There’s
good news in the battle for local access to the public-media news program Democracy
Now! (see “Democracy… later?” City
Newspaper, June 9-15, 2004).

You
can still listen to the show over the Internet — or you can watch it. Since
the first of the year, the television version of the daily program has been
aired on local cable access TV. So you can hear journalists Amy Goodman and
Juan Gonzalez and their off-the-beaten-path interviews — and see them, too.

Both
Rochester Community TV (cable channel 15 in the city of Rochester) and Cable 15
West (cable channel 15 in the city’s western suburbs) air Democracy Now! weekdays at 12 p.m. The show is aired as part of
programming provided by Free Speech TV, a progressive national television
channel.

Through
the garden gate

Many
locals are complaining about the soggy summer — and the folks at
Canandaigua’s Sonnenberg Mansion and
Gardens have good reason to chime in.

Sonnenberg’s
attendance this year is down 17 percent, which staff chalk up to the season’s
rainout. It is also the second year that Sonnenberg will end its season under
the cloud of foreclosure. Sonnenberg is in talks with the New York State Parks
and Recreation Department to try to get state park status (and state funding).

“We’re
basically in a state of foreclosure,” says Tracy Kather, public relations
intern at Sonnenberg, “and the talks with the state are keeping us open. We’re
open for the season, we’re hanging in there at this point.”

Sonnenberg’s
financial slog started two years ago, when the museum’s then-CEO was found
guilty of embezzling $600,000. The money couldn’t be recovered.

Kather
says the museum has not accumulated more debt, but that “all of the money we
get basically goes to operation costs.”

A further obstacle: Sonnenberg has a
paid staff of only 18 (three horticultural staffers are in charge of the
50-acre estate), meaning that the museum rests heavily on volunteer work hours.
The 1887 mansion and the elaborate planned gardens need constant attention.
Sonnenberg’s gardens will close for the season October 11.

Fair-weather
advertising

Remember
Rochester Made For Living? When men
in sunglasses played trumpets, couples snuggled, and kids ate ice cream? A
marketing blitz aimed at overcoming Rochester’s negative self-image,
particularly over the climate, Made for Living’s radio, TV, and billboard
advertising is now in a resting period.

The
campaign “ebbs and flows,” says Craig Curran, president of De Prez Group of
Travel Companies and chairman of the Greater Rochester Visitors Association
Board. “It’s making substantial progress. It’s a brand that we intend should be
fairly long-lived.”

The
$2 million-a-year campaign, a project of the Greater Rochester Visitors
Association, Greater Rochester Enterprise, and the county, is now in its second
stage. After a sweep of radio, television, and billboard advertising aimed at
local residents, now local businesses are being encouraged to adopt the logo
and tagline into their own marketing materials.

“We’d
like them to adopt this brand as their own, we’d like to see these folks tie in
with Made For Living — which we feel we can quantify, we can prove is a valid
statement — and integrate it into their products or services,” Curran says.

One
example is WHAM’s program called “Ready, Set, Grow,” which is built around the
Made For Living theme, Curran says. Advertisers on the program use half their
spot to talk about their company and the other half to talk about why Rochester
is Made For Living. “So goes the community, so goes their business,” Curran
says. “They understand that.”

Next
up: the arts and cultural community. “We are working with larger cultural
institutions in the community,” Curran says, “and we are asking them to
contribute a portion of their marketing budgets to Made For Living, to pool our
arts and cultural resources, compound our monies, and validate Rochester as a
destination.”

“Our
strongest sales force is ourselves,” Curran says. “And our biggest challenge is
our own sales force, which has such a negative self-image.”

Once
Rochester’s self-image has been scoured and the community has adopted the brand
as its own, the focus will turn outward to attract visitors, re-locators, even
businesses. The campaign will have an approximately 300-mile radius, what
Curran calls the “windshield-wiper crowd.”

Success
can be hard to gauge. A telephone survey done in June last year found that more
50 percent of city residents had noticed the ads. But whether or not they are
passing on the message — or what the impact of that might be — was not
determined.

Politics,
schmolitics!

Will
moving the budget submission date from October to November take politics out of
the county budget process?

County
Democrats don’t think so. “It takes the accountability out,” said Minority
Leader Stephanie Aldersley at a recent press conference. A group of Democratic
candidates for the lej called the conference to emphasize their opposition to
the proposal, which is slated to go before county lawmakers September 14.

In
an apparent role-reversal of typical politics, the Democrats are going after
their Republican counterparts over the possibility of higher taxes. The
proposal was included in a series of recommendations from County Executive
Maggie Brooks’ Budget Advisory Team, which Democrats term “a collection of tax
increases and service cuts.” They say the idea of moving the budget submission
date was added to keep Republicans from paying the political price for adopting
the report’s recommendations. Furthermore, by holding both the hearing and vote
on September 14, the candidates charged, the Republican majority aims to stifle
opposition and public input.

On
Tuesday, August 24, the Democrats unveiled a website attacking the proposal,
and gathering signatures on a petition against it. The site —
www.citizensforopengovernment.org — is the work of an anonymous donor, says
Aldersley, adding the donor has no connection to the county or to local labor
organizations. “He’s just a good government guy who can’t donate money so this
is how he stays involved,” Aldersley says. Democrats hope to garner at least
several hundred signatures countywide through the site. “If I had even 20
signatures on a petition in my legislative district, I’d sit up and notice,”
Aldersley says.

And
the Dems don’t plan to stay quiet about the issue. David Thiel, a legislature
candidate in the 11th district (East Rochester and Perinton) tipped the party’s
hand at last week’s press conference: “If you really want accountability, have
a publicly elected [county] comptroller,” he said. That challenge was already
issued in the “Democratic Agenda for Fiscal Responsibility,” but party
officials confirm plans to renew the call for such a position soon.

Korner
comeback

Sometimes
the good guys do win. Monty’s Korner (the only bar in the East-Alexander area that doesn’t seem like every other bar
in the East-Alexander area) is back, baby.

Amidst
allegations of corporate fraud, The Korner closed in late spring and a legal
battle ensued between partners. Through diligent legal work, faithful
employees, and fundraising done by area bands, Monty’s Korner will celebrate
its grand re-opening Wednesday, September 1. Cheers.

DMV
dreaming

Monroe
County is taking a “what-will-be-will-be” attitude toward attracting a
state-run downtown Department of Motor
Vehicles branch.

County
Executive Maggie Brooks supports such a branch, but has done all she plans to
for now, says a county spokesman. “If the state wants to reopen [a DMV office]
in downtown, she’s supportive of it,” says County Communications Director Larry
Staub. Money for the office was included in the state budget, but Staub says
“it doesn’t seem to be a high priority for the state DMV, because they had the
money last year and didn’t use it.”

Is
the county doing anything to encourage the release of those funds? Not really,
Staub says. “You have to pick your battles and what you’re going to spend your
time lobbying on,” he says. This battle is between the state legislature and
the agency, he says, not the county. “The state’s going to do what they want to
with that money,” Staub says. “In the end, the DMV has the right to spend it or
not spend it.”

Besides,
he adds, the county’s mobile DMV units serve people around the county —
including city residents when it stops at City Place. “That’s meeting current
residents’ needs in the city and suburbs,” he says.

Rochester
is the only major city in New York without a state-run DMV office. In a February
2003 press release, Brooks, then acting as county clerk, reacted to the state’s
decision to close its downtown DMV office: “While any change can be
challenging, the closure of the State DMV District Office is actually good news
for taxpayers and the County Auto License Bureau,” Brooks said in the
statement.

This article appears in Aug 25-31, 2004.