The University of Rochester now has an online archive of 438 issues of the Empty Closet, beginning with the first issue published in January 1971 to the April 2011 issue. | The EC was founded by a group of UR student-activists who formed the Gay Liberation Front’s Rochester chapter. The newspaper is New York State’s […]
Tim Mains
Tim Mains: schools, money, and City Hall
The mayor and the schools City: Given the city’s fiscal challenges, would you favor more city funding for the CitySchool District? Mains: My goal is to make sure the schools work. It is clear to me that the schools need more money than they receive today to function at the level they need to be. […]
Tim Mains: On the economy, stupid Q&A
City: What would you do differently from the Johnson administration when it comes to economic development? Mains: I have an aggressive plan to use tax reform and a specific tax proposal to leverage economic development to create an incentive. Rochester has a two-tier homestead rate. There’s single-family residential of one to three units, and the […]
Pop quiz:
How much do the Democratic candidates for mayor know about the city they want to lead? We thought we’d put them to the test — no prior notice, no research allowed. And we’d love to ask any of your questions. In fact, our readers helped inform this week’s pop quiz. To have your questions included, […]
Playing โpolitical piñataโ
City Councilman Tim Mains often jokes that he’s spent the past two years serving as City Hall’s resident political piñata. And it’s an experience that Mains says forced a hard lesson: that “political friends,” as he says, “are sometimes better defined by the adjective than by the noun.” Over the past two years, Mains, a […]
Reader feedback 8.20.03
Ginna’s future, taxing ‘little people,’ City’s writers
Reader feedback 3.19.03
Pleas for peace On a recent trip to Laos, it was with great shame that I saw the results of the US bombing during the Vietnam War. US pilots indiscriminately dropped more than 250 million cluster bombs, hitting schools, hospitals, and temples, killing thousands of innocent people. Historic sites are filled with bomb craters; ancient […]
Happily divided?
There was a moment during last Tuesday’s City Council meeting when longtime Councilmember Tim Mains’ face said it all. It happened shortly before Council passed legislation that bars Mains — and anyone else employed by the Rochester City School District — from serving on Council. As two councilmembers abstained from voting on another piece […]






