What’s your vision for downtown Rochester? Some of the candidates we’ve talked with this summer have brought up that issue, and it’s a good time to talk about it. What do we want for this essential part of the city? Rochester’s downtown has changed dramatically over the past several decades, and it’ll likely never again […]
Mary Anna Towler
Mary Anna Towler is a transplant from the Southern Appalachians and is editor, co-publisher, and co-founder of City. She is happy to have converted a shy but opinionated childhood into an adult job. She credits a grandfather for instilling in her a love of politics. And she makes no apology for her liberal views.
Posted inNews & Opinion
Which side are you on? Trump, morality, and us
Racial, ethnic, and religious hatred in this country aren’t new. They predate the founding of the nation. So Donald Trump didn’t create the sentiments that the white supremacists and racists and anti-Semites spewed out in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 11 and 12. But he embraced those sentiments and the people who marched with torches and shields […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
People of color much worse off here, report says
African Americans and Latinx in the nine-county Greater Rochester area are more than three times as likely to be poor as whites are. The median household income for African Americans is less than half that of whites, and the statistic is only slightly better for Latinx. Whites are more than twice as likely to own […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The city should do an ‘arts impact’ study
City Council’s big, ornate Chambers in City Hall was packed last week with people concerned about the future of the key downtown piece of real estate known as Parcel 5. Mayor Lovely Warren has chosen a combination of a new theater for the Rochester Broadway Theatre League and an apartment building created by Morgan Communities. […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The hate that Trump bred
“Make America white again” signs. “Jews will not replace us” chants. Nazi flags. Torches and Nazi salutes. The predictable horror spawned by Donald Trump finally erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend in the white nationalists’ Unite the Right rally. The reaction of the president? To wag his finger at the resulting violence, which he […]
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Tensions build over a new RBTL theater
In April, Mayor Lovely Warren announced that she had chosen RBTL and Morgan Communities to develop Parcel 5, a key part of the former Midtown Plaza site. City Council has to approve sale of the land, and the mayor hasn’t sent Council a request for that sale. Warren’s choice was controversial from the beginning, because […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
How to reduce poverty: Boost workers’ wages
The statistics shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us; many of them have been in earlier reports. But still, the numbers are staggering. And so are the rankings those numbers put us in. Rochester is the fourth poorest city among the 75 largest metro areas in the country. We have the third-highest concentration of […]
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Trump’s transgender ban: Another time to resist
The big news out of Washington last week was the health-care vote. But that bit of positive news shouldn’t erase another big development: Trump’s decision to ban transgender people from military service. It’s not surprising that Trump has jettisoned yet another vulnerable group. He tosses aside anybody who gets in the way of something he […]
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Finding hope, locally, in the age of Trump
A reader responding to my column last week – “The State of the Union in the Age of Trump” – concluded that I’ve abandoned hope. And in doing that, wrote Phillip Miner, I’ve failed in my responsibility to encourage readers to fight back. Actually, I haven’t abandoned hope, although I’m certainly discouraged. But I appreciate […]
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The long, long road for Cobbs Hill Village
It’s not unusual for development proposals to be controversial, and several development plans are generating a lot of heat in Rochester right now. But one of the most complex is the expansion plan for Cobbs Hill Village, a 60-year-old apartment complex for low-income senior residents. Currently, the Village consists of six one-story apartment buildings tucked […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The state of the union in the age of Trump
Day after day, the bad news spills out: During last year’s presidential campaign, the Russians not only hacked into the Democrats’ e-mail system but also proposed a meeting with Donald Trump’s son, on at least the pretext that they had incriminating evidence about Hillary Clinton. A gleeful Donald Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting, and, […]
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For Dems, a wealth of candidates
This year is a particularly significant election year for the City of Rochester, with the mayor’s office, more than half the seats on City Council, and three of the seven school board seats on the ballot. This year is also significant because of the large number of candidates: three for mayor, 13 for City Council, […]
