rescuing Rochester families from a dismal school district gave hope to the less fortunate half of the “two Rochesters” Warren so often speaks of. The bad publicity also threatened to overshadow some of the good news to come out of City Hall, such as the coming of a grocery store to the East End. Warren also got credit for helping end a stalemate in the County Legislature, which salvaged a bunch of projects, including a city Costco store. Warren says that people are missing the point. Her husband’s record, for example, was sealed. So the real story, Warren says, is who leaked a sealed record and why. “When it comes down to it, family, in politics, is generally off the table,” she says. “But for me, it’s something different.” And the incident with Spencer Ash occurred when Tom Richards was mayor. So why, Warren asks, does it become a problem only after she takes office? It is true that the much of the venom coming Warren’s way via social media is unsettling, racist, sexist, and disgusting. And Warren says she’s gotten threats, including threats against her young daughter. Even the “lighter” stuff on social media is laden with schadenfreude. “People say, ‘If you were white, this wouldn’t happen,’” Warren says. “And I don’t like to think like that. I like to think better of our city, of our world. But it’s just something that I’m faced with, something that I’ll deal with. I’ll go forward, because my goal is to do great things for our city.” Warren plans to go forward with her campaign promise to create an education office in City Hall. She’s also set on adding police stations to combat crime and improve police-community relations. She is most passionate when she talks about getting people to see the city and its challenges from a different perspective — that of Rochester’s most impoverished residents. Warren talked about the challenges she faces and her plans for the city in a couple of
recent interviews with City. The following is an edited version of those discussions. CITY: Do you think you’ve gotten off to a rocky start?
“I THINK THAT WE ARE IN SUCH ACRISIS HERE, WE NEED ALL THE HELP THAT WE CAN GET.”
Warren: I think there’s something else going on here. All these things are not about me. They’re not about my leadership. Spencer [Ash], at the time, was a city attorney. So why wouldn’t it come out, “City attorney charged with a DWI?” But it’s attributed to me. In the paper, it’s “Lovely Warren’s appointee…” [Regarding her husband] How many people in this city plead guilty to a particular crime as a youthful offender, and to have this come out… How does that affect his employment? Even when it comes down to the security detail: you look at people wanting me to die. Wishing that I was poisoned. It has become such a racial barrier, and a distraction. I have moved on. I’ve got other business to talk about. But do you wish you had been upfront about the fact that there were actually two traffic stops?
I’m not talking about that anymore. How is T. Andrew Brown keeping his stake in his law firm not a conflict of interest?
Christopher Thomas, who was part of the transition team, did extensive legal research based on the case law and everything, and there was no conflict as long as [Brown] and his firm put up a firewall. Any clients that had anything against the city, [Brown] had to ask to be removed from those cases. He would have to get rid of those [cases] and remove himself and his firm. The firm would have to disclose to the court that they had to be removed as counsel. I’ve seen a memo that was prepared from Chris Thomas before we even extended the offer to Andrew that there
“OUR CHILDREN NEED TO SEE THAT THERE’SA WAY OUT .”
would be no conflict and there was nothing wrong with this. It’s widely presumed that James Sheppard resigned as police chief last year because you wouldn’t have kept him on. Why not? He was popular, did a ton of community outreach, and if there are cultural problems within the police department, he really wasn’t given enough time to change that.
It was the chief ’s choice. I didn’t ask him to stay, I didn’t ask him to leave. The chief came in to me and he said, “Look, I’m tired. I’ve been doing this job for 30 years. I think I’ve given everything that I can give at this point in time. I want to take a break, so I’m going to retire.” That was his decision. I didn’t say “You have to go,” or anything. He also had indicated that early in the summer, before the primary, he was thinking about retiring. So that wasn’t a decision I made for him. But if he didn’t want to retire, would you have kept him?
It doesn’t matter. Speaking of police, Richards put money in the current city budget to study adding police stations. But it sounds like you’re skipping the study and going right ahead with a reorganization, from two stations to four.
We’re going to utilize [that money] to figure out exactly how much it would cost, how we could actually implement this four-quadrant system. The interim chief has done a lot of work and has lot of background on studying this. And it’s something that not only our police department and members of our police union have called for, but it’s also something that our residents have called for. The $50,000 was for figuring out if we should do this. I don’t think we need to study if we should do this. We know that we should. We need to figure out how much it’s going to cost.
What we’re doing now is not the best way of policing our city, and we’ve heard that from not only the people that are on the ground, but the people that receive the services. So we have to do this. What are your thoughts about the city’s red-light camera program? There’s been controversy, including the fact that despite numerous stops, city employees aren’t required to pay the fine.
I know that this is up for review [the contract between the city and Redflex expires on December 1, 2014], and I believe that the legislation in the state of New York sunsets this year. I think it’s something that we have to study to see, did it do what we said [it would], and that was to reduce accidents. I’m going to talk to City Council about not extending the contract until we do a study on the feasibility, long term, and is it giving us what we expected as it pertains to safety. There are concerns, and I know that some people on Council have concerns. Is the equipment working properly? I know there was an issue with [the timing of yellow lights] — have those been corrected? Are people actually paying? So I think that before we make a decision, we need to have some more information. You got credit for rescuing the Costco project, along with the rest of the projects in the county’s capital program, from partisan gridlock. And people are talking about a new era of cooperation between the city and the county. How do you know this relationship won’t be one-sided? After all, the county doesn’t have the best record in terms of its treatment of the city.
Our city residents are fifth in the nation for childhood poverty. When we look at the Costco project, over 1,000 full-time jobs will be there. We [will] have over 1,500 construction jobs. Look at MCC — the downtown campus — the potential to do startup businesses continues on page 10
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