Tabelski proposed taking the money originally intended for Vibrant Batavia, which the council scuttled two weeks ago, on a recent joint city, county, school district and Genesee County Economic Development Center initiative called Pathway to Prosperity. 

BP2, as it's known, will take a portion of fees paid in PILOT programs (payment in lieu of taxes) by property owners with economic development projects and use it to help mitigate environment issues at brownfield properties in the city. The chicken-and-egg problem is BP2 has no money until the first new PILOT is approved, and the city's brownfield area properties need to clean up as projects come on line. 

Tabelski thought $92,000 might best be used to jump start some brownfield redevelopment.

Council members had other thoughts about what to do with the money, from building a spray park on the Southside, to payment toward the new police station, to just letting it sit in the general fund.

"We need to start thinking of the kids on the south side of the city," said Councilwoman Rosemary Christian. "We need something for the child. We're always thinking of things other than the children in our community. They're our future leaders who will up her someday making these decisions."

Tabelski countered that today's children will need tomorrow's jobs.

Some council members said they thought Tabelski's timing is off, that it was only a meeting ago that Vibrant Batavia was killed off and perhaps there should be more time taken before deciding what to do with the money.

"As for timing, the reason to bring this up now is that as time goes by, the default action is that nothing happens," Tabelski said. "I'm trying to address this in a timely manner."

Molino said a spray park on the Southside would likely cost more than $92,000, with planning, engineering, possible land acquisition and the purchase of equipment. Briggs and Christian promised to push for a spray park in the 2017 budget.

The city's deer population has been a point of discussion with the council before, and after researching the issue, City Manager Jason Molino is asking the council for direction on what to do next, how much city staff time should be spent on the issue and what approach might the city take on the topic. Council members received, as part of their agenda packet, a 50-page pamphlet on community-based deer management. There are several approaches the city could take, Molino said in his memo to council, and the best approach depends on the situation in the community and what community members will accept as an appropriate response. "There is no right answer," the memo says, based on the recommendations of the pamphlet authors.

Councilman Adam Tabelski requested an item on tonight's agenda regarding the disposition of funds previously earmarked for Vibrant Batavia, which the council decided to defund at its last meeting.  That creates a pool of $97,000 in unallocated funds. Tabelski is suggesting the money be used for the as-yet unfunded Batavia Pathway to Prosperity Capital and Reinvestment Fund. New PILOT agreements with property developers is supposed to generate funds for that program, which is intended to help mitigate clean-up of brownfield sites in the city. That creates a bit of a chicken and egg problem, because funds are needed to clean up brownfields and there's no money in the fund. "Kickstarting the BP2 fund with a significant amount of seed money will help turn an innovative approach to target economic development into reality," Tabelski wrote in his memo.

The council will also discuss changes in the funding formula for the Business Improvement District. The reduction in funding for the BID prompted its board of directors to cancel Summer in the City.

The City Council meets at 7 p.m. in City Hall.

"Vibrant Batavia got off to a bad start," said Jankowski, who voted against moving the two-year plan to the council's next business meeting. "It got a stigma, labeled, if you will, as coffee parties and ice cream socials when really it wasn't that, but unfortunately, you only have one chance to make a first impression."

Paul Viele, Kathy Briggs, Al McGinnis and Rose Mary Christian joined Jankowski in voting against the plan.

The plan would have committed $48,500 for 2016-17 and another $48,500 for the following year.

The funds would have come from money already committed in the budget for Vibrant Batavia ($25,000), another $24,000 from last year's unused appropriation, $33,000 from the sale of a foreclosed home on Walnut Street and $15,000 from a community development block grant.

Christian argued that the city has a lot of other needs and the funds would be better spent on parks, sidewalks or police gear.

Both Christian and McGinnis questioned whether Vibrant Batavia really accomplished anything its first three years of existence. 

McGinnis said that recent community action to oppose the closure of Park Road and stop a fast food restaurant on West Main Street were citizen, grassroots initiatives and didn't need Vibrant Batavia to get going. That's the American way, he said, not government-funded programs for neighborhood improvement.

"As long as we allow Vibrant Batavia to exist, it becomes a fixture and continues to grow," McGinnis said. "It becomes a mandate and it needs to stop now."

One of the accomplishments placed by some on Vibrant Batavia's resume is improvements to the Summit Street neighborhood over the past year to 18 months.

Christian said there is no way Vibrant Batavia deserves credit for that change. That was the result, she said, of citizens working with the police and code enforcement officer.

"You can't tell me that Vibrant Batavia did this," Christian said.

A short time later, Councilwoman Patti Pacino said exactly that. She said she was at the neighborhood meetings with Summit Street residents right from the beginning, and so was LeAnna DiRisio, then director of Vibrant Batavia. Pacino said Vibrant Batavia was involved every step of the way.

"The residents called LeAnna and said, 'can you help?' " Pacino said. "A couple got together and said, 'we don't have any experience and power.' She was at all of those meetings."

Pacino also rejected the notion that all Vibrant Batavia did was spend money on pizza parties.

"All this money supposedly spent on pizza and ice cream, it didn't come from the city," Pacino said. "Most of it was donated and not taken out of this money."

Pat Burk and Marty Macdonald, both Vibrant Batavia volunteers from the beginning, spoke in support of continued funding.

"People need to know that they can depend on their elected officials and their city officers to ensure that there is pride throughout the community," Burk said.

Macdonald said Vibrant Batavia existed primarily because it was backed by people willing to support it with donations and thousands of hours of volunteer work, but it still needs city backing to continue.

"There are people who believe in our community and the movement taking place," Macdonald said. "They see a vibrant Batavia rising up and they need City Council leaders who are not taking people where they want to go, but where they need to go."

When Vibrant Batavia was first conceived more than three years ago, it was the result of a study of a group of consultants who said the city needed to do more to address deteriorating neighborhoods, because decreasing home values can spiral out of control if neighborhood issues are not addressed. 

The original plan was for Vibrant Batavia to be established as a five-year project, but every year since, some council members have forced it to fight for its existence, annually calling into question whether the city should be involved in backing the initiative.

City Manager Jason Molino's plan was intended to get it through the final two years of that five-year plan and then see where to take it from there.

Last year, the council reached a compromise for one more year of funding but made it contingent on Vibrant Batavia finding another $15,000 in funding not from a city source.

Molino argued that the auction of the house on Walnut for $33,000 met the criteria. That is money being reinvested back into neighborhoods, he said.  Originally, the city wanted to donate the house to RochesterWorks!, and much like Habitat for Humanity, allow RochesterWorks! to finish the rehabilitation on it and then sell it to fund Vibrant Batavia. This clearly would have met the funding goal,  Molino said, but legal barriers prevented that plan from moving forward, so the city auctioned off the house itself.

McGinnis argued that Vibrant Batavia had failed to meet its financial obligation.

"Using the home sale money is not going to fly," McGinnis said. "It's short and simple: you failed to meet your goal and you're finished. You don't have the money, game over."

After the meeting, picking up on prior statements by Molino that Vibrant Batavia is really a committee of the city appointed by the council, just like any other committee, and other city committees aren't expected to raise their own funding, Jankowski said perhaps Vibrant Batavia should have raised an objection a year ago to the self-funding requirement.

"They should have addressed it much sooner," Jankowski said. "People kind of felt like it was a scam."

Jankowski said he's favored all along a one-year plan for Vibrant Batavia, that such a request might have a better chance of getting through the council. A one-year plan, he said, he would be more likely to support than a $96,000 two-year plan.

But he also questioned both some of the specifics of the plan rejected by the council and even whether there is that great of a need for a group like Vibrant Batavia.

One of the specific tasks of the two-year plan was to select two neighborhoods for a "curbside appeal" program where a consultant would produce artist renderings for more than 200 homes showing residents how with a little work they could improve the appearance of their houses.

"Do we really need artists renditions of people's homes?" Jankowski said. "Will people really spend money to get a nice picture of 'this is what your house could look like,' and you're like, 'I don't have $10,000 to do that kind of landscaping.' "

On the other hand, there's no reason for the city not to go back to the drawing board on neighborhood improvement efforts, whether that's called Vibrant Batavia or something else, Jankowski said.

He favors what he's seen work during his own 35-year police career. Years ago, Pat Corona (now retired) started a neighborhood policing program that had police officers knocking on residents' doors when local crimes were reported, not just to seek witnesses and warn of break-ins, but to make connections.

That evolved, he said, into the local drug task force, and instead of instant feedback, months-long investigations fell behind a necessary cloak of secrecy and people no longer had direct knowledge that problems in neighborhoods were actually being addressed.

Maybe the $33,000 from the sale of Walnut Street should be spent on sending a couple of police officers to community policing school, Jankowski said.

On the other hand, things in Batavia really aren't as bad as some people sometimes make it out to be. He remembers a floating crap game on Ellicott Street, and parking lots filled with beer-swilling men and kids drag racing on Main Street. 

"I'm not seeing that kind of activity that I saw in the beginning of my career," Jankowski said. "I mean, things were really bad. There were shootings. There were murders. Now they are fewer and farther between."

A year ago, the council made 2016-17 funding contingent on Vibrant Batavia securing $15,000 from another funding source, but the available language of the resolution seems unclear whether Vibrant Batavia must already have that funding in place or if the group of volunteers must have a plan in place for raising the money before the end of the fiscal year.

City Manager Jason Molino wasn't at the meeting last night and council members would like to hear from him and to review the minutes from a year ago to help with the interpretation of the resolution.

That said, it's a resolution, so it isn't binding. If there are five votes against Vibrant Batavia, the meaning of the resolution could be moot.

When Council President Eugene Jankowski asked council members to vote on a motion to request more information from Molino, four members -- Rosemary Christian, Kathy Briggs, Al McGinnis and Paul Viele -- all voted against even getting more information before making a decision.

Councilman Brooks Hawley was not at Monday's meeting, but it's not clear that other council members would support Vibrant Batavia if came down to a binding vote.

McGinnis likened Vibrant Batavia to socialism. He thinks the government shouldn't take the initiative on what private citizens should do.

Rosemary Christian said she was promised years ago that a spray park would be built on the Southside and she wonders whatever happened to that idea, and there are sidewalks that need repaired and police cameras that should be purchased.

"We need other things more than we need Vibrant Batavia, no ifs, ands and buts about it," she said.

Jankowski said everybody agrees that Vibrant Batavia has done good work over the past three years.

"There's no debate about it," Jankowski said. "The debate is on how to fund it. That's where the split is."

While the motion failed on the 4-4 vote, it really only takes one council member to request an item be placed on a conference agenda (it takes majority approval to place an item on a business agenda), so the council will be able to take up the issue again at the next conference meeting that Molino is able to attend.

Vibrant Batavia grew out of the City's Community Improvement Plan, approved by the council in 2012.

The plan was to undertake a series of initiatives aimed at creating stronger neighborhoods, "reenergizing the sense of pride that defined Batavia for so many years, yet which has, to a certain extent, become dormant," City Manager Jason Molino wrote in a memo to council in advance of tonight's meeting.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. at City Hall.

The proposed funding for the next two years of activities:

• $25,000 committed by council for current fiscal year
• $24,000 remaining from prior year appropriations
• $33,000 received from the auction of house at 109 Walnut St.
• $15,000 Community Development Block Grant funds from the Healthy Blocks initiative for low- and moderate-income areas.

The remaining two years of the Vibrant Batavia plan would include hiring a new coordinator, neighborhood initiatives for Summit Street, an open house with an architect on best practices for home improvements, more neighborhood initiatives in the second year, coffee talks, publication of positive stories about Batavia, a community-wide yard sale, support for neighborhood groups, and landlord and homeowner workshops.

Over the first three years of Vibrant Batavia, it received local resident and business support and more than $135,000 in donations, mostly for the Centennial celebration, and more than $50,000 in revenue from the publication "Vibrant Times."

Molino lists 15 accomplishments for Vibrant Batavia, including bringing community groups together, five coffee talks in which 50 residents attended, more than a dozen neighborhood activities, the Centennial celebration, a bike rack project, a community-wide yard sale and publication of "Vibrant Times."

There was no action taken on anything concerning Vibrant Batavia. But the issue of whether to continue funding for the 2017-18 fiscal year will need to be addressed at some point. The next city council meeting is April 18. 

Canale was asking Don and Pam Hiron, who have lived for 35 years at 137 Summit St. Don spoke in praise of the community-building initiative, heretofore coordinated by Leanne DiRisio, prior to the council meeting. DiRisio is leaving her part-time job to start a new business in the Masonic Temple Downtown next the Charles Men's Shop.

"The drug problem came first," replied Pam from the audience.

Plagued by shady goings-on and concerned about an upswing in crime in their neighborhood, the Hirons and other residents formed a concerned citizens group. Then in April 2014, they reached out to City Hall to find solutions. They were put in contact with Batavia PD and DiRisio and they worked in tandem to improve conditions.

"Leanne helped us formulate our goals and helped behind the scenes," Don said.

There were meet-and-greets, which were well attended, and included the presence of firefighters and police officers. Newcomers get gift baskets and those who live on the street get their very own specially designed keychain.

"We succeeded in shutting down several drug houses and improving the quality of life, restoring a sense of pride, regardless of age, nationality, race, religion," Don Hiron said, "and made new friends, rekindled old friendships. Was it worth the investment? Yes."

City Manager Jason Molino said Video Lottery Terminal (VLT) funds have paid for the 30-hour-per-week Community Coordinator position.

The total funding for Vibrant Batavia is about $45,000 annually, and in addition to the coordinator's salary, it covers the costs of community events and communications.

For the upcoming fiscal year, 2016-17, there's still $25,000 intact from the 2016 allocation, and Molino proposes bridging the gap by auctioning a city-owned foreclosed house at 109 Walnut St.

"It's not like a lot of foreclosed homes; it has value, it's not in bad shape," Molino said, of the three-bedroom, 1.5-bath abode, which he estimates might fetch $25,000 to $35,000.

The auction is in three weeks. If it sells for much less -- say $20,000 -- then plans for Vibrant Batavia would have to be scaled back accordingly.

But funding Vibrant Batavia in this fashion is not something to be done "year after year," Molino told the council.

"An auction is not going to produce revenue to fund this project every year," Molino said, adding that you also "can't grant fund your way through."

The job is a contractual one with Rochester-based NeighborWorks; it is not local municipal employment, but Batavia stills pays part of the contract.

Some residents have been vocal in their oppostion to public funding for Vibrant Batavia, launched in 2012 with the aim of eventually becoming self-funding.

"There was a very emotional discussion last year," Council President Eugene Jankowski said. "We need to remember the other 50 percent who aren't in favor of funding it."

He said groups like the Lions Club or Kiwanis Club do good works in the community with volunteers and private donations, without taxpayers' money.

Molino said Vibrant Batavia is not correctly characterized as "a service club initiative."

"It's a policy choice," Molino said, that some people would make because they believe over the course of time it strengthens neighborhoods and adds market value to properties.

"However you see fit to proceed as a group is up to you," Molino said, noting that the previous resolution authorizing funding is not binding to the current council.

"We will take ownership of whatever we decide to do," Jankowski assured Molino.

Councilwoman Rose Mary Christian questioned why, if Vibrant Batavia made $135,000 during 2015 as noted during DiRisio's presentation, that money can't be used to fund the coordinator's job.

Molino replied that it can't because the funds were specifically raised to pay for Centennial-related expenses -- the Time Capsule, the Sun Dial at City Hall, the Parade, commemorative coffee mugs, sweatshirts, Centennial party food and refreshments, etc.

Councilman Brooks Hawley praised DiRisio and called for a round of applause for her efforts. Likewise, Councilwoman Patti Pacino said she is so proud of what has been achieved to date, and just looking around on Bank Street, Tracy Avenue, Ross Street and State Street, for example, shows that changes for the better are being made.

"It is sparking out," Pacino said, people are painting, clipping bushes, growing flowers. "It is a growing thing that started in a small place."

Canale said he is a proponent of Vibrant Batavia and that the Summit Street model, known as a "targeted investment," is one that needs to be followed and more such groups need to be created.

Christian said she and others in the Sixth Ward tried three or four times, without success, in getting people together for events.

"This model won't work in every neighborhood," Molino said. "It's more likely to work in transitional neighborhoods that could go either way."

DiRisio said the point to remember about Summit Street is "The residents here have proven there's skin in the game. There's momentum. Why put up a wall?"

Jankowski asked staff to include the previous resolution for funding Vibrant Batavia in the next agenda packet so the council can refamiliarize themselves with it.

He said he wants constiuents to call or otherwise contact their representatives to let their wishes be known.

If your sale isn't posted, post it.

Booklets for a Self-Guided Walking Tour of Downtown Batavia are now available. The tour identifies 16 sites of historic interest between the Holland Land Office Museum on the west and the site of the former Cary Mansion on the east.

The tour was developed by City Historian Larry Barnes in conjunction with the Centennial Committee of Vibrant Batavia. Rob Dumo provided caricatures, and most of the photographs were obtained from the Genesee County History Department.

The booklets include pictures of the 16 sites and text providing historic background of each location. For individuals with smartphones, QR codes provide access to additional audio descriptions and pictures that complement the information in the printed copies of the booklets. Most people will be able to complete the tour in an hour to 90 minutes or less.

Booklets are available free of charge at the following locations: the tourist information booth on West Main Street, the Holland Land Office Museum, City Hall, the Office for the Aging, Genesee County Chamber of Commerce, and the Richmond Memorial Library.

The Centennial Committee is a part of Vibrant Batavia, a community network organized to celebrate the past, build on the present and to create a more vibrant future. The volunteers work side-by-side with the City of Batavia, NeighborWorks® Rochester, and the business community to strategically improve the City's neighborhoods and to promote a livable community of choice.

Press release:

The City of Batavia is celebrating its 100th anniversary! The Centennial Committee is planning to bury a time capsule in September; and we need the community’s help! 

Take part in the fun by writing a note to your family’s descendants or write a poem for people to read 100 years from now! Centennial notecards with envelopes will be available beginning July 1 at the Genesee Valley PennySaver, 222 E. Main St., Batavia. We encourage you to take part and contribute to the time capsule that will be opened in 2115.  

In addition to the above items, The Batavian will be conducting polls on Tuesdays beginning June 30 into the month of July, on which items will be placed in the Time Capsule. Be sure to visit The Batavian to vote on Time Capsule Tuesday!

Mary Valle and Paula Miller were at the Oak Street roundabout this morning planting flowers. The project is sponsored by Vibrant Batavia.