
I'm guessing it's just a matter of time before Congel sells to the Senecas and cashes in BIG. Get ready Rochester and Irondequoit - your "mixed-use lifestyle center" (in the form of a casino) is on the way...
http://blogs.democratandchronicle.com/vote…
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/201…
http://auburnpub.com/blogs/eye_on_ny/a-clo…
If you add the donation amounts from the two articles, it seems Robert Congel gave Cuomo $60,000 in 2012.
Re: “Big Brother at work”
A good joke told by Jay Leno: ‘We wanted a president that listens to all Americans - now we have one’
A joke told by Barack Obama: "This is the most transparent administration in history"
Re: “Costello lays out CityGate plans for Mt. Hope neighbors”
Thea,
I just checked with a Costello representative and he tells me that the number on the website was wrong. Hope that's helpful.
Re: “Costello lays out CityGate plans for Mt. Hope neighbors”
"Costello said the company will invest upward of $1.5 million...to improve the Erie Canal path"....It looks like this has been reduced to $500,000, according to an update on their website.
Re: “Legislature passes fair legislation”
FamiliarTD,
The Monroe County Fair and Recreation Association owned the old fairgrounds and Dome Arena but it reached an agreement to sell them last year. Media reports from the time of the sale say the Association had been operating the facilities at a financial loss.
Re: “Running out of time”
Mrs. Remis,
SBPT has limited power to create autonomy in schools. They can determine academic programs which are contingent on CO approval, and other requirements of the state and board. They are also tough to manage when much of the funding and support for school programs can rapidly change in light of new board or superintendent policies. To say that SBPT is the same things as autonomy is disingenuous and demonstrates your lack of understanding of the process, and also points out your selective evidence and logic which not so surprisingly seems always directed toward three conclusions: 1) Teachers unions are corrupt 2) Teachers are wholly responsible for the low performance of students in the city schools 3) Charter school are the answer.
Sadly what you don't report on or advocate to change is the devastating impact of concentrated poverty on the individual lives of students and the culture which develops around it. The reason this exists is because of the political structure we have for funding and enrolling our schools. Our system allows for class segregation which often correlates with racial segregation that lets a district like W.Irondequoit (as one example) have a student poverty rate around 10% border the RCSD carrying close to 90%. The impact of poverty on learning has been well documented. It is true that we can all find examples poor students who succeed and wealthy students who fail, but if you look at overall trends in the performance of large numbers of students there is a direct correlation between wealth and performance.
Solely blaming teachers, unions, and supporting charters schools as the solution is like a doctor focusing on a cut on the arm of a patient who has cancer. Until we focus our efforts on bringing down this unjust system of racial and class segregation which exists across the country in urban area, we will not significantly change student performance. Again I will ask my question Mrs. Remis: How is your child's unionized, non-charter, low-poverty school performing?
Re: “Analysis finds racial disparity in pot arrests”
Lincoln,
Your arguments have a certain amount of logic to them. The problem is that regardless of your anecdotal evidence, the numbers don't lie. They don't lie here in Monroe County, and they don't lie anyplace else in the nation.
The fact remains that if 2 16-year old males are arrested for the same drug possession charge, if they are of different races, the outcomes in the supposedly impartial courts of law will be different far more often than not. The problem is in the entire system - the war on drugs that makes victimless activity a crime (and thus fosters the violence you see as the cause of the disparity), selective prosecution and differences in the quality of lawyers available due to disparity in incomes. Overworked public defenders barely have time to meet their clients, much less indulge in an active defense. Privately paid lawyers have more stake (and time) to engage the court in the adversarial relationship that should properly define the process.
The system obviously breaks down along class lines. Historic events and trends have conspired to leave one race in a specific (under)class. Until the system is fixed, and the laws are made to be actively less partial the disparity will continue and the racism built in to the system will continue. No one person drives the system any more, no more than any one person gets up in the morning determined to incarcerate more blacks than makes any kind of logical or demographic sense.
Until we as a society get our collective heads out of our collective rectums, the problem will persist and the underclass will continue to be far over-represented by African-Americans.
Re: “PHOTO: From East Broad Street at night”
Cool!!!
MJN - Unfortunately this shot cannot be taken from Main St... because the hulking, double-deck Broad Street Bridge blocks the view! I like the idea of re-watering it, but I'd just as soon support removing the top section and bringing traffic down to the first level.
Re: “Big Brother at work”
MJN - Good points. Seems that a majority of people are satisfied by the deluge of articles penned by PR firms to justify the spying & to clarify that, anyway, PRISM isn't even what we thought it was. Congress "briefings" given by the intelligence directors consist of sanitized talking points & what laws we do have get broadened widely in top secret court opinions. Meanwhile the news cycle moves on. The only wildcard I see remaining is this Snowden/Greenwald duo and whatever they might have left up their sleeves. Supposedly there are multiple leaked documents and Greenwald is working on a second round of articles.
Re: “Legislature passes fair legislation”
This is a big shame. I haven't followed the story of how and why the County opted out of the traditional County Fairgrounds out at E. Henrietta and Calkins. However, that spot is right in the middle of Monroe County, and thus, more fair for all residents who wish to go to it.
Getting rid of the big carnival rides, etc. That is fine, but why do you have to move it? Calkins Rd is accessible by bus. If there's a problem with people parking on roads around the former Fairgrounds, get a posse of deputies together and put up signs saying "You'll get a ticket if you park here" and then hand out the tickets - MC Sheriff and Henrietta Police and volunteers. It takes imagination.
Moving it to Ogden seems to make it remote and separate. What about the pie contests, jam contest etc? Get young people involved in those things -- what about a contest between all high schools to make homemade jams, pies, other things. Because even in the City we grow food or can go to the Public Market and get locally grown cherries, etc. What can we do to bridge the differences between City and non City life in Monroe County?
Re: “Big Brother at work”
Better send for Peter Graves (sorry Tom Cruise) because finding a balance between security and privacy in the 21st. Century is truly a Mission Impossible. The range of opinions is simply too great.
From anti-government, tin foil-hatted paranoiacs on the Far Right, to Libertarians with unrealistic ideas of how to run a society, to Tea Partiers who’re OK with spying on Americans as long as it’s limited to Muslims and other people they don’t like, to middle-of-the-raiders who claim to see both sides of the question but can’t decide which way to lean, to those who don’t give a damn one way or the other, to those who figure that the government is too incompetent to be able to misuse the information they gather, to those who distrust the government (or at least Obama) but feel that the risk of terrorist attacks is greater than the risk to privacy, to those who trust the government to do the right thing.
Now somebody tell me what balance or system of checks and balances can possibly be put in place that can satisfy more than a small percentage of the above groups?
Re: “Orwell and '1984'”
TIM LOUIS MACALUSO - So you believe that a great wrier like Orwell could only have written a novel such as "1984" because of his medical condition? Does that mean that Ray Bradbury was probably suffering from heartburn when he wrote “Fahrenheit 451” (or when Vonnegut wrote “Slaughterhouse- Five”)?
Re: “Medley Centre's long odds”
You should hire Virginia Borden Maier. We already know the mall is dead.
Re: “Analysis finds racial disparity in pot arrests”
Hi MJN - I live in the city's northeast quadrant and I see open-air marijuana sales on the corner near my residence continually, despite arrests made just earlier this week. No I don't believe that the sellers or buyers are dumb or blind. I believe that the sellers are well-motivated and accept the risk willingly. Buyers prefer the convenience of being served right in their cars. Both groups likely have a sense of impunity because police enforcement is rare and inconsistent. Sometimes the police will run some low level harassment (e.g. circling around or maybe idling nearby), but very rarely will they exit their cars. The offenders were involved in some street violence requiring an emergency response just this last weekend and the police chief had within recent weeks also called out the specific street name as a known problem spot, these things being what's most likely prompted the recent arrests.
I'm not actually convinced that drug trafficking and use are quite as prevalent outside of the city as within it. Maybe it is, nevertheless it's only within the city that the law is openly flaunted and it's only within the city that the drug activity correlates to ongoing violence.
The truth is that many people do use marijuana discreetly and without drawing undue attention to themselves and those people maybe go undetected for many years. Other people associate with street gangs, commit various crimes open. Especially when violence flares up, police are forced to respond and, after patting people down, oftentimes the thing which police can most easily charge is marijuana possession.
Re: “Medley Centre's long odds”
This is reminiscent of the multi-year long farce that Bill Johnson was engaged in with the various developers who were going to re-invent Midtown. Or the fiasco with the Wilmot’s shell company and the Sibley Building. Those both ended badly. And Medley Center will go down the same drain. And once again the taxpayers will be left to pick up the tab for our elected leaders pipe dreams.
Re: “Analysis finds racial disparity in pot arrests”
Lincoln DeCoursey – So your common-sense explanation as to why 650% more inner city black youths than white youths get busted for pot possession in Rochester is because there are fewer places to sell weed unobserved then in white neighborhoods so the blacks, completely ignoring how many of their number are being arrested, continue to be more open about it? Must be their eye sight and hearing are also more defective then those faculties in whites because so many of them apparently don’t see or hear the cops coming.
Re: “PHOTO: From East Broad Street at night”
Just think, If Bobby Duffy were still mayor he might have had the roadway torn out and the Broad Street aqueduct "rewatered” by now and we could be listening to frogs croaking in the deathly silence of downtown Rochester.
Re: “PHOTO: From East Broad Street at night”
Nice shot. The full panorama here is really nice.
Re: “Medley Centre's long odds”
Are you aware that the developer receives a refund from the state for his PILOT payments by virtue of Medley being located in an Empire Zone? The Syracuse Post Standard has published the amount of these refunds for several years, via a searchable database on their website -- data through 2010. I asked Empire State Development for the amount for 2011, and it was nearly half a million dollars. So, it's not fair to say that Congel has paid his PILOT payments. The taxpayers of NY have paid his PILOT payments. By my estimation, NYS has refunded him (or the previous owner) over $2.5 million since 2007, while the project paid slightly less than that in PILOT and property taxes. Add this to whatever tax write off he is getting for depreciation on the building, and he is making money on this situation.
Re: “Medley Centre's long odds”
J,
I just want to clarify that it's Scott Congel, not Robert Congel, who owns and is developing Medley Centre. Robert Congel is developing Destiny USA in Syracuse. Scott Congel is Robert's son.
A quick search of the state Board of Elections' campaign finance database shows no contributions from Scott Congel to Cuomo in 2012. It shows Robert Congel made a single $25,000 contribution to Cuomo's 2014 re-election committee.