Laurie Oltramari, executive director of the Batavia Improvement District, turned in her letter of resignation this week.
BID president Victor Gautieri confirmed the resignation and said the board would meet in the coming week to decide what to do next.
Oltramari led the organization for a year.
Gautieri declined further comment.
Le Roy fell 60-32 to Bath in its season opener in Bath.
Photos by David Boyce. For more photos from the game, click here.
The Batavia Blue Devils, 2016 edition, quietly took apart Greece Olympia/Odyssey on Woodward Field on Friday night to the point that the Spartans seems to have lost their fight by the third quarter.
It's as if the team that has won two consecutive Section V titles hasn't missed a beat. In fact, the win was the 20th straight for the program against a Section V opponent.
The final score was 39-0.
"I'm very pleased because going into the game I wasn't sure what we had," said Head Coach Brennan Briggs. "I wasn't sure how we would respond to things and how we were going to go when we got hit in the mouth. But these guys came out and proved that they bought in and they’re a tough group of kids and we’ve got some playmakers out there. I’m very excited for what they can do from here."
This edition slots Jerry Reinhart and QB1 and, Ray Leach and Codie Dioguardi in the backfield, Chandler Baker, Andrew Mruczek and Eric Davis at wideouts and a defense that includes Baker, Mruczek, Taiyo Iburi-Bethel, Anthony Ray and Jzon Richardson.
Those are not names that popped up in many headlines over the past two championship seasons, but they're all players poised to make an impact, if one game is any indication, in 2016.
Reinhart certainly has a lot of confidence in his teammates.
"Everybody asked me, they all asked me, 'how are you guys going to be this year?' and I was like, 'come to the first game and find out,' " Reinhart said. "I was very positive about our team. In the off-season, I thought we were going do great."
Briggs is impressed with the quiet leadership Reinhart has brought to the team, replacing Andrew Mruczek's older brother, Greg, at quarterback.
"Greg was more rah-rah and everything and great about it," Briggs said. "Jerry is more reserved, but he goes out there and gets the job done. He's a leader. He's a great leader. You saw, he made some big plays. He's not afraid to tuck it and run and he kept us together. I'm proud of him. He did a great job."
Friday was also a chance for Andrew to move out from under the shadow of his older brother, and in a big way, and significantly with a key interception in the first quarter.
"I think the biggest turning point in that game was Andrew Mruczek's interception," Briggs said. "They had a drive going, I think 10-plus plays, and we always say a nine-plus play drive is devastating for a defense and we were starting to feel it and all the sudden, number 21 comes in and makes a huge play for us. I’m happy for him because he’s been a trooper and he’s been working his butt off and he’s just silently been doing it."
Mruczek exemplifies the quiet confidence that characterizes the team.
"I think people are going to realize, Batavia football is here to stay and we're going to keep working hard every day," Mruczek said.
The offense was good, the defense was good, but special teams really stepped it up Friday night.
Richardson, a linebacker on defense, handles kickoffs, extra points and field goals. On kickoffs Friday, he consistently put the ball past the 10-yard line, and with defenders hustling down the field, the Spartans were routinely starting drives with their backs to the wall.
"That is so big for our team," Briggs said. "From the standpoint of having just great energy and momentum, they did a fantastic job for us and special teams cannot be overlooked because field position is huge in football games."
Briggs praised the work of special teams coach Ben Buchholz in motivating the players and getting each to do their part to plug holes and cut lanes, and John Garlock has been applying those lessons well, Briggs said.
"Johnny Garlock has been doing it for us for three years and he goes down like a missile," Briggs said. "He’s long snapper on punts and the first guy down there and on kickoff coverage, he makes the plays."
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A 31-year-old Oakfield resident has been accused of smuggling suboxone and heroin into the Genesee County Jail and delivering them to her husband, who is an inmate.
Serena L. Snyder is accused of bringing the narcotics to Cody E. Snyder, 25.
Serena Snyder was allegedly found possession of heroin while at the jail on a visitation to her husband.
The Local Drug Task Force handled the investigation. Agents concluded Serena Snyder had allegedly delivered drugs to her husband on two prior occasions.
Task Force members, along with Deputy Chris Erion and K-9 Destro searched Serena Snyder's car and allegedly found heroin and crack cocaine.
Serena Snyder was charged with attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance, 3rd, criminal sale of a controlled substance, 4th, two counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance, 5th, conspiracy, 4th, promoting prison contraband, 1st, and two counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance, 7th.
Cody Snyder was charged with conspiracy, 4th.
Serena Snyder was arraigned in City Court and released under supervision of Genesee Justice.
Here's a collection of all our pre-season, training camp, football pictures.
To purchase prints of preseason football pictures, click here.
Here's our pre-season previews:
The season opens tonight.
Tonight's games:
Tomorrow's games:
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There are 7 white sheep wandering around lost in the Bethany area after escaping through an open gate. Last sighted on a trail cam near Cackner Rd. and Bethany Center Rd. Please contact Barbara Hollands 585-734-2236 if you see them. They are a bit shy of people but like grain and will come to someone shaking a bucket of grain.
UPDATE Friday, 10:23 a.m.: Thanks to the help of neighbor Pat Pietrzykowski, all seven sheep have been located, rounded up and returned home, where they are safe and sound.
It's a lot of work moving thousands of collectible toys along with 40,000 comic books, but that's what Bill Hume, along with his wife, Joy, staff member Wayne Stahler along with helpers and friends have been doing for the past few days.
Hume opened Foxprowl at its new location at Main and Jackson, downtown Batavia today, even though not everything is unboxed or on the shelves yet.
We've covered Foxprowl from its opening on Ellicott Street over the years and watched the business grow. The store expanded, added inventory and Hume hosted a convention in Batavia last year (it will return this year; details to be announced).
Several other small businesses have come and gone in Batavia in that time, but Hume has persisted and succeeded. He said lasting and growing has had a lot to do with his passion for the business, his passion for collectibles and his willingness and enjoyment to work the long hours necessary.
A reader submitted this photo of a tractor-trailer that went off the around 4:20 p.m. on Bergen Road. No injuries reported.
Pembroke Junior/Senior High School unveiled a new logo and new sign in a brief ceremony Wednesday evening.
The new logo was designed by Matt Steinburg, a 1991 graduate of Pembroke who now lives in Corfu with his wife, Anne, and son, Benjamin. He is creative director for Visit Buffalo and won the new logo contest. Matt also created a custom font for "Pembroke." He estimated he put in more than 100 hours of volunteer time into the effort.
Pembroke has a new Head Coach, Ray Stoldt, but the only returning starting QB in the Genesee Region League.
Reid Miano will take snaps behind an experienced line, but they've got the size to protect him once they make the adjustment to the speed and technique of varsity-level football.
"I think they come around later in the year," said Stoldt, who has spent his career with Pembroke as an assistant on varsity and then coach of modified the past two seasons.
Blocking will be key because Miano, given time, can pass well and he's got some weapons at wideout, Stoldt said.
"I think every coach will always like to be a little further ahead at this point, but we’re young and we’re getting better every snap," Stoldt said.
With 15 seniors and a trio of returning all-league defensive players and a new QB with a strong arm and field smarts, Alexander's Head Coach Tim Sawyer likes what he sees so far of the 2016 Trojans.
"I feel like I’ve got a fast and physical group of kids who understand our systems both offensively and defensively," Sawyer said. "It’s been fun. It’s been a good camp this year."
Alexander opens against Notre Dame tonight (at 7 p.m. in Perry, (NOTE: As soon as I hit publish on this story I got an e-mail from a Section V official saying the game has been moved to Saturday in Warsaw) because of renovations to Alexander's home field.
Sawyer knows the Fighting Irish will be a tough match right out of the gate.
"There's not a lot of kids (at Notre Dame), but they get after it," Sawyer said. "It doesn’t matter the size, those kids will play. They always play tough."
Week two doesn't get any easier because the Trojans face perennial powerhouse Attica.
"Within the first two weeks, we’re going to know kinda where we stand," Sawyer said.
The starting QB is P.J. Brennan, a senior who was Jared Browne's backup last season. He's not big, Sawyer said, but he's got a strong arm and he handles read-options well.
Among his weapons is returning wideout Derrick Busch. He'll also marshal a rotation of running backs.
Josh Hylkema, Dustin Schmeider and Jake Jasen, all over 200 pounds and all all-league on defense last year, are back and ready to anchor a squad that also includes Busch, Dane Heberlein, Jacob Bykowski and Erik Scharlau (who's also expected to have an impact at tight end this season).
And for the first time in school history, Alexander will have a girl on the squad. Rather than play soccer this year, Hannah Paolucci will be one of two place kickers on the Trojans (bottom photo).
The latest legal challenges to live, amplified music at Frost Ridge Campground in Le Roy have been dismissed by Judge Emilio Colaiacovo, meaning owners David and Greg Lueticke-Archbell will be able to continue their concert series, Jam at the Ridge.
Colaiacovo ruled that the Zoning Board of Appeals acted with appropriate consideration and diligence when deciding live, amplified music was a prior non-conforming use and that there was no substantive violation of the state's open meetings law when it reached that decision in February.
Attorneys for David and Amy Cleere and Scott and Betsy Collins challenged the ZBA's decision on both of those counts.
The decision seemingly concludes two years of legal fights initiated by the Cleeres and Collins and initially backed by the Town of Le Roy.
The plaintiffs maintained all along that Frost Ridge violated the town's zoning laws, because it is in an agricultural-residential district, by hosting music concerts at the campground.
The owners and their supporters countered that both live music and amplified music had been part of the operations of the campground since the 1960s, which means those uses were grandfathered in, or prior, non-conforming uses, before the R-A district was created.
The ZBA met at least twice prior to the lawsuits being filed and sided with David and Greg Lueticke-Archbell, but Judge Robert C. Noonan, who retired earlier this year, ruled that the ZBA meetings where these decisions were made were not properly noticed (a violation of the state's open meetings law), so he ordered the ZBA to hold a new public hearing.
The town board then tried to disband the ZBA -- which at the time was a joint board of the town and the village -- but Noonan barred dissolution of the ZBA until after it conducted a new hearing and issued a decision.
The ZBA met in December and collected documents and testimony at the time, but never publicly deliberated the issue and issued its decision without a public vote in February.
Colaiacovo ruled that even if these actions were a technical violation of the open meeting law, the record is clear that the ZBA members had ample information about the issue without the need for public deliberation and there was no evidence presented that the matter was discussed in a closed meeting by the board.
"The Court finds that the alleged failure to vote on its decision in public is a de minimis technical violation that, in light of the exhaustive record and consistency of the ZBA's determination that there exists a prior, non-conforming use, injunctive relief is not warranted," Colaiacovo wrote in his decision.
Colaiacovo said it was not the court's place, based on case law, to decide whether the ZBA reached the correct decision, only that the decision was reasonable and not arbitrary and capricious.
The mere fact that the plaintiffs disagree with the decision is not evidence that it is arbitrary and capricious, he said.
Courts must be careful, according to case law, not to overturn local decisions that are based on substantial evidence and are rational, he said.
The record shows the ZBA had a substantial amount of testimony and evidence to consider that seemed to back the conclusion of a prior, non-conforming use, he said.
"The ZBA held that these activities occurred to varying degrees prior to the adoption of the Town Zoning Code," Colaiacovo wrote. "The ZBA referenced Mr. (Eugene) Sinclair's testimony, which established that the defendants' actions were 'consistent with the essential character of the property as a prior, non-conforming use.' Accordingly, the ZBA, after exhausting its reasons for its determination, found that the use of the property as a campground, which permitted live and recorded music, limited food service, and allowed the use of recreational vehicles, was a prior, non-conforming use as permitted by the Town of Le Roy Zoning Code.
"Based on the foregoing," he continued, "the Court finds that the determination of the ZBA is based on substantial evidence that was made part of an extensive record. As such, because the ZBA had a rational basis to reach its decision, this Court will not disturb it."
He added, "Nothing in the record demonstrates that the ZBA reached its determination haphazardly."
Photo, from left: Undersheriff Bill Sheron, Joseph Grube, Steve Sharpe and Sheriff Gary Maha.
Steve Sharpe, director of communications for the Genesee County Sheriff's Office, was honored yesterday with an industry award that recognizes his dedication to the profession and his job.
The PSAP (Public Safety Access Point) Finest Director of the Year award was selected by industry professionals from a national pool of nominees.
The award was sponsored by emergency communications company NICE and presented by Joseph Grube, director of public safety for Wilmac, another public safety company.
Grube said Sharp was selected based on his habits of lifelong learning, his self-motivation toward excellence, his involvement in several industry associations and groups and his advocacy for the 25 staff members who report to him in ensuring they have the best equipment and training.
“The public safety community is a better place because of people like Steve,” Grube said.
Sharp said the award really reflects what a great team he has around him, from the County Legislature that supports professional emergency communication, to the Sheriff's Office administration, to the dispatchers in the emergency dispatch center, nothing would be possible without their hard work and dedication, he said.
“I think the biggest thing people have got to understand is it's about the team," Sharpe said. "It’s always going to be about the team. It’s the people you put in the right place. It’s about learning. I’ve had some pretty spectacular failures as a leader, and I’ve had some pretty spectacular failures here in this job, but my failures were mitigated by their strengths. It all comes back to team.”
Willis Middleton moves into a new apartment in Batavia tomorrow, and the day before yesterday, he signed his lease and picked up his keys.
At first, he didn't think much of it. He went back to his room at the VA Center, in the Cazenovia Recovery Program, and sat down on his bed and started looking for a keychain.
"After I put all the keys on the chain, I just stared at it and I was like, dang these are my keys," Middleton said. "I mean, I’ve had that before, but it just means a whole lot more. I was just staring at those keys and I was like, ‘wow.’ It’s been a long road and I’m very appreciative of the people who helped me. It’s just a great feeling, it really is."
The ladies of the VFW Auxiliary Veness Strollo Post #1602 in Batavia were among those who helped Middleton get to this point, which comes after years of struggling with addiction, in and out of rehab programs, until he was finally brought to one that is making a difference.
One of the key benefits of the program, Middleton said that at the end of it, counselors make sure patients don't go back to the same community and the same life and same associates they were mired in before.
"Let’s be honest, we all do rehab really well," Middleton said. "We all go in and make these promises we’re going to do better, we’re going to do this and we’re going to do that, but then when it’s time to leave, we really didn’t have the resources, so basically we got threw back into that environment that we came from. Excuse my French, but snowballs stand a better chance in hell with that situation. But here, it gives you an opportunity to change everything, even your environment. I think that’s more important than anything, those resources and employment are more important than anything."
Middleton, originally from Cross, S.C., and most recently a resident of Durham, N.C., is getting a fresh start in Batavia.
He thinks that's wonderful.
"By the time this program came, it saved my life," Middleton said. "That’s really all I can say. It saved my life because I was thinking crazy, I was doing irrational things and, well, I ended up in the psych ward at the Durham VA. That was the beginning that put me on this road right here and I’ve been blessed to be on this road for so long, Thank God. I’ve been seeing all of these wonderful things that are happening to me now."
The VFW Auxillary is providing many of the necessities Middleton will need to get a good start in his new apartment. They've purchased for him, as they do many other veterans who have been through Cazenovia, a coffee pot, pots, pans, dishes, silverware, dishpans, a strainer, utensils, kitchen trash can, cleaning products, dish towels, oven mitts and potholders, sheets, blankets, a shower curtain, curtain rings, a wastebasket, toilet brush, plunger, towels, toothpaste, toothbrush, floss, shaving products, alcohol-free mouthwash, curtains and furniture.
They ladies buy all that for multiple veterans with funds raised from Buddy Poppy sales, social events and raffles.
Middleton joined the Army when he was 17 and served four years. His problems, he said, started when he got out. He struggled with drugs and homelessness off and on, though he also had times of stability, but hit rock bottom in Durham.
"When I got here at first started learning about myself, it wasn’t a pretty picture at all," Middleton said. "It was kind of ugly, to be honest, but the more I stayed the course, the more it just was so obvious that if I didn’t want to die in my addiction, I knew that I had to change. I just had to get down and dirty and do it.
"This program has meant a lot to me," he added.
Photo: Pictured with Middleton are Jean Dolph, Daphne Cross and Judy Cooper, of the VFW Auxiliary Veness Strollo Post #1602.
In keeping with his plea deal, David O'Connor, 55, was sentenced to 12-and-a-half years in state prision for using .22-caliber rifle to shoot out the window of a deputy's patrol car while the deputy was sitting in it during a traffic stop in Byron.
O'Connor's appearance in County Court was brief. Other than telling Interim Judge Michael Pietruszka, "No thank you, your honor," when asked if he'd like to make a statement, O'Connor said nothing.
If the case had gone to trial, O'Connor could have been looking at a 40-year-to-life sentence, if the jury had convicted him.
"On the other hand, if he had only been convicted of reckless endangerment first (degree), the maximum would have been seven years," said District Attorney Lawrence Friedman.
The plea deal also includes five years post-release supervision.
Outside of court, Friedman said O'Connor had been drinking the day of the shooting and that he made some anti-law enforcement remarks when deputies entered his room on the second floor of the Byron Hotel.
O'Connor reportedly told authorities that he had been aiming at the tires of the patrol vehicle while Deputy Andrew Hale sat in it.
This case is one of a few recently with weapons involved, where local law enforcement has exercised restraint in the face of potential dire consequences. In this case, after Hale's window was shot out, the only thing officers knew at first was that there was a man on the second floor of a building with a rifle. Yet, they managed to take him into custody without more gun fire.
"I'm glad to say that in this county, we've had a number of incidents where the police have shown admirable and appropriate restraint in situations like that," Friedman said.
Lang had a good life, as he sees it. He was running a successful cab company, making good money, and then he wanted to expand his entrepreneurial horizons.
He thought there might be a place in Batavia for a head shop with a tattoo and piercing parlor attached. He called it The Laughing Budda.
Good name. Bad business.
"I opened the smoke shop and that was like the worse mistake of my life," Lang said. " I opened that because at the time, I was bored. The cab company at its peak and I wanted to find something new. As an entrepreneur, I was always thinking of different ideas so I thought of a tattoo, piercing and smoke shop and then the troubles that came with that business took me out of reality.
"It’s just a big regret," he added, "...If I could go back in time, I would have put more into the cab company instead of choosing another business."
Lang said he didn't start using drugs, specifically bath salts, until after law enforcement raided his shop and seized much of his inventory.
The seizure cost him more than $200,000, he said, and brought him to the brink of financial ruin.
He became depressed, he said.
Authorities had seized much of the synthetic drugs stored in his shop, but they didn't get all of it. The inventory he had left over, he started using.
This was the spring of 2012, when news was starting to spread across the country of people doing bizarre things while reportedly high on a form of synthetic drugs known as bath salts.
By the summer, the strange behavior had spread to Batavia, with people climbing on roofs, getting into odd confrontations, causing trouble in the emergency room at UMMC, and Lang himself calling police with reports of gunshots at a local hotel (it didn't happen, and he was arrested for making a false report) and weaving tales of elaborate conspiracy theories.
"I just lost my mind," Lang said. "I was acting completely crazy. I had no concept of reality. I thought all these strange, crazy things were going on. I kept having run-ins with law enforcement and I got placed under mental arrest. It was just insane."
Lang knows he contributed to the rise of bath salt usage in Genesee County, and he now regrets it and apologizes to the community for it. But about the time his shop was closed, the 420 Emporium opened at 400 Ellicott St. The insanity continued until federal, state and local authorities raided that shop and another of the chain's locations in Brockport and Fulton as part of a nationwide operation to rein in bath salt distribution.
At first, the Laughing Buddha was much like any other head shop that had existed for decades. It sold paraphernalia, such as glass pipes, that technically had legitimate uses other than the consumption of illicit drugs, and the shop also offered tattoos and piercings, but in the process of building his business, Lang attended conventions in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. Distributors there were pushing products such as K2, Spice (synthetic marijuana) and Amp, among other products generally known as "bath salts" that were said to mimic harder drugs, such as cocaine.
"They were really pushing it on the smoke shops saying, ‘it’s legal. It’s nothing to worry about,'" Lang said. "They said there were these huge profits involved."
So, Lang stocked up. The packets were available under glass at his front counter. The law at the time was a bit more ambiguous. The federal law dealing with what are called analogues was considered hard to enforce and Lang's shop wasn't raided until after state health officials determined the drugs violated health and safety standards.
At the time, Lang said then and admits now, he didn't think the drugs were a big deal and back then he defended his business practices.
"At the time I was like, ‘I don’t care. It’s their choice,’ " Lang said. "If somebody wants to do any drug, that’s their choice. That’s the outlook I had on it. Now, that I’ve been on the other side of the fence and addicted to drugs, I would never open a business like that again or sell drugs, or be involved with anything like that, because now I know firsthand what it does to people. I was naive to that before."
Lang's fall was probably as complete as they come.
According to Lang, by 2012, seven years after starting Batavia Cab, he was doing pretty well, pulling in $5,000 to $6,000 a week and by his own admission, feeling pretty cocky. He thought he had it good.
Before the year was out, he would have spent his first night in jail, had his name spread through the media from Rochester to Buffalo and be on the verge of losing his cab operation -- he did eventually sell it in 2013, and it is still in operation, with its third owner.
Criminal prosecution led to a chance at rehab, and through rehab, Lang met heroin.
"It was a big relief when I first started doing heroin because it took away all the paranoia and it got me away from the bath salts," said Lang, explaining the opiate's initial allure.
Of course, with heroin, once addicted -- and it's highly addictive -- the high you chase is elusive yet it's hard to function without the drug in your system. You need the drug just to feel normal (according to medical literature).
It didn't take long for heroin to wipe out what little money Lang had left and then he turned to shoplifiting. He was arrested in multiple jurisdictions, including as far away as Hamburg and Victor.
"I was even homeless at one point, which was a huge turnaround for me because just years prior I was vacationing all over with my family and staying in nice hotels, and then I’m homeless in Rochester and I’m a heroin addict," Lang said.
He was eventually arrested on felonies in Orleans and Ontario counties, which led to a prison term.
Prison included three months of 23-hours-a-day locked by himself in a cell. That gave him a lot of time to think, he said.
"I wasn’t using drugs and in those moments of clarity I could think about everything," Lang said. "That's all you could do is sit and think all day. I realized I really screwed up. I decided to just get through the prison time. I choose not to use drugs in prison, and there are tons of drugs in prison, and I stayed clean the whole time I was in there. Because of that, they sent me to shock camp where I became a squad leader for my platoon. I really excelled through all of that and I just decided I wanted to get back to the old me."
Once home, his son, Lathan, started pushing him to get back into the cab business. Lang said Lathan is already bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and helped him plan his return.
Lathan even came up with the name for the new cab company, Grab-A-Cab.
Lang had already determined he wanted to stay away from a name with a regional identification. He felt calling his previous cab company, Batavia Cab, limited its growth potential. It made it hard to expand into other counties.
"I liked that name," Lang said of Grab-A-Cab. "It seemed kind of modern and trendy and I thought it would be a good name that would go with expanding the business and developing an app."
Lang admits to having big plans. The new cab company should launch soon. He's got one cab painted and decaled and ready to go and he's hired six drivers and plans to add a second cab to his fleet as soon as he can. And, yes, he hopes to build an app for cabbies. He said it will borrow ideas from Uber, which can't legally operate in Upstate, but for licensed and properly insured hacks.
"I miss the cab business," Lang said. "I love driving. I love meeting people, talking with people, knowing people, knowing other business owners. I miss it."
He thinks Batavia is still a wide open market and he's heard from friends and family and former customers who say the cab business in Batavia hasn't been the same since he got out of it. He said he's already lined up several transportation contracts, so he'll get off to a good start.
But he knows to keep it going, he's got to stay clean, and that means not associating with the people he did back when he was hooked on narcotics.
"I don’t talk to anybody who is involved in selling drugs or using drugs," Lang said. "I stay away from all of that now. I’ve got a lot of clean time now and I just want to do good. I know I have the potential to do good and I have good ideas. I learned a big lesson from everything."
If he does good, he thinks both his example, the money he earns and the business he's able to build, will enable him to be in a position to help other addicts.
He's gone from a guy who thought drugs were just a recreational activity that only losers couldn't handle to somebody who now understands drugs can grab ahold of anybody and change their lives in horrible ways.
"I met people who have been using drugs since their teenage years and they don’t have any faith that there is any better life out there," Lang said. "They just keep relapsing and they just think there is nothing better. I want to prove to people that you can pull it together.
"I know people just look at addicts like scum of the earth," Lang added. "They're really not. There are a lot of really great people I’ve met in rehabs. A lot of people I met in prison, even though they may keep relapsing, going back to it, they don’t want that life. They don't want to be shoplifting and they don’t want to be committing whatever crimes they’re doing. They just have a really bad addiction that keeps leading them back to that."
He'd like to start a program for people who need a hand up, out of addiction.
"I'd like to help people who don't have entrepreneurial skills because nobody is going to give them a fair shot," Lang said. "There’s not a hot of help out there for people like that. Maybe I can help them with some other business venture, or help guys that need employment and need guidance and help them out because there's nobody who cares about them."
After graduating 15 seniors, Notre Dame's starting varsity will feature a lot of new faces, but Head Coach Rick Mancuso says his players are working hard and will be ready for Thursday's season-opening kickoff at Alexander.
"We have a good group of kids," Mancuso said. "We’re really happy with the effort. We just came off our scrimmage the other day. We’ve got a lot of stuff to clean up, but the effort that they’re putting in is good."
Brendan Klotzbach takes over at QB and a trio of players -- Jordan Weatherwax, Jake Weatherwax and Cam Clark -- will rotate through the backfield.
The offensive and defensive lines are strong.
"We're down in numbers, but what we have is quality," Mancuso said. "We’ve got lot of growing pains to get through to get up to speed as quick as we can."
About 3,900 pairs of shoes are rolling down a highway tonight in the back of a semi-trailer bound for Louisiana.
The shoes are being donated to flood victims in the Baton Rouge area by p.w. minor.
CEO Pete Zeliff said he decided to make the donation just as a way to give back.
"Nothing more than that," he said.
"We partnered with a program called Soles for Souls through the National Shoe Retailers Association," Zeliff said. "They paid to send the truck and pay the freight and we specified that they go to Louisiana."
Most of the shoes on the 27 pallets loaded onto the truck this afternoon were manufactured in China and were being sold as closeouts, but Zeliff said he decided it would be better to donate them to flood victims.
Over the past several months, p.w. minor has moved production out of China with the goal of making all of the company's shoes in Batavia.
"We'll be making 500 pair a day by the end of this year and 1,000 pair a day by next August," Zeliff said.
Much of the ramp-up in production is made possible by a bevy of new machines that automate much of the shoe production process.
Zeliff said with a robot and another automated machine in place, the plant is already 20-percent automated. Nine more machines arrived within the past week and are being put into service.
The jobs of one of the machines in production can perform is to rough up the leather on the shoe so the glue binds better when the sole is attached.
"We went from five minutes to rough a pair of shoes to last week to Denise did a six-pair rack in 40 seconds," Zeliff said.
It's been his goal to move all of the company's shoe production back to Batavia since he and a partner rescued the business just before it was shut down, but the process has taken longer than expected.
"It will take three years from the time we invested in the assets of this company," Zeliff said. "It’s not as quick as I would have liked it to have been, but it’s still a pretty good accomplishment, I feel."
Below, photo provided by Pete Zeliff of his granddaughter, Nicole, with a country star Keith Urban and his band new pair of p.w. minor shoes. Zeliff took his family to see Urban at his show in Camden, N.J.
A car has reportedly hit a tree at East Road and Raymond Road, Bethany.
The driver was able to get out of the vehicle and has a complaint of chest pain.
Bethany fire and Mercy EMS responding.
In five years of covering concerts at Frostridge, there are four shows I'm sure I'll always remember: Marty Stuart in 2011, which was my introduction to Jam at the Ridge, The Farm, featuring Alexander native Krista Marie, the time Blackjack Billy upstaged the night's headliner, Blackberry Smoke, that same year, and finally, Blackjack Billy's return to Le Roy last night.
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