batavia

Last night, the Batavia City Council voted to waive the residency requirement for 14 city employees. That was all the news that was reported about the 6-to-1 vote. Nobody has yet been able to tell us why exactly the city has such a requirement if it's willing to waive it for such a large number of employees. In the meantime, we would like to get your thoughts. Do you feel it's imperative for a person to live in the city of Batavia if they are employed here? Can someone in Oakfield do the job? Does it matter? If it doesn't matter, why does the city require residency here? If it does matter, why would the city waive that requirement? Well, what do you think?

Batavia's City Council last night waived the residency requirement for 14 city employees, according to WBTA's Dan Fischer. Councilman Bob Bialkowski was the sole dissenter in the 6-to-1 vote. Assistant City Manager Sally Kuzon and recently appointed Code Enforcement Officer Ronald Panek were among those relieved of the requirement.

No one has yet explained exactly what such a decision means for the city. If the residency requirement was in place: How did the city hire 14 people in violation of the requirement? We put the question to Council President Charlie Mallow this morning, and we're waiting for his response. We'll be sure to get it up when he responds, if he doesn't just beat us to the punch and post a comment before then.

Update: Mallow has responded to our inquiry from earlier this morning.

"The City has a residency requirement for all employees to live within the boundaries of the County," he said. "These employees were identified as living outside the County, some who have worked for the City for over 10 years, and it has been determined that it is in the best interest of the City to waive this requirement  for these people."

Thanks to Lindsay Warner for submitting the following info on the Genesee Region League Cheerleading Tournament. We would love to have some color to go with this recap, so if you've got photos or video of this event, please post it to the site or contact me by e-mail so we can get it posted.

This weekend the JV and varsity cheerleading squads of the Genesee Region League gathered for their annual tournament. The competition travels to a different host school every few years and this year was the first for Elba High School and Michelle Merrill, their head coach.

The competition is run much like Winter Cheerleading Sectionals in that each team performs twice on the mat- once in a cheer only round and than again using the tradition cheer/dance routine. Grand Champion is determined by the squad who carries the highest total score. Since the inception of this competition that score belonged to the Holley Hawks- that is until this weekend.

Notre Dame has competed in this tournament for years and since Coach Lindsay (Rapone) Warner began coaching, grand champion was set as the ultimate goal. Holley High School, who is class B2 with nearly twice as many squad members, doesn’t make for much of a fair fight. This year Notre Dame has 14 members, 6 of which are new additions to the varsity team from last year. Nevertheless, Notre Dame was able to top Holley’s squad of 27 by 6 points in Round One which was very exciting for the squad as a last second decision was made to throw out the original cheer and learn a completely new one less than a week before the day’s performance. Overall the Irish stole grand champion by 4 points.

“My team was aware that the odds were against us in our goal to get grand champ. Holley is a great competitor and is well known for their themed routines, which this year, was Legally Blonde,” coach Lindsay Warner. The squad worked very hard to prepare for this competition, including two full practices before each of their games this week. The girls wanted it and their efforts certainly paid off. Assistant coach, Sheri Girvin, who is an alumni of Holley High School and former recipient of Grand Champion as a Hawk joined the Irish last year and was thrilled to receive Grand Champion again, now as a Notre Dame coach.

Squad captains are Stacy Squire, Kristen Francis, and Lauren DiFante, two of which are seniors and are very hopeful that this is just the start of a very successful final season for them at Notre Dame.

JV CHEER DI- Holley 177, Attica 173, Alexander 170; DII- Kendall 137
JV CHEER/DANCE DI- Holley 179,Attica 169, Alexander 156; DII Kendall 150
Varsity CHEER DI-Holley 184, Attica 179, Alexander 174, Oakfield 109; DII Notre Dame 190, Elba 173, Kendall 157, Lyndonville 150
Varsity CHEER/DANCE DII- Notre Dame 185, Kendall 166, Elba 164, Lyndonville 146

Batavia's City Council will meet tonight at 7 p.m. at the City Centre. Their only order of business is a vote to abolish the city's Board of Ethics, which would henceforth hand over all questions of potential ethics violations to the county's board, according to WBTA's Dan Fischer.

Today and tomorrow will be mild compared to the expected temperatures later this week. An Arctic front will blow in Wednesday, dropping temperatures down to near zero that day and possibly even as low as minus five degrees on Thursday. Follow this link to download a helpful extereme cold weather guide.

 We were supposed to get slammed with some big-time snow last night. I woke up this morning with the ambition to go out and photograph some carnage.

It was actually pretty nice.

As you can see, most streets and driveways are clear and the only real damage I found was a power wire down.

Yesterday, we brought you some extracts from a report by the Center for Governmental Research on the potential consolidation of the town and city of Batavia. We would still encourage everyone in those municipalities to download and read the full document (it's about seven pages or so). In the meantime, we would like to present you with the four most commonly asked questions of the researchers as they interviewed leaders in the city and town on the topic of consolidation. Here's what they heard most:

1. "How can we ensure that city and town residents and businesses are fairly represented in the new government?"

2. "How can we ensure that the current costs and obligations of the city are not unfairly transferred to current town taxpayers?"

3. "What would happen with fire and police services?"

4. "What is the process for approving the creation of New Batavia?"

Answers to all of these questions, to a certain extent, depend on the plan that has not yet been planned. That being said, the Center for Governmental Research has some answers to help appease folks in the meantime. That is particularly the case for questions one and three. Amusingly, the CGR recommends a charter review committee works out those details in time for the November vote. We say amusing, because the city has been working on its own charter for quite some time now, and all of the work would essentially be null and void if a consolidation goes through. Daily News reporter Joanne Beck explored this irony in a recent article in that paper.

As for the other questions... Question two—will the cities burdens become the towns—has been the most frequent that I have heard. Basically, CGR says that consolidation of the city and town "can be expected to yield both short term and long term savings" for everyone. To me, that makes it sound like a non-issue.

Question four—approving the creation of New Batavia—is a real hoot. Quite simply, there's nothing that says the consolidtion has to be voted on by residents. However, the state Legislature does get a say.

As for the next steps...

Number One: Develop a plan! (Seriously, that's number one.)

Number Two: Get some money, because you will need it.

Number Three: Get more input.

There you go. Is everybody ready?

Yesterday, we ran a post on some of the details of the consolidation proposal. Later today, we'll get more into what has yet to happen if this issue will truly go to a public vote this November. For now, we thought to play a little hypothetical game. One of the lines in the report on consolidation prepared by the Center for Governmental Research reads: "For discussion purposes, we will refer to this new consolidated government as New Batavia."

That's right: New Batavia. It's got a nice ring to it. Now, if we had to vote tomorrow on who should run this new, mega rural-opolis, whom would you vote for?

As some of you may already know, the 'Other' responses do not automatically show up here, so we'll do our best to get them added in the comment field throughout the day. Personally, I'm going other and nominating former Main Street Coffee proprietor, Rob Credi, for the post. Either him or Tim Paine.

Everybody's talking about consolidation. Will the city and town of Batavia merge into a single entity? Even more important than that: If it does, what will that mean for me and my taxes? In the hopes of shedding some light on the topic—rather than further obfuscating the issue by pandering to rumor—we thought to invite two of the major players down to our office for a video interview. We had hoped to ask Charlie Mallow, the city's council president, and Greg Post, the town's supervisor, to explain as succinctly as possible the central issues involved in a potential consolidation.

Unfortunately, Post didn't have much to say. It's far too early in the game, he said. Most of what we've been hearing so far has been "a lot of hype and political posturing," he said. He then recommended we check out the memorandum issued by the Center for Governmental Research on the upcoming consolidation study. Once we've done so, he would be more than willing, he said, to answer questions pertaining to specifics as they were mentioned in that document. So we did that. In fact, the document is right now sitting on the desk before me.

Before we turn again to Mallow and Post with some more specific questions, we thought it would be a good time to extract a few choice nuggets from the memorandum to help give folks a clearer idea of just where we are in this whole process and just where we may be going. Hadn't someone said that we would be voting on whether to consolidate as soon as November? Could that be true? Well, before we jump that gun, let's look at what we do know (all of the following excerpts have been taken from the memorandum by the Center for Governmental Research issued to the "City and Town of Batavia Consolidation Study Committee" on December 15). You may download the complete document here.

"The overall objective study was to identify ways to make the joint operations of the two governments more effective and efficient, by exploring ways to work together incrementally under a shared services approach, up to and including full consolidation of the two governments. Results of the study are expected to be delivered by October, 2009."

"If the City and Town of Batavia consolidate into one government ... This would be enough to reduce the combined property tax levy of the City and Town by 15% per year."

"In greater Batavia, local governments have ironed out their differences over provision of regional water service, and the City and Town have worked cooperatively on a regional waste water treatment system. However, current boundaries and the resulting turf protection issues have made it very difficult to develop cost effective regional solutions to deliver ambulance, police and fire services."

"Batavia already has two distinct advantages in pursuing consolidation:

• Most public school students in the town attend the Batavia City School District. Thus, there is not a town versus city conflict in public education within the greater community.
• The City and Town share the same name, thus there would be no loss of brand identity from the perspective of the outside world if the two entities were to consolidate."

"Fortunately for Batavia ... the top elected leaders in both the City and the Town are willing to actively support consolidation as being the right thing to do for the greater community in the long run."

Those are the main points made in the first part of the memorandum. Perhaps the most significant recommendation comes later on in the report, under the section: Moving Forward. It recommends that the joint study committee "should strongly consider developing a plan for consolidation that, if approved by the City Council and Town Board, could be put to a vote in the general election on November 3, 2009."

Whoa! There it is.

We can't yet say how any of this will work, we don't even have a plan, not even a confirmation of when the plan will start, but in ten months, the residents ought to be ready to put it to a vote! What's more bizarre, if the vote passes, the consolidation wouldn't even happen until 2011.

Here's my favorite line: "For discussion purposes, we will refer to this new consolidated government as New Batavia."

We would encourage anyone who is interested in these developments to download the complete copy of the memorandum (the link is above). There is much more to be read, some of which we hope to highlight in another post tomorrow, including the next steps, brief sketches of the different phases of the project and the four most common questions so far raised.

For now, we're in the midst of Phase One: "Develop a baseline of current operations." This should be completed by March 1, when we dive into the much more complex Phase Two: "Develop a model for New Batavia." That would be finished by May, when we would begin the final phase leading up to the November referendum: "Community discussion..." That's where I'm sure things will get especially interesting.

So... While we're getting things ready for the big discussion, it seems like a great time to ask: What do you want New Batavia to be? I say we build tunnels. Everywhere. Tunnels.

 Batavia wrestling coach Rick Stewart figured the school uniforms were coming for state competition. But he thinks the possible $300 charge for Empire State Games participants is going to kill the event.

"It is what it is, but I think there must be another way the state can raise money," Stewart said. "As a coach, if my kid were to make Empires, and it cost $300 to get uniforms and stuff when it was free before, I would still encourage him to do it."

Stewart agrees with most that the hefty cost will deter many athletes from even trying out for the games, but has a good idea on how to keep the numbers up for the scholastic grapplers.

" There is an adult (open) and kids (scholastic) competition," Stewart said. "I would be more than willing to say that the state should furnish the kids, but once you are an adult and have your own job and make money, you can pay to participate - split it in half rather than everybody paying for it. When you are an adult, it is a hobby for you."

As far as schools wearing their own singlets for the state competition and the possibility of having just one champion, Stewart believes New York State is the only one that still has team uniforms for each section - and that small school wrestlers can compete with the big schools.

"Back when I was in school, that's how it was," Stewart said of having a single state champion in each weight class. "I don't think it makes that big of a deal in wrestling. It makes all the difference in the world, but it matters in dual meets. A school like Spencerport or Fairport has twice the number of kids to fill their weight classes."

The Blue Devils are 14-5 and have several potential sectional champions that could contend for a state title.

It's up! The sign that caused quite a stir over the summer has been installed out front of the Batavia City Centre. Isn't it pretty—and it only cost us... what was it... oh, right around $20,000. (Personally, I say for $20,000, we should have bought a hatchback, mounted a megaphone to the roof, and hired a driver to circle the city continuously intoning: 'Come to the mall. Come to the mall. Please.' But the sign is nice, too.)

That big, blank, white face just begs the question: What should be the first message? This sign is supposed to boost business for the shops inside the mall. So what message would get you inside the mall to spend your hard-earned cash?

While we're on the topic of mall signs... Has anyone caught a glimpse of the old sign lately? That's somewhat of a trick question, because if you're heading east on Main Street, you have to see through—or around—the tree that all but blocks the view of the sign from that direction. No matter. Even if you saw that side of the sign, it wouldn't make much sense. Intended to advertise the movies now showing at the cinema in the mall, it currently reads: 'BET' for the first film and 'ARLE' for the second. Any guesses?

So what is the mall telling people with these two signs? The new one seems to say: 'Hey, come buy our stuff. We're fresh and lively, and we believe in the majesty of British orthography.' But the old one tells us: 'We're rusting. Honest to God: we're rusting.'

I mean, come on: 'BET' and 'ARLE'. Well, at least when spring comes, the leaves will blot out the reference to the Genesee Country Mall.

I went out a few minutes ago to take some photos for a post that will be going up this afternoon. In the half hour or so I was out on Batavia's sidewalks and city streets, I found much to be lamented. Sidewalks out front of the Batavia City Centre (a.k.a., the Genesee Country Mall; a.k.a., the Mall) were treacherous. In a span of maybe a couple hundred feet, I nearly fell on my arse a handful of times. Who is responsible for salting those walks? I could understand if it was in that shape earlier this morning. But it's nearly noon. That's lunch time. Do we need people breaking hips on their way to scarf down a BLT?

Is it the responsibility of the individual shop owners to salt out front of their establishment wherever it fronts Main Street? Or is it the responsibility of "the mall" in general? If the latter, who in particular takes care of that?

Of course, this problem is not only confined to the mall. Other Main Street shops need to be much more diligent about salting out front of their establishments. Unless, that is, they want to discourage their clientele from visiting the shop.

Even worse than the sidewalks, however—and I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice this—is the stretch of Ellicott Street for about fifty feet on either side of the railroad tracks that cut across the road right near Center Street.

It is horrendous!

The blacktop is so chewed up that it's like driving off road in a rocky gully.

How about you? Have you found troubles with potholes and unsalted sidewalks?

Folks in the region will have several opportunities to meet and speak with our governor in February. An article in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reports this morning that Gov. David Paterson will hold a series of at least four town-hall style meetings upstate to "allow residents to ask questions and interact with the governor on the ideas he lays out in the State of the State address." Gov. Paterson will give his State of the State this Wednesday at 1:00pm.

Of those meetings that have so far been scheduled, three will be held within a short distance of Batavia: one in Buffalo on February 18, one in Rochester on February 11 and another in Geneseo on February 12. Others will likely be held in Watertown and Binghamton.

From the article:

Paterson has moved away from Spitzer's plan to split up some state duties, particularly economic development, into upstate and downstate branches. Paterson has argued that New York is one state with a united purpose.

Andrew Rudnick, president of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, said an upstate address isn't necessary so long as the governor gives the region the attention it needs.

If the symbolism of an upstate speech, "isn't followed up by definitive policy and asset allocation, what much difference does it make?" he said.

Most people would likely agree that the most pressing issue now facing the state is the budget crisis. A few weeks ago, Paterson released his budget proposal that caused quite a stir. We've put together a poll with a few topics that might come up when the governor visits upstate. Pick whichever you most want to hear about. I figure that the budget proposal will likely be a major part of the State of the State this Wednesday, so try to think what's most important to upstate other than that.