Tag Archives: Rochester, New York

Dark Chemistry spotlight in Rochester D&C

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The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle featured my romantic suspense novel Dark Chemistry in its author spotlight.

Brighton resident Kirsten Mortensen has published a romantic suspense novel about a twentysomething California woman who must move back to upstate New York and run the chemical* manufacturing company that her recently deceased father founded if she wants to inherit his fortune. What she doesn’t know about is a sinister force within the company who is up to no good, and she finds herself fighting for her identity and her life.

Here’s the article.

Thank you, D&C!

*Pheromones!

Pileated Woodpecker in my backyard

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pileated-woodpecker4Okay, excuse me while I flip out — but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen one of these guys — then this afternoon, didn’t I walk out my back door and see a Pileated Woodpecker working the bark of a tree, right here in the ‘burbs!

If you’ve never seen one — you know right away it’s a Pileated because they’re BIG. Crow size.  Of course, if you can get a close enough look you will also see the “woody woodpecker” red crest like shows up in this pic.

pileated-woodpecker3

I wish my pics had come out clearer. I actually got quite close, but he was on the shady side of the tree so the clarity isn’t the best . . .

For most of the time I watched him, he was working one particular crack in the tree. This pic shows how they use their tails to brace themselves.  He’s twisted his head around to try to work something out from under the bark. Late lunch :-)

Here’s one more that I didn’t crop as much so you can see more what he looked like when I first noticed him.

pileated-woodpecker2Pileated Woodpeckers need a habitat with mature forest and lots of deadwood. Must be there’s enough of the stuff he likes in Brighton . . . I sure hope so, would love to see this fellow again sometime!

Let’s squish the Square

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The economy is teetering. Our food & gas prices are climbing. And, lest we forget, we citizens of New York are the highest taxed in the country.

So how do we want our politicians to spend our tax money?

If you’re a construction worker, you’ll answer: Build Renaissance Square! Because yeah, if that happens, you’ll have a job for, ya know, a few months.

I can understand that. But what comes next?

Most likely, a big long morning after. For example, take this article by Mark Yost in the Wall Street Journal. He’s writing about sports stadiums, but what he says is enough to remind you of your worst public project hangover.

Sports economists have long argued that publicly financed stadiums are a waste of taxpayer money. And they have the data to prove it.

Yes, stadiums do create high-paying construction jobs for a year or two. But the vast majority of long-term employment is low-wage concession jobs. A Congressional Research Service study of the Baltimore Ravens stadium found that each job created cost the state $127,000. By comparison, Maryland’s Sunny Day Fund created jobs for about $6,000 each . . .

Then there’s the fact that only a sliver of the tax base really benefits from a sports stadium. And with ticket prices rising rapidly, that group is getting much smaller.

Consider the New York Yankees, who have the highest payroll in baseball and take in more than $300 million a year just from their television network. They’ll move into a new $1 billion stadium next year, about half of which was covered by the taxpayers. Seats behind home plate that cost $250 this year will be ten times that next year. The net result is that very few of the people who paid for the stadium will be able to afford a seat there.

But perhaps the best argument against publicly financed stadiums is straight out of Econ 101: Opportunity cost.

“What else could the city have invested its money in and what kind of a return would it have produced?” said King Banaian, chairman of the St. Cloud State (Minn.) Economics Dept. Despite reams of evidence to the contrary, the District proceeded with what Councilman Kwame Brown calls “the most controversial project in the history of the city.”

It was controversial, he said, because the city had more pressing needs. The city’s schools are in shambles; crime is out of control; and unemployment in distressed neighborhoods, like Southeast, is double the national average, if not higher.

Fortunately, people are raising their voices. In City Newspaper, Mary Anna Towler asks a whole slew of questions about Ren Square that need to be asked.

Was the big theater the best theater for Ren Square? If MCC or SUNY owns the theater, will taxpayers’ money be diverted from education to subsidize the theater?

If there’s not enough money for the theater, should we go ahead with the MCC campus and the bus station?

And: does downtown Rochester need Ren Square? A few years ago, it seemed to be about the only development hope we had. That’s no longer true. Is it a good idea to build Ren Square, taking prime development land out of the private market – and taking that land off the tax roles?

There’s also an excellent comment after the City piece:

It would be good if the transit portion of the project were as closely analysed as the PAC. Shouldn’t we also notice that over $100 million TRANSIT dollars are essentially being squandered in a way that will make the bus system slower, less efficient and much more costly to operate? Ther is no advantage to the city to leave the auditorium theater and sibleys building empty, as the current plan would do.To pursue such a plan in an environment of record gas prices, (not to mention global warming) falls on the spectrum between “sub optimal use of public funds” and “complete insanity”. The bus station is both the achilles heel and fatal flaw since it literally cannot be used by buses. This might explain why no traffic study has been done.

Hopefully the Ren Square cloud will clear in time to save the federal transit funds to use for badly needed transportation projects that actually move people TOWARDS their destination at lower energy and lower cost.

We have already spent $15.8 million on the Renaissance Square project.

Are we going to wake up and say “no more” before it’s too late?

I’ve blogged about Renaissance Square previously here, here, and here.

Deer in the street!

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This was taken from my living room window this morning.

suburban deer

Unfortunately I had to run and get the camera so I missed them when they were really close — right in my front yard.

Some years ago I read that the deer population in Monroe County was one of the highest in the entire state. The worst concentrations have typically been in Irondoquoit, a northern suburb where parks like Durand Eastman function as predator-free deer resorts. The consequences aren’t pretty, and include high numbers of deer-car accidents; at such high concentrations, the deer also over-browse the parks which is bad for the native woodland plants that also call them home. And forget growing hostas if you’re a homeowner.

Irondoquoit, to the horror of the pro-deer crowd, responded by culling through a bait-and-shoot program. More recently, they’ve tried contraception, a more politically acceptable alternative. Planned deerhood.

UPDATE: One mama deer in the neighborhood didn’t get the contraception memo, apparently.

Too nice to nap . . . (a possum post)

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Too nice to play dead, either!

possum in rochester new york

Spring weather brings out the critters — my daughter spotted this fella “scurrying” across our yard and around to the back of the garage. He paused here, against a brick bbq chimney, long enough for me to get a great pic!

He doesn’t appear to be sick, so hopefully he’s just out for an early spring stroll :-)

Another helping of crow a la Rochester

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Gee, here’s a surprise. A “consultant report, released Tuesday”

recommends city officials abandon a decade-long push to turn High Falls into an entertainment quarter and instead let private investors continue to steer development toward housing and office space . . .

In its report, the Center for Governmental Research concluded that the city should sell off the buildings it owns, halt its operating subsidies and clean up public spaces it has allowed to languish.

No private property remains available for renovation or redevelopment, the report says — thus turning the focus to the city and Rochester Gas and Electric-controlled land and buildings. The city owns the Center at High Falls/Brown’s Race Market complex. RG&E owns the land below the falls, the Beebee plant and other, smaller buildings.

Since 1992, the city has dumped $41 million of our tax money into the High Falls district. The bright idea: subsidize a bunch of bars because, ya know, that would make the place so cool people would flock to it after work, get real smashed, and, uh, revitalize downtown.

The plan was launched during Bill “Fast Ferry” Johnson’s administration.

Creating a housing and office district was the directive from an initial city-commissioned financial and market study in 1990. R. Carlos Carballada, the city’s commissioner for economic development, said that despite the city pushing in another direction, “the market has sort of evolved itself.”

“The market has sort of evolved itself.” Funny thing, that.

Maybe it’s time for our politicians to recognize that they shouldn’t be risking our money in these schemes.

Ah, don’t hold your breath. The next course is already slowly browning in the oven: buying Midtown Plaza, because what else does the city have to do with our money besides develop 1.2 million square feet of abandoned retail space?

(I’m not just being a crank, here, either. Yes, I believe it’s foolish for the city to own hard assets that it has to maintain, at taxpayer expense, for extended periods of time — particularly when local economic conditions suggest the chances of a decent return are not all that great. But I have constructive suggestions, too. I think the city should focus on making our community more livable and affordable for families, as per this post, and perhaps fund events to attract tourists, because that’s been demonstrated as a less risky way to stimulate economic development.)

Too stupid for words, but I’ll dig some up, somehow

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I know I need to blog about this, but I’ve been too stupified to try.

Yet it needs to be said, by as many people and in as many places as possible. So here goes.

First. Fourteen million dollars of Fast Ferry money is missing. That’s $14 million of New York State taxpayer money unaccounted for, and if you think anyone at any level of our government is going to chase it down and get it back to us, you’re smoking something.

[State Assemblyman] Joseph Errigo, R-Conesus, Livingston County, said he does not necessarily fault [state Comptroller Alan] Hevesi or [Attorney General/now governor-elect Eliot] Spitzer for not documenting the fate of the state aid, though he is “disappointed with that aspect of it.”

As for the agencies that provided the money, Errigo said, “The state lost out on $14 million, and you’d think they’d be interested in recouping all or part of that money.

“My conclusion is that they’re, I guess, embarrassed, and they don’t want this investigation to go further.”

(The article is thorough and documents all kinds of intriguing shenanigans. Enjoy it now, as the Democrat & Chronicle has a tendency to throw things behind their firewall & charge for them after awhile.)

(And for further context bear in mind that Hevesi, newly re-elected to his post in a landslide, exudes a strong smell himself & it ain’t roses. The public has spoken, all right.)

Okay. So that gives you a taste of how carefully our politicians watch our money.

Ready?

Now Rochester’s mayor wants to spend a quarter of a million on an option on Midtown Plaza. That’s an option to buy. If the city decides it doesn’t want the plaza after all, the money is gone for good.

“So?” you say. “Maybe the city will decide it wants to buy?”

You’re not from from around here, are you. Midtown Plaza is a mall in downtown Rochester. Well, it was a mall. Now it’s a hunk of deserted retail and office space.

Nobody wants it, because nobody can figure out how to make money from it.

Oh whoa, wait, I forget! The city can figure out how to make money from it!!! Of course!!!

Really, I am so disgusted I could spit.

It’s like they’re deliberately trying to accumulate worthless overpriced junk. The “fast ferry,” which still sits in dry dock because nobody else is a big enough sucker to buy it. Renaissance Square, the performing arts center cum bus station that nobody wants and for which we’ll be paying some undisclosed amount to keep solvent until it’s knocked down for a parking lot or something some day. And now Midtown.

If it wasn’t my money they’re wasting I’d find this hilarious.

UPDATE: Welcome, 2Blowhards readers, and thanks Michael for the link :-)

“A certain level of subsidy”

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Here’s Monroe county exec Maggie Brooks at the unveiling of the design for the performing arts center piece of Rochester’s proposed Renaissance square:

Other questions weren’t answered so completely. One suggested that there may be a $2 million annual operating loss for the performing arts center and a $3 million loss for the bus station. County Executive Maggie Brooks rejected the question’s premise. “Those figures aren’t accurate,” she said.

Brooks admitted, though, that the project might not be self-sustaining.

“I think it would be disingenuous to say there won’t be any subsidy at all,” Brooks said. “There is a certain level of subsidy that the community will accept.”

To minimize that subsidy, Brooks said, the project’s principals have adhered to a guideline of “What is affordable, what is sustainable.”

“We want to live up to that,” she said.

Also unknown is how the performing arts center will be operated.

“These are conversations that will continue,” said Brooks.

Okay. So we aren’t going to be sinking $5 million annually into this . . . thing. But it is going to be an ongoing drain. Of an unknown magnitude. Over & above the public money already appropriated for it. No matter, open your checkbook cuz the pols say so. Open your checkbook, because hey, you’re fine with “a certain level of subsidy.”

Think we’re fooled? We’re not. Poll results from 13WHAM: only 22 percent of us think this is a “good” or “great” idea. Half think it’s a bad idea.

I’ve blogged about this topic here and here. Not just grousing, either, I’m honestly trying to figure out what would work for this city. See also this post & comment thread on the subject at 2Blowhards for a breath of intelligent perspective on our little project.