On our early-morning walk on Tuesday, we heard the season's first redwing blackbird song. We've been hearing robins and cardinals for a couple of weeks, but each year it's the blackbird's sharp voice that provides the assurance that winter really is over. And Tuesday morning, there the bird was, sitting high in the top of a tree - at the corner, appropriately, of Harvard and Audubon Streets.
Throughout our little neighborhood, people have been out raking and sweeping up the debris of winter. Crocuses are out, and soon the daffodils will be in bloom and flowering shrubs will start putting on their show. And we will wonder again why anybody would want to live anywhere else.
In his State of the City address Monday night, Mayor Bob Duffy talked about the progress Rochester has been making: the Paetec headquarters, ESL, a drop in the crime rate. But he also talked about the "daunting budget shortfall," and "a culture of crime and lawlessness" that threatens some neighborhoods.
Duffy, a long-distance runner, warned that our "journey of progress" is a marathon, not a sprint. A good description, I think. And so the coming of spring in Rochester - the last dirty snowbanks melting, flowers blooming, restaurants setting tables out on the sidewalk: this is that nice downhill stretch that you hit in a marathon somewhere between the halfway and the three-quarter mark. And then there's the rest of the course. And the slog up a killer hill.
Duffy and his staff are still trying to find a way to cope with a large budget gap. And as County Legislator Paul Haney noted on WXXI after Duffy's speech, there's no fat in the city's budget. "For 20 years," said Haney, "the city has been cutting closer and closer to the bone." The closer you get to the bone, said Haney, the more painful the cuts become.
Add to that the culture of violence that has a strong grip on some inner-city neighborhoods. Young men shoot each other to settle arguments. Witnesses are either afraid to speak up or believe they should protect the killers.
While there is new housing development downtown, abandonment and population loss are forcing the city to demolish houses in other neighborhoods. And as wonderful as the new development is, it's coming at the expense of some of our suburban neighbors. Since the Greater Rochester area isn't gaining jobs or population, every time we build a new office building or apartment building in one place, we empty one somewhere else.
The new downtown development gives us a big boost - not only (eventually) in tax base, but also in pride. But until we make headway dealing with poverty, crime, jobs, that big uphill part of the marathon looms, threatening to make us quit.
"I am not a quitter," Duffy said on Monday night. Neither are tens of thousands of others, in the city and in the suburbs.
So on we go.
The mayor warned against naysayers, and I don't mean this column to be one of naysaying. I do have hope - and optimism. But to get this city where it needs to go - to complete this marathon - will take effort by the entire community.
I hate to keep harping on this, but nobody's talking about things like regional planning, sprawl control, or government consolidation. Or, God forbid, school consolidation. And so the city will have to keep looking for solutions within its boundaries. That makes crossing the finish line seem like a miracle.
(And while I'm beating old drums: the county executive was all smiles during Duffy's speech Monday night, but - how can I say this kindly? - she's part of the problem. It does not help this community to be known as a place where a political party picks college presidents and where county government spits in the face of black leaders and is hostile to the gay community.)