“Immense
and perhaps intractable”: That’s how, in his recent State of the City address, Rochester
Mayor Bill Johnson described his successor’s challenges. He could have as
easily used the words “overwhelming and perhaps impossible.”
Johnson is an optimist, though; and
perhaps he wanted to provide a bit of hope for the candidates in this year’s
campaign for mayor.
Rochester, like many other cities,
is in an extremely serious position: Residents’ needs and government expenses
are rising, and the city’s tax base has been declining. In part, that decline
is due to corporate cutbacks and consolidations. Kodak, for instance, is
downsizing not only its work force but also the number of buildings it operates
in Rochester.
Twenty years ago, said Johnson, “at
least 33 major financial institutions were located around the Four Corners
intersection of downtown.” Today “only a handful are left,” he said. “Lincoln
First, Bankers Trust, Central Trust, Chemical Bank, First Federal,
Manufacturers Hanover, Monroe Savings, Columbia Savings, Goldome — these and
many more are now gone. As the banking industry consolidated nationwide,
operations were moved out of Rochester, leaving many vacant downtown offices
and buildings.”
“A big challenge, then,” said
Johnson, “is the city’s shrinking revenues from commercial properties. As
businesses pay a smaller share of taxes, an inordinate amount of pressure is
placed on city homeowners.”
And many of those property owners
— homeowners as well as landlords who rent to low-income residents — can
not afford higher taxes. “An estimated 62 percent of city residents earn at or
below the minimum amount necessary to support a working family,” Johnson said.
“These are people who truly can’t afford to pay more taxes for basic public
services.” Nor, he said, can they go without those services.
“I’m not talking about people who are
trying to bilk the system,” said Johnson. “I’m talking about the working poor
and poor children.”
Another factor in the city’s
crisis is suburban sprawl. Thousands of homeowners have left the city, sometimes
for other regions of the country, sometimes simply for Rochester’s suburbs.
Left behind: thousands of poor people who, because of the lack of affordable
housing and transportation in the suburbs, are literally confined to the city.
As a result, Rochester has become, as Johnson put it, the “warehouse” for the
entire region’s poor.
“Not even Martin Luther King,” said
Johnson, “foresaw the extreme racial and economic segregation of metro areas
like Rochester 40 years after the Civil Rights laws went into effect —
prosperous, mostly Caucasian suburbs surrounding a poor, mostly minority city.”
Rochester’s tax base has begun to
grow, said Johnson, “but not nearly enough to offset the nearly $900 million
loss of the previous 10 years.”
Compounding the
city’s problems is the huge amount of tax-exempt property in the city: 30 percent, far
more than any of the city’s suburbs. The University of Rochester, county and
federal offices, hospitals, museums, entertainment venues like the Eastman
Theatre and the Blue Cross Arena: All serve residents throughout the Greater
Rochester area. But city taxpayers provide the police and fire protection for
those facilities. City taxpayers maintain many of the roads that non-city
residents use to get to those facilities. And city taxpayers pay higher
property taxes to make up for the taxes those facilities don’t pay.
The city has made progress
strengthening neighborhoods and attracting new businesses and residents
downtown, but state and federal budget cuts are working against those efforts.
• Every day brings new reports of
Bush administration attacks on programs that help the poor and their
communities. Johnson noted that the administration wants to cut funding for
housing vouchers — crucial assistance that helps poor families live in decent
housing. The administration wants to cut funding for home heating assistance,
police, and brownfield clean-up. It wants to reduce funding for the Community
Development Block Grant program, which Rochester has used successfully to redevelop
downtown, improve neighborhoods, and help low-income homeowners repair their
homes. Some Senate Republicans are recommending cutting food-stamp funds.
• For 20 years, New York State has
refused to abide by a state law that spells out how much aid cities are to
receive. If the state had done what the law requires, said Johnson, Rochester
would have gotten $140 million more in state aid this fiscal year alone.
Meanwhile, Johnson noted, the state has cut taxes by $67.3 billion in the past
seven years.
• The state aid that Rochester has
received has been less, per capita, than the aid for Buffalo and Syracuse.
• Monroe County, which until
recently had been cutting its tax rate as county property values rose, has its
own budget problems, and it has been cutting the amount of aid it gives the
city.
Rochester has
had difficult times lately. And in all likelihood, its most trying periods are
still ahead. In his State of the City address, Johnson warned against easy
promises. “Grandiose promises are the essence of political campaigns,” he said,
“offering what is neither prudent nor affordable.”
Johnson’s State of the City was a
sobering address. At last week’s candidate forum, several of the men who want
to succeed Johnson spoke optimistically about Rochester’s ability to achieve
greatness. But optimism isn’t enough. Nor is simplistic criticism.
As this campaign begins, voters
should be on guard, watching out, as Johnson said, for “promises that cannot be
redeemed.”
This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2005.
