WE DON’T NEED NEW WATER PLANT

Thank you to Krestia DeGeorge for watching the actions of
the County Legislature,
and to City for its coverage of the proposed water treatment plant (“A Rush to
Borrow,” Metro Ink, December 20). If only the pages of City could shout.

The “urgent” passage of the proposal to permit the
Monroe County Water Authority to borrow money for its proposed Webster water
treatment facility is unexpected, since the Water Authority agreed to delay
building of the plant for 18 months. Because of the proposal’s introduction as
a matter of urgency (this phrase was most disturbing), “it thereby
bypasses much of the public scrutiny that most legislative proposals get,”
DeGeorge writes.

Puzzling to me, also, is the need for any borrowing; Water
Authority leaders have stated at their presentations that funds to cover its
cost have been achieved by adding charges to all ratepayers’ bills over the
past few decades.

This water treatment plant is unnecessary and too costly.
Between the city and county water authorities, the water supply needs of the
region are currently met twice over. Plus, there are at least 15 treatment
plants in our area now; surely some of them, such as the plant at Kodak, which
produces 50 million gallons per day and may not be needed in the near future,
could serve.

Beyond the cost to taxpayers is the threat of continued
sprawl, with its attendant costs, in an area with dwindling population. With
the profit potential of land newly furnished with water pipes, we can look
forward to such esthetic additions to the landscape as strip malls, big box
stores, and housing developments.

But this plant will be built — every go-ahead has been
granted — unless we visit the CountyLegislature and give comments prior
to the monthly meeting, unless we write to legislators and let them know this
water treatment plant is not right for MonroeCounty. Again, I commend City, and
I look forward to further investigation into the issue, particularly of who
benefits.

Christine Sevilla,
Pittsford

‘TECH CUTS LED TO THE SHUTDOWN’

The computer problems that paralyzed the county clerk’s
office may have been avoided with better management and a service-oriented
staff. Comments such as “something like this is hard to predict” and
expressing displeasure after the fact do not inspire confidence.

This month, experienced computer service people have been
laid off in an effort to save money. The countyIT staff has half as many people as
it did 10 years ago. The staff who actually do the work are being cut, while
this year’s budget has added a “deputy director.” Are the taxpayers
in Monroe County really saving money? County employees will have to work
overtime to get things back on track.

This is not a “glitch”; it is a shutdown of county
services for one week. Do these same people provide support for the public-safety
computers?

This has a serious impact on our community’s commerce and
well-being and should be looked into further by someone outside of the county clerk’s
office. If there is no oversight we could end up with another fiasco, such as
the Water Authority, where cronyism and self-serving were placed above
“civil service.”

Patricia Nelson, Averill Avenue(Nelson’s brother-in-law was among the
IT staff members laid off.)

PUBLIC HYSTERIA

AND SEX OFFENSES

Thank you for your article “The Missing Pieces in the
Sex-offender Debate” (December 20). There is a lot of unfounded hysteria
in this debate.

Your article rightly pointed out that sex-offender
recidivism is lower than generally thought. The actual number of sex offenders
who are imprisoned for new sex crimes is lower than probably even you think.
Between 1985 and 2001, a total of 11,898 sex offenders were released from New
York State prisons. Only 253 of these (2.1 percent)
were returned to prison for new sex crimes within three years of their release
(“2001 Releases: Three Year Post Release Follow-up,” State of New York
Department of Correctional Services.)

Sources and more info are available at
http://theparson.net/so.

C. David Hess, West
Henrietta (Hess is pastor of West Henrietta Baptist Church and is the New
York Representative of SOhopeful International, an organization working to
“change the way Megan’s Law and similar legislation mandates the registration,
tracking, and community notification of non-violent, low-risk sex offenders,”
according to its website (sohopeful.org). “We are making this effort in order
to strengthen the Sex Offender Registry and make it more effective, to help it
to accomplish what it was originally intended to do,” says the website.

WRITING TO CITY

We welcome and encourage readers’ letters for publication.
Send them to: themail@rochester-citynews.com or The Mail, City Newspaper, 250
North Goodman Street, Rochester14607.

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often than about once every two months.

This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2007.