It seems exactly backwards: guaranteed medical care for suburban school kids, but none for city kids, where the need is greatest. “Sometimes, they’re [school nurses] the primary health-care provider for our kids,” says city schools spokesperson Barbara Jarzyniecki. The county health department administers the city’s school-nurse program. It has done so since it […]
County budget
Posted inNews & Opinion
Reader Feedback 11.5.03
The Doyle budget, peace demonstrations, bus pleasures
Posted inNews & Opinion
Are you mad yet?
It’s hard to analyze Jack Doyle’s 2004 budget proposal thoroughly. But having spent a good bit of last week reading it, I’ve reached some conclusions, having nothing to do with whether we ought to up the sales tax to pull ourselves out of the hole we’re in. One conclusion is that at the end […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Facing the crisis
Picture Monroe County with its public parks abandoned, trails and shelters in disrepair, Highland’s lilacs and conservatory a shambles, Ontario Beach permanently closed. Some arts organizations and museums shuttered and others dramatically reducing their offerings. The zoo shut down, the airport in disrepair, roads full of potholes. Residents and businesses fleeing a city that […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Time bomb
There is a time bomb waiting to blow up in our faces — in Rochester, in Pittsford, in Hamlin, in Webster, in Gates, in Mendon…. The time bomb is the county’s financial situation, severe now, and growing worse. Last year and this year, the county faced major budget deficits. It covered them by, among […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Down the drain
If Monroe County’s finances were your home’s water system, you’d have called a plumber, too. By last summer, it was clear the county’s finances were in the crapper. It was estimated that its 2002 budget would fall between $15 and $23 million in the hole, and the deficit for 2003 was predicted to be […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Playing Medi-tag: the price of long term care
“I cried for three months,” says Nova Robbins. The 74-year-old Fairport resident had helped her husband, Robert Robbins, get necessary long term care after a paralyzing stroke. But the crying that Robbins mentions here was connected to other terrible difficulties: the paperwork she needed to wade through, and the money she needed to […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Fear and loathing in the County Legislature
An air of jubilation swept through the chamber of the Monroe County Legislature in the final hour of November 12. Nineteen lawmakers from both parties had voted to override County Executive Jack Doyle’s line-item veto of a bipartisan budget. The plan that passed raised the property tax rate almost 2.5 percent in order to restore […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Reader feedback 11.13.02
The county clerk’s letter, Green candidates, Doyle and the United Way
Posted inNews & Opinion
Courage! Courage!
How bad do things have to get in what we used to call The Community of Monroe? Do only half a dozen county legislators have the guts to do the right thing? Next week, the Lej will vote on Jack Doyle’s proposed budget. That budget will ramp up the cuts we’ve already begun to […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Reader Feedback 10.16.02
A sampling of “Regents Math”: Start with the finest teachers that the Rochester schools can attract, given budget constraints. Then add a whole bunch of kids from populations typically at risk for failure: from households of poverty; where English is a second language; minority families; and kids with special learning needs or abusive or […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Reader Feedback 9.18.02
Supporting police, praising McCall, helping schools, fighting the budget cuts
