Take a Chance

SWF seeks midsized city with high hopes and little logic for a short-term and very expensive rebound relationship. You are a hopeless romantic and very optimistic; you like to take risks and aren’t afraid to lavish money on me. It’s OK if you’re boring, as long as your neighbors aren’t. I’m an Australian cutie, a 284-foot, 1400-ton lady of the sea. I’m high maintenance, I carry a lot of baggage, and I’m not afraid to break down. I’m spontaneous and a little fickle. I travel a lot. Fired from my last job and a little in debt — looking to relocate. If you’re waiting for your ship to come in, call me.

School Board fill-up

The Rochester School Board may act as early as this week to
fill the vacancy left by Darryl Porter’s move to City Hall. By last Friday, the
deadline for submitting applications, at least nine people had expressed
interest in being appointed to the seat.

Among them: long-time board member Rob Brown, who retired from the board when his term ended in
December. Brown did not seek re-election last fall.

The new board member will serve through December and will
have to run for a full term in a special election in November. Ink wasn’t able to reach Brown early
this week, but board president Domingo Garcia says Brown indicated that he was
interested in serving only through the end of the year.

Among others who sent in letters of interest: Penfield
teacher Jeff Henley, who narrowly
lost the Democratic nomination in the September primary, and community activist
and frequent district critic Howard
Eagle, who is also a teacher in the district.

The board’s next meeting is January 19, and Garcia has
called a special session an hour earlier to review the applicants. The
successful candidate will need votes from four of the seven board members. If
no one gets the four votes and the vacancy goes beyond 30 days — which will
be February 2 — Garcia can make the appointment himself, says district
counsel Michael Looby.

In filling the vacancy, the board could face a touchy issue:
race. Some of the candidates, including Brown and Henley, are white. Others,
including Eagle, are African American. A political action group called Rochester’s
Citizens for Real Education — which is supporting Eagle — says the seat
should be filled by an African American because Porter is African American.
Rochelle Coley, a spokesperson for the group, says the board set a precedent
when it appointed Garcia to succeed another Hispanic. And when Joanne Guiffrida left to join the district’s administrative staff,
the seat was filled by another white female, Willa Powell, notes Coley.

Eagle says if he isn’t appointed to the board now, he’ll run
for the seat in the November special election. But Eagle’s first problem may be
his employment with the district. He insists that it isn’t a conflict of
interest, but Looby says the state law is clear on
the subject.

“The general rule is you can’t have two offices of
employment in the same organization,” says Looby.
“You can’t be your boss and your employer at the same time.” Eagle can seek the
School Board seat, he says, but if he gets it, he’ll have to resign from his
teaching post with the district.

CofU hearings on hold

Mayor Bob Duffy announced last week that he’ll evaluate a
controversial licensing program for small businesses. Simultaneously, officials
suspended hearings of business owners who have refused to pay the $100
licensing fee. The fee is part of the city’s Certificate of Use program, which also requires business owners to
submit to background checks and inspections.

Neighborhood Empowerment Team Director Molly Clifford says
that hearings were required of people who had failed to comply with the CofU requirements. Business owners who refused to pay the
licensing fee have been incurring fines — the largest, so far, now at $2,850,
says Clifford. It’s premature, she says, to comment on whether fines will be
reduced or waived.

Clifford says
the hearings suspension doesn’t foreshadow the CofU’s
demise. The challenge, she says, is to create a more equitable policy. More
immediately, Clifford says, she and her staff have to determine how to appease
irate business owners without rewarding them for noncompliance.

Movin’ in

They’ve moved into City Hall. Now they face another move.
Top city officials are required to live
in the city, and that rule affects at least three people in the Duffy
administration: Deputy Mayor Patty Malgieri,
Neighborhood Empowerment Team Director Molly Clifford, and Environmental
Services Commissioner Paul Holahan. All must move in
by July 1.

Malgieri, whose home of 18 years
is just one street outside the city, isn’t complaining. “We’re actually very
excited about it. We don’t have any restrictions, because it’s just my husband
and me,” says Malgieri, whose two children are in
college. She and her husband, attorney Patrick Malgieri,
have decided to “look at every neighborhood,” she says.

Holahan, who was in the process of
selling before his appointment, has already found a buyer for his Greece
home.

Meshing with metal

Since September, Montage Grille owner Tim Miller has shared ownership of his
downtown club with metal musicians Jack and Brock Thrasher. And the combination
has breathed new life into the joint.

Now operating under the name Montage
Live and MontageMusic Hall,
the club features national and local metal and hard-rock acts on weekends. This
has added to the club’s already eclectic line up of roots rock, jazz, blues,
funk, rock ‘n’ roll. So you’ve got folks like singer-songwriter Loudon
Wainwright III one night and heavy-hitting hardcore like Inherence the next.
The audiences may not overlap, but Miller says the addition of metal to the mix
has been great for business.

This article appears in Jan 18-24, 2006.