Tag Archives: Rochester, New York

Why I live in Rachacha

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Barnie Fife, speaking from the Great Beyond (or on a breather between reruns?) left a comment on my next to the last post. Apparently my living in Rochester, New York fills him with wonder.

I never planned to move here. I moved here originally to attend a nearby college. Long story short, I fell in fascination with yet another complex but self-destructive individual (a tendency I’ve curbed at last now by adhering to a policy of social isolation, *sob*). Ended up married because I once again failed to acknowledge the taint of doom tickling my nostrils. (I guess that makes it mutually assured self-destruction? LOL) Now I have a wonderful kid. We’re in a great school district, her dad is here, and yeah, I chafe sometimes in the reins but I’m a big girl now.

That said, Rochester is also a great city in a lot of ways. The traffic is manageable — for example you can live in a rural bedroom community, the sort of place where you can keep horses if you want, and your commute into downtown will still be only a half hour or so. My neighborhood in particular is a little corner of paradise, aesthetically and small-c culturally — and I don’t have to be a zillionaire to live here, in a spacious circa 1920s home with hardwood floors and a fireplace. While our museums and sports teams are officially second tier, because we don’t have the demographics to support first tier, they’re high enough caliber to give kids a taste of what’s out there — i.e., the city is a suitable jumping-off spot for a kid with aspirations to make the world his home, if he has the inclination & chops.

And if you hanker for big city culture, the plane ride to NYC is only 45 minutes and thanks to JetBlue tickets can be had for under $100. Toronto is a three-hour drive.

We have great public parks. Mendon Ponds Park, for instance, has 30 miles of self-guided nature trails. You can be there from just about any place in the greater Rochester area within minutes. We’ve got the Erie Canal, great place to bike, jog, walk your dog. Since we’re in a temperate climate, you can mix up your outdoor activities seasonally (if you can’t fight it, have fun with it!)

We’ve got great healthcare, including a first-rate research hospital.

Our crime rates are well above the national average but not out of line with other Upstate New York cities.

We don’t have to worry about hurricanes or earthquakes, just snow and the occasional ice storm, but it’s like anywhere in that regard. Be smart and prepare yourself for self-dependence for a few days. At least your house won’t be smushed into a pile of sticks when it’s over.

The biggest downside is that because this is New York State, our taxes are ridiculous and our politicians are worse. At the local level, their moribund thinking has cost us the embarrassment of the so-called Fast Ferry; shamelessly, they’ve put that behind them (despite the fact that the damn thing is still in dry dock here, apparently unsaleable) to push the so-called Renaissance Square down our throats (new post coming up on that shortly).

I’m sure there’s more that’s good about this city but this gives a taste. Despite its flaws, if I were a young married couple planning a family, Rochester would top my list of places to live.

That said, me personally? I don’t know where I’ll end up once my kid has flown the nest. I can work from anywhere, so I’m not tied to any location for income. I’d like to be in a relationship again someday, that will probably influence my choice. I’d like to be able to golf year-round. I ache sometimes to smell the ocean. But I also love the flora/fauna of the Northeast — the hardwood forest, and the geography, the hills. I’d like to stay close enough to a world-class city to jump in regularly for a visit but I also need a base somewhere with space and trees & a bit of privacy.

So who knows? But I guess not knowing is part of the fun of it . . .

Upstate, downtimes

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For an interesting conversation on the flight of young, educated people from Upstate New York, hop over to Vodkapundit and check out the comments on a post that looks at a NY Times article on the subject.

Here’s one that jumped out at me:

Work for a software security company. We just closed our Toronto, Long Island, Albany and Waltham, MA offices and moved them all to Virginia due to the high costs in taxes and wages (from the high cost of living).

For what we were paying approximately 200 employees in those locations we can employee nearly 300 in Virginia. For the same amount of money I can hire 100 more people, produce more product and make more profit. I still have 2 programmer and one tester position open.

These are not low wage jobs. These are professional software development jobs of people making well into 5 figures (none under 50K) and some into 6 figures.

The region is being run into the ground, and our politicians are either too stupid or too corrupt to care.

But don’t worry. They’re going to get us our $230 million Renaissance Square. It’ll be such a nice place for the last seniors living here to hang out & listen to the crickets chirp.

Whither the weather data

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This has happened to me more than once. Finding weather forecasts on the ‘net is easy. But whenever I’ve tried finding how much rainfall accumulation Rochester has had over a specific period in the past, I’ve always come up dry. ha ha ha.

Closest I ever got was a NOAA site [update: link now defunct] where the last two days’ worth of data is kept online.

It’s funny how most of the time a search engine will spit back what you want, but once in awhile you hit a combo of too much clutter plus not enough specificity in available search terms. And then you’re sunk.

So I gave up using google’s neurons and turned to the old fashioned kind: I emailed Dr. Scott M. Rochette, Assistant Professor of Meteorology at SUNY Brockport.

And Dr. Rochette came through for me. He knew of a resource — happened to be on the same National Weather Service site I linked above — which lets you request past monthly data. Thanks, Dr. Rochette.

Here’s the page. Why I didn’t find it through their site map, I don’t know, but I sure missed it.

And why do I need this, you ask?

No reason, really, except that I’ve started keeping a rain gauge (nothing special, just an old fashioned clear plastic gauge) (now watch, my dad will be blogging about his electronic gauge next) and I was curious how my readings matched up to the official ones.

For the month of April: official rainfall was 2.18 inches. My reading was 2.4. (Probably the airport is dryer because of all those plane wings flapping. ha ha ha kidding again)

Joking aside we could use more rain — the ground is awfully dry for spring.

And now, I’m going to tag this so the one other person in the Greater Rochester Area who someday looks for this information can find it, once this post is crawled a few times.

Just doing my part.

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.

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.

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.”

Getting buttered in Rochester

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Searching for the perfect Friday post, and lo, I discover that Rochester’s own Century Discount Liquors made The Wall Street Journal‘s Friday Tastings column: “Taking Sides in the Butter Battle” (subscription required).

Turns out, a rebellion is brewing amongst wine drinkers, who are demanding the return of the buttery Chardonnay. Good for them, I say! Butter Lovers, Unite! So columnists Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, being gracious & tolerant sorts, phoned wine shops in various cities around the country

and posed this question: “If we walked into your shop this minute and asked you for a buttery American Chardonnay, what would you sell us?” We said they could choose one over $20 and one under $20, but they had to answer right away from wines that were on the shelf.

One of the stores they called was Century, where Michael Misch, general manager, recommended a Chalk Hill ($28) and Franciscan ($14).

So isn’t this grand? Now if you’re looking for bottled butter, you don’t have to say so out loud — and attract sneers from the anything-but-Chardonnay shoppers — or resort to passing a note to a clerk, which could get you mistaken for a criminal.

Otoh, pairing a Chardonnay, buttery or not, with the cold front that’s moved in today may well be the height of gauche. I’d better Google that, I think . . .

It’s an hawk, it’s an owl . . .

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No, it’s a Northern Hawk Owl, and Junk Store Cowgirl trucked her family out today to look at it.

This species of owl, she writes, isn’t supposed to be found this far south, so it’s generating a bit of excitement in the local birding community. It’s also stirring up sentiments of a different kind:

In a bid to keep the owl around, some birders have been releasing pet store mice into the fields near where the owl’s been spotted. So I knew we were in the right area when I spotted a sign saying, “Do not release live mice on my land.”

LOL

Here is a site with some info on this owl. It’s a pretty distinctive-looking bird. I can see why people are excited.