News Blog

The United Christian Leadership Ministry and the Coalition for Police Reform will hold a forum on police-community relations at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 2, at the Inner Faith Gospel Tabernacle Church, 32 York Street. 

The purpose of the forum is to hear community complaints about police tactics. A press release from the church says that a "Community Safety Act" will also be rolled out. 

New York has a de facto moratorium on high-volume hydraulic fracturing, but some of the state's landfills and water treatment plants have been taking in out-of-state fracking wastes. Some local governments — none in Monroe County — have even used brine from fracked wells to de-ice roads.

During a press conference this afternoon, Democratic State Senator Ted O'Brien pushed for a package of legislation that he says would halt the influx of fracking wastes.

"New York should not be a dumping ground for other states' toxic wastes," he said.

O'Brien was joined at the press conference by Marcia Bystryn, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters; the league endorsed O'Brien during his first election bid in 2012 and also endorses his re-election this year.  

At 4 p.m. on Wednesday, October 1, the City of Rochester will hold two “pop-up meetings” to discuss preliminary recommendations in the city’s bicycle boulevards plan.

The meetings will be held at two locations, both along potential routes. One site is the 19th Ward’s Aberdeen Square Park, 330 Post Avenue; the other is the Averill Avenue entrance to Genesee Gateway Park, in the South Wedge.

Bicycle boulevards are established routes that take cyclists to key destination points; a vital feature is that they try to avoid roads that are busy or not accommodating to cyclists. The routes are typically identified by signs, and the streets often have bicycle markings or traffic calming measures.

The city is trying out two potential bike boulevards in the 19th Ward and the South Wedge, and has installed temporary signage and markings. 

The 19th Ward route (map) runs along Ravenwood Avenue at Genesee Park Boulevard to Frost Avenue at Rugby Avenue. The South Wedge route (map) starts at the Genesee Riverway Trail at Averill Avenue, continues along Averill to Pearl Street, along Pearl to Meigs Street, and ends at Meigs and Monroe Avenue. BY JEREMY MOULE 


Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren will discuss civic innovation and urban growth in a Facebook chat on Monday, September 29. 

The chat will begin at 8 p.m. on the Aspen Institute's Facebook page. This discussion is part of the CityLab summit, sponsored by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic.


Seven years after the murder of Latasha Shaw, a peace march will be held in her memory. Shaw was attacked by a mob and stabbed to death. No one was ever convicted of the crime. Shaw’s murder and the murder of community organizer Jimmie Slater shortly afterward promoted former Rochester mayor Bob Duffy to initiate the controversial police crackdown known as Zero Tolerance.

Peace on the Street begins at 5:30 p.m. today at the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, 740 Driving Park. At 6:15 p.m., the group will march to the corner of Dewey Avenue and Driving Park, where Shaw died.

The march is sponsored by the Rochester chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists; 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East; SEIU Local 200 United; and family and friends of Latasha Shaw. BY CHRISTINE CARRIE FIEN 

New York regulators will probably make their decision on the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger by the end of fall.

When the State Department of Public Service announced its review of the merger in late May, it said that the process would take about four months. But department staff requested an extension, according to a filing from Comcast and Time Warner submitted today.

The two companies have agreed to let members of the Public Service Commission (PSC) make their decision during their November 13 session. They say that they want a final order from the commission — essentially the formal version of the commission's decision — no later than November 19.

Comcast wants to buy up Time Warner Cable in a $45.2 billion all-stock deal. Time Warner Cable shareholders wouldn't get cash, but would instead get shares of the new, bigger Comcast. The companies announced the merger deal in February, but they need to clear regulatory reviews in the states where they provide cable services, as well as federal regulatory and antitrust reviews.

UPDATE September 29 — The extension is a technical matter. Under federal laws, the PSC was given 120 days to compete its review of the merger and to issue a decision. Under federal laws, if a decision hadn't been issued by the 120 day mark, the merger would have been automatically authorized. The extension allows for additional time. Public Service Spokesperson James Denn sent along this statement:

"The Comcast proceeding, affecting 2.2 million cable customers in New York and representing an approximate New York transaction value of $3 billion, has led to an intense stakeholder focus producing nearly 3,000 public comments, making it one of the most active proceedings in commission history. Given the depth and breadth of the public record and the importance of the issues presented, the commission has accepted the extension of the period for review so that it may consider the matter more fully at its November 13 session."

Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas says that the district is projecting a 50.5 percent graduation rate for the 2010 cohort — meaning students who started high school in 2010. 

The 2010 group is the first required by the state to pass all Regents exams in order to graduate. These students will have also worked through the controversial new Common Core curriculum. 

Though good news, Vargas says, no one should be satisfied with these results. But the needle is moving in the right direction, he says. 

Imagine East High School with a 95 percent graduation rate. Imagine walking through the front doors without having to go through metal detectors. Imagine a school so popular that there’s a waiting list to get in.

That’s a sample of the ideas that surfaced yesterday at the University of Rochester Vision Summit. Others included college tuition assistance, hallway walls that prominently display East’s alumni, and a dynamic and inspirational environment.

UR Professor Steve Uebbing, Rochester school board President Van White, and East Principal Anibal Soler coached everyone who attended the summit on the value of having an end goal in mind: a fairly literal concept of what East will be in a few years from now.

The UR agreed to partner with the district to transform East. A partnership is one of the options that the State Education Department allows to fix a failing school. The UR's Warner School is in the planning stages and will assume management of the school next year.

But attendance at summit was lacking. The UR, according to one teacher, planned for 200 people to attend, and about 40 showed up. Roughly a dozen of them were from the UR.

Uebbing and White  expressed their disappointment in the turnout, but White later said that he wasn’t surprised.

“That doesn’t mean I’m not concerned,” he said. “I am, but it wasn’t a total surprise, either. Lack of [parent] engagement is part of the problem. We understood that from the beginning.”

Some school officials attributed the low attendance to a lack of publicity about the event. Information is on the website, however: www.ureasthigh.org. Lack of transportation and competing school events may have also contributed. 

The school board has approved adding more social workers and six parent advocates to reach out to families near East, as well as the creation of a family resource center at the school. Whether those steps will help to foster greater family and community engagement is hard to say.

But East won’t transform for the better just because the UR is involved; Uebbing said as much in his opening statement. And even though White has been tenacious about turning East around, it’s ultimately not up to him.

The Department of Environmental Conservation is taking comments on a brownfield cleanup plan for parts of 690 St. Paul Street, a multi-building property that includes Rochester school district space and the Rochester Prep High School — a charter school.

A few years ago, there were concerns about the air quality in the school district's space; the property isn't owned by the district. But the building owner has since done cleanup work around that building, including soil and ground water removal and the installation of ventilation and air-monitoring equipment.

The plan released today by the DEC is for additional cleanup work, including the removal of more contaminated soil, bedrock, and ground water, as well as the installation of ventilation and air-monitoring equipment in an additional building. According to a DEC fact sheet, the property includes groundwater contaminated with the industrial solvent trichloroethene and soils that are potentially contaminated with metals and chemicals related to asphalt.

The site has a history of industrial use, including a stint as a Bausch and Lomb lens manufacturing facility. The contamination issues are well-known to the school district, state environmental officials, and the private company that owns the property. 

The DEC is holding a public meeting on the proposed cleanup plan at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, October 14. The meeting will be held in room 413 at 690 St. Paul Street.

Dave Garretson, who for the past four years has served as Greece town Democratic leader, is the new chair of the Monroe County Democratic Committee. But the real excitement happened before the vote took place. 

Garretson was elected to the post during the Dems' annual organizational meeting tonight. He beat Rochester for Obama organizer Ken Preston and Henrietta Democratic Committee leader Simeon Banister by a substantial margin. Garretson announced his candidacy much earlier than Preston or Banister, and several Democratic leaders said that his vigorous campaigning and organizing likely fueled his win.

But earlier in the evening, just as the meeting started, a rift in the party was on full display. State Assembly member David Gantt lead a group of his supporters out of the room, and gathered in a lobby area. They never came back.

Gantt told the roughly two dozen black Democrats who left with him that from now on, they're going to act as a group. If party leaders want their support, they'll have to ask for it and they'll have to explain what they're going to do for the black community in return.

Gantt and his supporters said that they are unhappy with the actions of party leadership. At the committee level, black candidates with grassroots support aren't receiving designations, they said. And Gantt is still unhappy that some prominent Democrats campaigned for former Mayor Tom Richards after Richards lost the primary to Lovely Warren. Gantt said that he wants to make sure that the local Democratic Party is listening to the black community, as well as all groups in the community.

"The Democratic Party ought to be the party of all people," Gantt said.

Garretson, in his acceptance speech, specifically thanked Gantt for his contributions to the party and said that he wished Gantt was in the room.

"We are a better, more inclusive party because of David Gantt's leadership, including his mentoring of people of color," Garretson said, to loud applause.

Today, leaders from across the world, as well as leaders from some of the world's top corporations, are gathering in New York City to talk about climate change.

The summit is a prelude to talks that'll take place next year in Paris. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convened today's summit and "has asked these leaders to bring bold announcements and actions to the summit that will reduce emissions, strengthen climate resilience, and mobilize political will for a meaningful legal agreement in 2015," says the event's webpage.

The calls to action have already begun. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has released his remarks. His points should be familiar to anyone who has followed the IPCC's reports over the past year: climate change is here, human influence on the climate is clear, and world leaders need to act now to avert the worst effects.

"We are told that limiting climate change will be too expensive," Pachauri said. "It will not. But wait until you get the bill for inaction. There are costs of taking action – but they are nothing compared to the cost of inaction."

The League of Women Voters of the Rochester Metro Area and the League of Women Voters of Wayne County will hold a forum on proposed legislation that would extend some existing labor laws to farmworkers.

The forum will be held at 7 p.m. on Monday, September 22, at the Asbury First United Methodist Church, 1050 East Avenue. It’ll focus on the Farm Worker Fair Labor Practices Act — a proposed law that the State Legislature has repeatedly rejected in some form or another over the past 25 years, according to a press release from the League. Farmworkers are exempt from some protections afforded other workers under the 1938 Fair Labor Practices Act.

The most recent Assembly version of the bill, which the chamber passed during its last session, would allow farmworkers to unionize and require overtime pay for the workers.

The forum’s panel will include Lewis Papenfuse, executive director of the Worker Justice Center of New York, and Dean Norton, president of the New York Farm Bureau. Former Brighton Supervisor Sandra Frankel is the forum’s moderator. BY JEREMY MOULE 


Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas resumes his coffee and conversation meetings on Tuesday, September 23. This is an opportunity for parents, teachers, students, and residents to meet and talk to the superintendent, raise questions, or make him aware of problems.

The meeting will be held from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., at the district’s central office, 131 West Broad Street.

Also, almost all of the district’s schools are holding an open house this week. Parents can meet with teachers, sometimes tour the school, and discuss student progress. Call your child’s school for the schedule or visit the district’s website: www.rcsdk12.org. BY TIM LOUIS MACALUSO