For many years, Community Action of Orleans and Genesee has been a resource supporting reliable and affordable transportation services to community members in our two counties via the Community Action Transportation System, better known CATS.

But the current system of providing bus transportation has become exceedingly expensive for Community Action. Over recent years, many of our bus trips contain only one or two riders. Using buses to transport a single rider is extremely expensive and the costs have continued to rise with increases in insurance, bus maintenance, fuel and wages.

It is with a heavy heart that Community Action has made the decision to downsize the CATS Bus transportation system. With costs exceeding revenue, it is deemed necessary to protect our ability to provide the many unique and essential services we bring to our customers. This will be difficult and this process will take time.

“Fuel and bus maintenance is costly, while ridership is low due to COVID and new conveniences such as remote work, grocery delivery, and telehealth,” said Community Action Executive Director Renee Hungerford.

The CATS program has been providing to residents, bus transportation service for established routes and for “on-demand” rides year-round, five days per week.  Destinations included community health centers, doctor and hospital visits, treatment centers, clinics, dialysis, and retail store shopping.

The caring and courageous staff continued services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic despite a drastic reduction in riders along with the added effort of sanitizing buses between trips. 

Community Action services have been able to support clients who are elderly or disabled and who remain independent in their homes but do not own/drive a vehicle. 

CATS bus transportation services have evolved where experienced and professional staff have dedicated themselves not only to ensuring maintained vehicles but have also provided very caring door-to-door and door-through-door service for some of our clients.

Today however, our friends at Rochester Transportation Services (RTS) and others are helping to fulfill this need. 

Community Action will work with partners to do everything possible to ensure transportation needs are met by offering other transportation options to our Community Action clients. We will continue to provide busing for our Head Start program.

As we go through this process, we will research the possibility to evolve our community transportation support to vans and energy efficient vehicles that meet the special needs of valued customers.

From Marybeth Stefani:

I recently moved to Ross Street. My cat Mittens was always an indoor cat, but since moving to the new place she was eager to get outside, so we let her. She was only going as far as the neighbor's and would show up periodically throughout the day. We have been here for a month and a half. Well last Monday is the last I’ve seen of her

She is a female cat who is about 14 years old. She has a scar on her lower side (from a cat fight from before I adopted her). When she went missing, she was wearing a purple flea collar on which I had written her name and address. She is friendly but hides from people she doesn't know.

She could be hiding under a porch or even a garage, so I am asking people to keep their eyes out for her.  She is a family cat and we are missing her terribly! I can be contacted by phone 585-297-7418.

A small platoon of volunteers could deal with the army of stray cats in Batavia, the City Council was told during a long discussion of the issue Monday night.

Three representatives of the pro bono animal program at the SUNY Buffalo Law School recommend a trap, neuter, vaccinate and return program that they say has been successful elsewhere, even in small towns in Western New York.

West Seneca provides an example, said Joseph Smith, a law student working with the pro bono program. That community instituted TNVR and it made a huge difference.

"You can have as fast as a year turnaround," Smith said. "You can get direct results and significant results within a year."

The results include fewer nuisances from cats and fewer stray cats.

Problem cats fall into two categories -- community cats, which are cats who were once domesticated, but somehow became ownerless, and feral cats, which are cats born to a homeless cat and never domesticated.

Smith, along with fellow student Nicole Komin and Vice Dean Kim Diana Connolly, outlined the program's benefits, especially when compared to alternatives.

Stray cats will always be with you, both Smith and Komin emphasized. If you try to capture them and keep them, they'll overwhelm any such system. If you try to kill them, other strays will just move into the territory.

Cats tend to go where they can get food and shelter, be it a cat lover who feeds them, scraps from a restaurant or plentiful prey. If all the cats are removed from an area of food and shelter, other cats will just take their place.

TNVR solves that problem by returning non-breeding cats to those their former haunts.

Once fixed, cats fight less, howl less and spray less, making them much less of a neighborhood nuisance.

And if you can eliminate the breeders, there are fewer feral cats and eventually fewer community cats. They never disappear from a community, but over time, their numbers are greatly reduced.

The life expectancy of a homeless cat is seven or eight years.

Assistant City Manager Gretchen DiFante invited Smith, Komin and Connolly to speak with the council because she's been tasked with coming up with a program to deal with stray and feral cats.

Council members expressed an interest in learning more and supporting a task force to study the proposal further. 

Such a program could be implemented at no cost to the city because there are volunteer and community groups that can be tapped to help set up the program and take care of the task of trapping cats and getting them neutered and vaccinated before they're returned to the location where they're trapped.

Cats who have been through the program get a notched ear so they're identifiable as neutered, and once released, they've learned about the trap and will never allow themselves to be captured that way again, Smith said.

Based on "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" by T.S. Eliot

February 20th & 21st, 2015

7:00pm

Elba Central School Auditorium

57 South Main St., Elba

Tickets:

$6 students/seniors

$8 adults

Available in the District Office during school hours or at the door on show nights

Information: (585) 757-9967

This information. and much more, can be found at The Animal Rescue Site.

To vote for Volunteers for Animals, please click HERE!

Hi!  I'm writing to tell you about The Animal Rescue Site $300,000 Shelter+ Challenge of 2012 - together with Petfinder.  The Animal Rescue Site is awarding $300,000 in grants to eligible Petfinder.com member rescue organizations to help animals.  The grand prize in each voting round is a $5,000 grant, and there are many other prizes!  Visit The Animal Rescue Site to vote every day and learn more.  You don't have to register, and voting is FREE!  Support your favorite shelter and vote today! 

How long is the Challenge, and how can we increase our chances?
This voting round begins on January 9, 2012, and ends at midnight (PT) on March 18, 2012. There will be other voting rounds throughout the year - more chances for your organization to win! The more friends you can rally to vote for your favorite rescue organization, the better its chances of winning. Every vote, every day counts - shelters can pull ahead even during the last few days with enough support. Get people involved! Your favorite rescue organization is counting on you!

What kind of grant could my shelter win?
Seventy (70) grants will be awarded for a total of $75,000 to eligible Petfinder.com members during the very first voting round of the 2012 Challenge. The grand prize will go to the eligible Petfinder.com organization with the highest accumulative votes for the duration of the Challenge as specified in the rules.

The Prizes Are:
Grand Prize:  One $5,000 grant!
Dark Horse Grand Prize:  One $2,000 grant!
Dark Horse Runners Up:  Five $1,000 grants.
State Winners:  Fifty-one $1,000 state grants
  (50 U.S. states and Washington D.C.)
Canadian Winners:  One $1,000 grant will be awarded.
International Winner:  One $1,000 grant will be awarded.
Weekly Winners:  Ten $1,000 grants will be awarded, one for each week of this voting round of the Shelter⁺ Challenge.

According to Coutney Iburi, specialist for Aging Services, “The purpose of the rural shopping service is to ensure that all seniors in Genesee County have access to transportation services for their grocery, pharmacy or other personal shopping needs.”

The CATS service helps people who need assistance getting out of their homes and onto the bus or need help getting their groceries loaded onto the bus and into their home.

Iburi noted that seniors wishing to use the CATS medical transportation are urged to schedule their Buffalo area appointments on Tuesday afternoons and their Rochester area appointments on Friday mornings.

The Transportation Coordination Program assists seniors and their caregivers in understanding available transportation options. The program is made possible by the Rochester Area Community Foundation’s Muriel H. Marshall Fund for the Aging.

Prior registration for use of the CATS services is necessary. Contact the Office for the Aging to register or for more information at 343-1611.