You’re a victim of domestic violence and you’ve finally decided to get help. You need to get out. Now. You contact the Monroe County Department of Human and Health Services and you and your children are sent to… the Cadillac Hotel?! “That place is horrible. That’s the last place you want to send a […]
Christine Carrie Fien
I'm City's news editor, which means I oversee all aspects of our news-gathering operation. I also sneak in to an occasional City Council meeting and cover Rochester's intriguing and eclectic neighbors. My family has a long legacy here, and I'm proud to continue to represent.
Posted inNews & Opinion
Wound-lickers need not apply
Coming up on her one-year anniversary as Democratic Party chair, you might not think Molly Clifford has much to celebrate. Look no further that this year’s county executive race, where Democratic candidate Bill Johnson lost to Republican Maggie Brooks by nearly a 2 to 1 margin. The results, Clifford says, were surprising because polls […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Top secret: Monroe County budget
I’d say the county budget process this year reads like a dime-store novel, but that wouldn’t be fair. It has more literary merit than that. And there is so much more at stake. There’s pathos aplenty, to be sure. See the throngs of desperate people who’ve been turning up at lej meetings, alternately begging […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Partial truths
The ban on so-called partial-birth abortion is all talk and no teeth. And it has created a weird middle ground in an otherwise polarizing debate. “The devil himself would have signed this bill,” says the Rev. Flip Benham, national director of Operation Save America/Operation Rescue. “This piece of legislation will not save the life […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Dumping on the city
So much for that city-county romance we were promised post election. The county legislature may vote this week on a $972 million budget proposal. Republican county legislators say they are running out of options to close a $42 million chasm in the 2004 budget. The sales tax increase proposed by Jack Doyle is dead […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Health scare: So long, school nurses?
It seems exactly backwards: guaranteed medical care for suburban school kids, but none for city kids, where the need is greatest. “Sometimes, they’re [school nurses] the primary health-care provider for our kids,” says city schools spokesperson Barbara Jarzyniecki. The county health department administers the city’s school-nurse program. It has done so since it […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Goodbye, to that old black magic
We hold these truths to be self-evident: 1) You can’t cut taxes and maintain the same level of services; and 2) Even acknowledging the truth of the first, people will punish the candidate who says tax increases are a possibility. But Bill Johnson’s not the only person who says Monroe County might have to raise […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Sizing up the battle for school board
There are 10 candidates running for four open seats on the Rochester School Board this year. Four Democrats will face off against four Republicans, an Independence candidate, and a candidate running on the Working Families line. The Democrats — Malik Evans, David Perez, Willa Powell, and Shirley Thompson — were profiled in City Newspaper‘s […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The great race: Maggie Brooks vs. Bill Johnson
Read more about “The great race” in the News Articles section here This year’s campaign for county executive is a crucial one. Monroe County is faced with major budget problems, a weak economy, loss of manufacturing jobs, small population growth, and a decline in the population of young adults. Because current County Executive Jack […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Bill Johnson
William A. Johnson Jr. was elected 64th mayor of the City of Rochester in November 1993. He was re-elected without opposition in November 1997 and won a third term in November 2001. Under Johnson’s leadership, the City of Rochester has initiated a variety of innovative programs, including the Neighbors Building Neighborhoods Program (considered a […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Maggie Brooks
Maggie Brooks was appointed county clerk by Governor George Pataki in April 1997. She won a full four-year term later that year and was reelected in 2001. As county clerk, Brooks oversees a $54 million a year operation that includes the county’s downtown lands records office, which handles legal recordings and filings, along with […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Sleight of hand
It’s not so much a feeling of desperation; that implies a certain quickness — a racing, clinging quality. No, the mood in the St. Paul waiting area is slower, somehow. Men sleep. People wander in and out, checking the jobs-posting boards — nearly empty at 3:30 p.m. on this particular Friday — and to […]
