The
only show of its kind between Hartford and Chicago, the Antique
Paper Show is a paper dealer’s exposition in HoneoyeFalls. For one day
each year, the village high school’s gymnasium fills with shuffling collectors
flipping through stacks of old postcards and coffee-sipping dealers chirruping
over the prices of their most treasured items. It’s like a makeshift museum,
except you can fondle anything you like.
Former
South Wedge historian, cobblestone house owner, postal-service worker, and
postcard enthusiast Josh Canfield founded the show seven years ago. “It’s
growing every year,” he says.
Canfield
owns one of the largest collections of Rochester-area postcards, thanks to a
large set he inherited 16 years ago. Much of his collection depicts the city at
the height of the industrial revolution, from roughly 1890 to 1920. “Rochester was a busy,
busy city,” he says.
One
of Canfield’s most valuable cards is from 1911. It’s a motorcycle rally
sponsored by “Indian Motorcycles” with the UpperFalls in the
background. “It’s one or two of a kind. Of all the other dealers I’ve spoken
with, not one has seen it. I’m not sure if there’s another one out there.”
Canfield also deals and collects rare “real photo” postcards, which are photographs
developed directly on card stock and routinely made in sets of 10 or less.
This
year at the Paper Show you’ll be able to browse through “stamps, old sports
programs, maps, sheet music, photographs, postcards, ephemera, and basically
anything made of paper,” Canfield says. “A woman called from Syracuse looking for
paper money. And yeah, we’ll have a dealer here with paper money. This is
something where people come specifically looking for paper products, they don’t
want to see glassware.”
The Paper Show
takes place on Saturday, May 21, in the Honeoye Falls-Lima Central High School
“B” Gymnasium, 20 Church Street, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., $3 (proceeds benefit
the Honeoye Falls-Mendon Historical Society). 582-1438.
—
Michael Neault
Pesticide law ok?
It
took a little while to happen, but the pesticide
notification law now appears poised for approval in the Monroe County Legislature.
The
law will require lawn-care companies who plan to spray pesticides to notify
neighbors of the property being sprayed at least 48 hours beforehand. Seven
other counties have opted into the same legislation, (Erie and Tompkins
in this part of the state), and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg signed a
similar law last week.
The
MonroeCounty bill has the
support of County Executive Maggie Brooks, but — in a rare intra-party split
— it’s opposed by a few Republican legislators.
Republican
Majority Leader Bill Smith downplays the division in his camp.
“There
are one or two members of our caucus who aren’t happy with it,” he says, “but
the overwhelming majority are behind it.”
Smith
predicts that the legislation will come to a vote at the June Lej meeting and that — despite attempts to hammer out a
compromise — the original proposal will pass.
The
legislation was probably a hotter issue than elected officials had counted on,
and some of them seem to be feeling some real heat from constituents. Plenty of
laws are controversial. But this one — more than most — has stirred up
fierce support and opposition, much of it at a truly grassroots level.
Local
and statewide environmental groups, along with public-health advocates like the
Breast Cancer Coalition, are ardent backers. Lawn-care industry professionals,
understandably, loathe it. Emotions on both side run deep.
But
so, too, do solid arguments.
Proponents
cast the debate in “right-to-know” terms: They say the chemicals are dangerous
and they have the right to know what chemicals neighbors are using.
Opponents
say the law is “cumbersome” and will deliver only administrative headaches and
expense, not better-informed consumers. They want a voluntary registry instead.
Both
sides say that scientific research backs up their position. But ultimately
it’ll fall to politicians in government — not scientists in their labs and
peer-reviewed journals — to make the decision.
What
timing!
Just
two days after City’s article
exploring labor-management tensions at the Democrat and Chronicleand the daily’s relationship to parent
corporation Gannett, Editor and Publisher
Online reported top executive salaries at major media companies.
Wanna guess who
came out Number 1?
At
$7.8 million in salary and bonuses, the top five executives at Gannett raked in
the highest compensation of anyone in the business. They also picked up $1.8
million in long-term compensation. The next nearest was the New York Times
Company, at $7.2 million and $1.9 million respectively.
Gannett
also had the highest-paid executive in the business, CEO Doug McCorkindale, whose $4.1 million pay was more than double
the industry median of $1.8 million for that position.
Members
of the local Newspaper Guild, the newsroom union at the Democrat and Chronicle,have
been complaining about what they say is the stinginess of the local paper and
the Gannett company. The D&C and
Gannett, Guild leaders say, value profits over journalism, paying low salaries,
shrinking the news staff, and hurting the quality of the paper.
Monroe visions
In October, about 100 people — residents, architects, city
officials — spent a day brainstorming what the city neighborhood known as Upper Monroe might become.
At a public meeting next week, they move from brainstorming into planning.
The area under study is bounded by I-490, Monroe
Avenue, and Culver Road
and includes not only houses and commercial buildings but also two significant
landmarks: CobbsHillPark
and the Culver Road Armory.
The meeting will be at 7 p.m.
Tuesday, May 24, at New Life Presbyterian Church, Monroe
Avenue at Rosedale Street.
The RochesterRegionalCommunityDesignCenter will present its summary of
last fall’s brainstorming, focusing on several specific ideas that have a
chance at becoming reality.
Among the suggestions in the October session, for example,
was a pedestrian-bicycle bridge over I-490 from Rosedale
Street to Berkeley Street,
too expensive a project to be a short-term priority. But there were also
suggestions for smaller steps: street furnishings, crosswalks, improvements to CobbsHillPark along Culver
Road.
The May 24 program is sponsored by the Upper Monroe Planning
Collaborative and the Upper Monroe Neighborhood Association. Organizers say
they hope area residents and business owners will come that afternoon and
comment on the ideas. The DesignCenter
will take that input and put together a final report, ready for presentation to
the public around the beginning of August.
Number crunch
Just how much can a mayor control anyway?
Everybody’s speculating about who Rochester’s
next mayor will be. But there’s not been much talk about what that person will
be able to accomplish. The mayor’s actions will be severely limited by money.
When Mayor Bill Johnson unveiled his $403 million 2005-2006 city budget proposal last week, control
was the undertone.
Once again, the city finds itself resting its fiscal fate
with Albany. Johnson’s hoping the
State Legislature will authorize an additional $4 million in aid for the city.
If it does, that’ll help prevent a 4.32 percent average property-tax increase
for homeowners. Even if that $4 mil is approved, the average homeowner will get
a 1.49 percent tax increase.
The new state budget provides a bit of grim context,
something Johnson calls “huge storm clouds ahead.” The budget decreased aid to Rochester
in 2005-2006 by $3.5 million. And aid is expected to keep dwindling through
2008.
As it has throughout its tenure, the Johnson administration
was quick to point out that cities like Syracuse
and Buffalo get far more state
money than Rochester. Then there’s
the state constitution, which limits how much the state’s largest cities can raise in taxes. And there’s the way sales-tax money is
distributed. It’s based on population instead of need, and Rochester’s
population is dropping, but its needs are rising. And then there’s Rochester’s
overwhelming concentration of poverty, which limits many city residents’
ability to absorb tax increases.
Johnson’s not the only one talking about this stuff. Ben
Douglas, who chairs City Council’s finance and public safety committee, is
right there with him.
“It’s a shame the way the dynamics work,” Douglas
says. “You never get rewarded for good financial management. You only get
rescued if you’re in the hole. And we’ve avoided going into the hole. We’ve
avoided needing the state to come in here and take over our finances.” That’s
what happened not too long ago in Buffalo,
which, at last count, was going to land $62.2 million more in state aid this
year than Rochester.
Headline making
The nation’s inner-city public schools make the news more
often for their academic problems than for their successes. But one Rochester
school is getting lots of positive attention: Wilson Magnet School on Genesee Street is 27th this year on Newsweek’s annual list of the “100 Best
High Schools in America.”
Also on the list: Pittsford Mendon, 39th; Brighton,
47th; and Pittsford Sutherland, 78th. Wilson’s ranking was particularly
impressive, given its relatively high student poverty rate of 63 percent (based
on the percentage who qualify for free lunches). That figure is the second
highest of the 100 schools. (Pensacola High School in Florida, ranked 8th, has
the same poverty rate, and University Park Campus School in Wooster,
Massachusetts, ranked 68th, has a poverty rate of 76 percent.) Many of the top
100 had poverty rates of less than 5 percent.
Newsweek bases its
rankings on the percentage of students taking Advance Placement and/or
International Baccalaureate tests. “Although that doesn’t tell the whole story
about a school,” says Newsweek, “it’s
one of the best measures available to compare a wide range of students’
readiness for higher-level work….”
Wilson, an IB
magnet school, is heavily oversubscribed, and the Rochester
school district is expanding it into nearby James Madison.
Street talk
Kodak may be a shadow of its former self, but it’s still a
big deal to investors and the media. And when Kodak got a new leader last week, it was big news all over the
place.
Some business writers tried to inject a little drama into
the change (Business Week
ย talked about a “sudden announcement” and said outgoing Chair and CEO Dan Carp is
“leaving much earlier than expected.” The Wall
Street Journal media said it was a “surprisingly early departure.”) But
there was praise for both Carp and new chief Antonio Perez — and for Kodak
which, said Business Week,“has defied skeptics” with its
ascension to the top spot in digital-camera sales in the US.
The Rochester Business
Journal quotes Perez as saying Kodak’s headquarters will stay in Rochester.
But there was skepticism and pessimism, too. Andy Serwer’s “Street Life” column in Fortune quotes an e-mail from an anonymous former Kodak exec,
predicting that Kodak’s medical imaging “is toast” and that its printing
business won’t survive.
And both the Journal and
Business Week noted that despite
Kodak’s digital achievement, Perez has his work cut out for him. With its
increased debt to help finance digital, and film sales plummeting, Perez will
have to cut costs to keep the company healthy. Growth in digital sales won’t be
enough to offset the losses from film. And cost cutting may very well mean more
layoffs.
Said BW:
“Kodak still has a chance of pulling off the transformation that eluded
AT&T, Polaroid, and other icons that sank as new technology undercut their
businesses. But Perez has a long way to go. And as more folks switch to
digital, he and Kodak are racing the clock.”
From RBJ, this
quote from Perez: “We have to become a growth company A
company that doesn’t grow inevitably is going to be doing layoffs. The answer
for layoffs is growth, and the only opportunity for growth is digital. We can’t
grow film any more.”
This article appears in May 18-24, 2005.
