Category Archives: Rochester, New York

Buh Bye, Ferry, Buh Bye

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Rochester’s fast ferry has been sold to a company that will use it on the English Channel.

Once the sale closes next week, the city will take the money and repay $7.5 million borrowed from city insurance reserves for shut-down expenses. The remainder, less a brokerage fee, will be applied to a $40 million debt owed to Australian lender Export Finance and Insurance Corp. The city borrowed from EFIC to buy the ship for $32 million in February 2005 and restart the Rochester-to-Toronto service last June.

Thomas Richards, the city’s corporation counsel who negotiated the sale, said the remaining debt of slightly less than $20 million will become a taxpayer obligation.

Twenty million. That’s what we’re stuck with. Oh, and the public embarrassment.

Giving up on the ferry was a retreat. But it was a retreat from a position that was untenable. The people of Rochester deserve better.

So how about, for starters, applying the lessons we’ve learned on the ferry to our thinking on the so-called Renaissance Square.

Just because our politicians want to strike heroic poses and direct taxpayer money to a project doesn’t mean it’s right for our city. Pork spending is not good governance.

Here’s a post I wrote on Renaissance Square that compares it to a Miami art fair that has led to measurable economic growth. Check out the difference in the price tags. Renaissance Square: “estimated” cost $230 million. Art Basel: less than $5 million the first year. Current budget (three years later): $14.4 million.

Note also that the growth of the budget came after the fair had started proving itself out.

No, we’re not Miami. But there’s no reason we can’t learn from what Miami has done. Ya know, it’s that best practices thing. It’s also the kind of governance that can navigate a city to greatness instead of crashing it into a dock.

Kodak puts medical imaging division on the block

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Kodak’s press release is here.

Here’s CEO Antonio M. Perez, in the release:

“Our stated corporate goal is to be among the top three in each of the businesses in which we compete,”  Perez said. “While the Health Group is enjoying strong organic growth in elements of its digital portfolio, such as digital capture solutions and healthcare information solutions, we have been observing for some time consolidation in this industry. Given our valuable assets and the changing market landscape, we feel that now is the time to investigate strategic alternatives.”

Here’s what an industry analyst says about the unit’s prospective sale, from the Wall Street Journal online edition (subscription required):

Ulysses Yannas, a broker with Buckman, Buckman and Reed who has long followed Kodak, said a sale could bring more than $4 billion, and predicted that private equity firms would be eager to buy the profitable unit.

Stay tuned.

Where’s George?

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I got a “Where’s George” -stamped dollar bill yesterday.

If you haven’t heard of this, it’s a website that lets you track the location of paper currency. If you get a bill with a Where’s George stamp on it, you go to the website and enter the serial number, and a page will come up that shows who else has logged that same bill. (There’s a Where’s Willy? option for Canadian currency, too.)

The bill I have has one other entry. Webster, New York, 57 days ago.

Oh well. I was hoping for something more glamorous. But Webster’s nice.

[tags] Webster, New York, Where’s George [/tags]

And — a fast little bird

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Actually, peregrine falcons aren’t only fast for birds. They’re the fastest animal, period. “Scientists have estimated the falcon’s speed to be more than 200 miles per hour.”

A few years ago, it was feared they might go extinct. Now they’re making a comeback, thanks to captive breeding programs.

From a PR standpoint, the birds are also getting a little help from the Internet. “Falcams” — webcams set up so people can watch falcons — are the most popular type of webcam, according to this article by Sandy Bauers in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Here in Rochester, we have our own falcam: the Kodak Birdcam. Check it out. They’re back.

There’s spending, and then there’s spending

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I don’t consider myself knowledgeable enough about the Monroe County budget to speak to whether there’s any fat that could be trimmed. But when it comes to the national budget, clearly some spending decisions are driven by politicians’ craven attempts to score easy points with their constituents, regardless of whether that spending is good for the nation as a whole. That’s why it’s nice to see that pressure on Congress to reduce porkbarrel spending seems to be working. According to figures published by blogger N.Z. Bear, FY ’07 earmark requests are down 37 percent.

That is very good news.

Locally, perhaps the answer is something along the lines of what Michael Caputo suggests in one of his recent series of stories on the proposed county sales tax hike:

The dire choices presented by Brooks had she opted to cut services. She told the assembled in the County Office Building last Thursday that to cut the programs necessary to balance the books would have been… well, draconian. She talked about ending the road patrol service. She talked about closing the zoo… closing the parks . . .

This is as if she couldn’t scale back on some or all of these programs. Why end them? Why give us the all or nothing scenario? That is, of course, about making a point using drastic means.

Whatever the specific answer, the real takeaway is that if the politicians know people are paying attention, their behavior changes. We have to show them we expect them to act responsibly — that we haven’t forgotten it’s our money they’re spending.

Think about this, the next time a local pol wants to build a parking garage that’s only supposed to last 30 years.

Neigh!

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Was actually three horsemen that rumbled through Rochester, New York, this week. Death (Robert Wegman), Destruction (collapsing parking garage) and Taxes.

I’ve blogged about the first two already. Here’s the third: County Exec Maggie Brooks has proposed a tax increase.

Here’s her op-ed in yesterday’s paper, in which she sets up a straw man (raising property tax) and hails higher sales taxes as the lesser evil.

And here’s today’s Democrat and Chronicle piece — a survey of reactions to the proposed hike from the ‘burbs. An excerpt:

“It will increase the cost of doing the business — and we’re scared of losing business,” said Mike Terrigino, 46, owner of NapaGino’s restaurant at Penn Fair Plaza in Penfield.

About two-thirds of the additional $73 million raised would come from consumers in their daily purchases of everything from meals at a restaurant to appliances for their homes, county officials say. The remainder would be paid by businesses, in the form of a sales tax on such items as office supplies and gasoline to make deliveries.

With customers already watching their spending, Terrigino worries that some might buy less or dine out less often as a result of a sales tax hike.

His expenses will also go up. Terrigino pays a sales tax on everything from take-out containers and napkins to materials for cleaning. As it is, he pays about $300 a month in sales tax on such items.

Michael Caputo has been blogging extensively about this move. Keep scrolling. Here he’s posted a comparison of how much Rochester gets back from the state sales tax pot (more, per capita, than other New York cities).

Here, he’s got some more interesting factoids — including that New York State”has one of the highest combined state/local sales tax rates in the U.S.”

Personally, I don’t see how raising taxes — any taxes — helps our community. OTOH, we’re enmeshed in such a messy situation at the state level that our options truly are limited.

Rochester parking garage collapse

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This is bad news. Two ramps of the South Avenue Parking garage collapsed yesterday.

Rochester blogger Chuck Simmins was in the garage a few minutes before it happened and has a photo on his blog, here.

The Democrat and Chronicle write-up gave a hint as to the “why’s:”

The city-owned garage opened in 1974 and has been undergoing about $6 million in repairs for more than a year.

In a February 2004 document from then-Mayor William Johnson to City Council proposing $5 million in renovations, Johnson said the garage “has surpassed its original life expectancy and is deteriorating.”

The ongoing repairs, however, “did not include the ramp, but rather areas adjacent to it,” according to City Communications Director Gary Walker.

Nobody was injured in the collapse (miraculously, considering it happened shortly after five on a weekday) but this is going to be a mess that keeps on messing things up for a long time. Not only will it create a downtown parking problem, but they’re going to have to figure out why it collapsed and whether the rest of the garage is structurally sound or not. Mayor Duffy is quoted in the D&C article as saying he’ll need “an awful lot of convincing” to reopen the garage in the future. Yeah, well I’d need an awful lot of convincing to use it in the future . . .

Oh, and btw. How is it that we have municipal buildings that only last thirty years? Is that normal for parking garages, I wonder?

Update: an engineering consulting firm, Stantec Consulting Group, had raised concerns to the city about “deteriorating conditions…”

 

Robert Wegman R.I.P.

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Passed away yesterday at Strong Memorial. Age 87.

If you’re not from the Rochester area and have never been in a Wegman’s supermarket, this Washington Post article (registration required) provides a little background on who this guy was and what he accomplished:

Wegman took over as president of the 90-year-old business begun by his father and uncle in 1950 and over decades introduced private-label products and laser scanning at the checkout.

He was behind the “Shoppers Club” electronic discount program and Wegmans’ “Strive for 5” program offering recipes with nutritional analyses that emphasized fresh vegetables and fruits.

He is credited with pioneering one-stop shopping, placing bakeries, imported foods and cafes into huge stores, along with photo labs, video departments and child play centers.

The 70 Wegmans emporiums in five states employ more than 35,000 people and posted sales of $3.8 billion in 2005.

The company’s employee scholarships, high-end wages and health insurance program have landed Wegmans on Fortune magazine’s list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” for nine straight years.

In 2005, Wegmans was ranked No. 1 on the list, leading the chairman to say, “This is the culmination of my life’s work.”

When most people think of Rochester corporations, they think of Kodak, which hasn’t exactly had a pleasant time of it over the past decade. Wegman’s, on the other hand, has flourished, growing into a local icon that rivals Kodak in many ways.

I mean, unless you’ve been to one of these stores this will sound totally ridiculous — but if you were to come from out of town to see me, a flagship Wegman’s is one of the tourist stops we’d visit.

Other bloggers’ thoughts (some of which are posted by people who had met him or worked for him) here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The man was deeply admired and even loved . . .

Muzak. Not just for elevators any more.

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A lot of interesting stuff in this New Yorker article by David Owen.

Muzak, if you haven’t heard already, no longer sells “elevator music.” It’s now in the business of packaging real music for replaying in retail stores. When you’re in Gap or Old Navy, for example, the songs you hear played are Muzak tracks.

The article gives the history of that transition.

The piece features an interview with Dana McKelvey, “audio architect.” She picks tracks and assembles them so they’ll convey the mood corporations want evoked by music played in their stores. The audio architecture concept was conceived by one Alvin Collis, who was doing an engineering job for Muzak.

He told me, “I walked into a store and understood: this is just like a movie. The company has built a set, and they’ve hired actors and given them costumes and taught them their lines, and every day they open their doors and say, ‘Let’s put on a show.’  It was retail theatre. And I realized then that Muzak’s business wasn’y really about selling music. It was about selling emotion — about finding the soundtrack that would make this store or that restaurant feel like something, rather than being just an intellectual proposition.” 

Since I live in Rochester, New York, it was also interesting to come across a tidbit about how the company got its name: it was originally called Wired Radio, but in 1934 changed its name to Muzak. Its inspiration: George Eastman’s “Kodak.”

When’s a naturopath not?

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When there’s no license that says so. Or something.

A Village Voice article covers a campaign underway in New York State to restrict the title “Doctor of Naturopathy” to practitioners who hold four-year degrees “from an accredited naturopathic college.”

Among the issues:

* Would licensing make it easier, or harder, for people to make alternative healthcare decisions?

* Is this a power grab by one alt health faction or Altruism Embodied?

* Will licensing help the state find and bring to justice any malevolent alt health practitioners who might land on our fair shores?

* Will licensing pave the way for insurance reimbursements of alt health therapies?

Rochester’s Dale Volker is one of the state senators backing the bill.