Feedback Sometimes you drive Mom to drink... So drive her
TO the drinks at Salena’s!
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a for-profit company that would like to keep the competition from entering their market? How can anyone take seriously the case that “casinos are bad” when it comes from someone who currently runs a gambling business? Let’s not jump to conclusions from data that is so likely to be biased by a personal agenda.
Drug intake
Schools, reformed
On local collections of unused prescription drugs: One of the
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302 N. Goodman St. Village Gate, Rochester 256.5980
presents…
A concert for the community
questions we should address, along with the wonderful efforts to collect unused prescription drugs, is: what percentage of the pharmaceuticals in our waters are we actually stopping by these collections? These drugs we take enter our waters in various ways, mostly through us. Are we designing our wastewater treatment systems to both remove these drugs before they enter our waters and before we turn on the tap? FRANK REGAN
Casino facts
Former Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson should be listened to (“Group Says Casinos Aren’t the Cash Machines They’re Made Out to Be,” News Blog). He has evidence that casino developers were inflating promises. He’s telling people to lower expectations. He’s right! MIKE BRUTON
TOWARD THE LIGHT
Music of hope & inspiration Reflections of the soul’s journey through this life and beyond
Saturday, May 10th at 7:30pm Free and open to the public. Free will offering First Unitarian Church of Rochester 220 S. Winton Rd. 4 CITY
MAY 7-13, 2014
There is certainly not enough evidence presented here to form an opinion. Bill Johnson may be right, but he could just as easily be wrong. Anyone who understands data analytics would also understand how easily these types of statistics can be manipulated to fit a personal agenda. There are two key points here: 1) As the article correctly points out, there is no context given to the information presented. This data implies that taxes increased 1.3 percent on average per year in these communities. I don’t have any facts to know if that is good or bad. 2) Most important, this anticasino “research” was sponsored by people who already own casinos (or racinos). Do we really think we can trust in unbiased results when the research is sponsored by
BILL M.
On Urban Journal’s support of school integration (“Segregation Forever”): This position is
Do disadvantaged families really want to see their children bused all over the county in order to assuage liberal editorial writers’ white guilt? Abolish the government school monopoly and let the families who know and love a child decide for themselves how to educate her and where to send her to school. As the editorial says, absolutely every other conceivable option has been tried, and the results only get worse. B.D.G.
Reforming East
fundamentally flawed. The lack of integration is not the reason the system is not working. Student success requires parental involvement, emphasis on the importance of education, and the resources to fully support their child’s participation. This problem starts at the elementary level. If you were exposed to the daily happenings at a city elementary school, you would see that the lack of parental ability (or desire) to support their child’s education is a massive hurdle to success. Perpetual poverty is certainly a large contributor to this issue. However, parents’ inability to support their children’s education does not improve simply because we bus the kids off to the suburbs. I am quite confident that a parent who can’t get their child on the bus to the city school will also struggle to get their child on a bus to the suburbs. The current system of school choice offers a parallel. Parents already have the option to send their children to “better, more affluent” neighborhoods to get a better education. This clearly has not helped and you only help make my point with School 23: a mostly white affluent neighborhood (think suburbs), and the system still fails. Until we enable the support system that these children need and create an environment for success, we will continue to fail. This will take grass-root actions to turn around. Our best chance of success is to empower parents to improve their local, neighborhood school. If parents care, schools improve and then neighborhoods improve. We can’t just bus these kids away and expect the problem to fix itself.
time to get control of the Lilac Festival, if it isn’t too late already. I’ve felt less safe in the crowd the last couple of years and I wasn’t planning on going this year, although I’m still undecided about being searched and tagged. The problem with the Lilac Festival is overcrowding and groups of loud and pushy youths without any adult supervision. It just creates the potential for trouble. Not to mention the people who still insist on bringing their dogs to the festival. What is it with them? Dogs can’t enjoy the flowers and crafts. They end up tripping people with their leashes and barking and fighting with other dogs. Just leave them home!
CONCERNED CITIZEN
TONY
On School Turnaround’s proposal to run East High School:
Essentially, then, we are creating one 700-student school for those who can fulfill the promise for a 100 percent graduation rate and another 700-student school for the kids who can’t hack it. Nice for some; not so nice for others. KATHERINE QUINN THOMAS
What they will do is downsize the school by transferring the underperforming students. Test results will improve but fall at the schools that receive those kids. Then the company will take credit for the East High improvement and use it to secure other contracts. The district should not let them downsize. Let them show what they can do with the same kids. FGF
Lilac time
On the new security policies at the Lilac Festival: It’s about
News. Music. Life. Greater Rochester’s Alternative Newsweekly May 7-13, 2014 Vol 43 No 35 250 North Goodman Street Rochester, New York 14607-1199 themail@rochester-citynews.com phone (585) 244-3329 fax (585) 244-1126 rochestercitynewspaper.com facebook.com/CityNewspaper twitter.com/roccitynews On the cover: Illustration by Matt DeTurck Publishers: William and Mary Anna Towler Editor: Mary Anna Towler Asst. to the publishers: Matt Walsh Editorial department themail@rochester-citynews.com Arts & entertainment editor: Jake Clapp News editor: Christine Carrie Fien Staff writers: Tim Louis Macaluso, Jeremy Moule Arts & entertainment staff writer: Rebecca Rafferty Music writer: Frank De Blase Calendar editor: Antoinette Ena Johnson Contributing writers: Paloma Capanna, Casey Carlsen, Roman Divezur, George Grella, Laura Rebecca Kenyon, Andy Klingenberger, Dave LaBarge, Kathy Laluk, Adam Lubitow, Nicole Milano, Ron Netsky, Suzan Pero, David Raymond, David Yockel Jr. Editorial intern: Taylor White Art department artdept@rochester-citynews.com Art director/production manager: Matt DeTurck Designers: Aubrey Berardini, Mark Chamberlin Photographers: Mark Chamberlin, Frank De Blase Advertising department ads@rochester-citynews.com Sales operations: Matt Walsh New sales development: Betsy Matthews Account executives: Nancy Burkhardt, Tom Decker, Christine Kubarycz, William Towler Classified sales representatives: Christine Kubarycz, Tracey Mykins Operations/Circulation kstathis@rochester-citynews.com Circulation manager: Katherine Stathis Distribution: Andy DiCiaccio, David Riccioni, Northstar Delivery, Wolfe News City Newspaper is available free of charge. Additional copies of the current issue may be purchased for $1 each at the City Newspaper office. City Newspaper may be distributed only by authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission of City Newspaper, take more than one copy of each weekly issue. City (ISSN 1551-3262) is published weekly by WMT Publications, Inc. Periodical postage paid at Rochester, NY (USPS 022-138). Address changes: City, 250 North Goodman Street, Rochester, NY 14607. Member of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and the New York Press Association. Annual subscriptions: $35 ($30 senior citizens); add $10 for out-of-state subscriptions. Refunds for fewer than ten months cannot be issued. Copyright by WMT Publications Inc., 2014 - all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording or by any information storage retrieval system without permission of the copyright owner.