From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made on June 17th when Rochester City Council passed the new city budget.

Here's what my colleague Gino Fanelli reported.

Quote A leaner and modest city budget passed city council.

A spending plan thus far avoids significant cuts despite declining and uncertain federal revenue.

The budget comes amid the expiration of federal Covid relief dollars and the threat of withholding of funds by the federal government to sanctuary cities.

The city is currently being sued by the Trump administration over its sanctuary policy.

And while the move to withhold funds was blocked by a court ruling in April, the administration has continued to threaten similar tactics.

The bill passed city council by a vote of 6 to 3.

Council members Stanley Martin, Kym Smith and Mary Lucien voted no.

End quote.

Next week, we're going to welcome Mayor Malik Evans and several members of council to talk about their support for this budget.

On the program today, we welcome one of the dissenting voices on council, Rochester Council Member Mary Lupi, and is back with us here.

And it's nice to see you.

Thank you for being here, too.

First time having you on the program after the primary.

And, listeners know that Mary Lupine was a candidate for on the Democratic primary line for Rochester mayor and was not victorious.

Malik Evans, the incumbent, won the primary and will be the Democrat on the ballot in November.

But for you, I'll.

I guess I'll just start by asking, how are you feeling post primary?

I mean, what's what's life been like for you on the other side of this campaign?

I'm a lot less busy now.

I feel really good.

And I knew that regardless of the outcome, good things would happen.

And that gave me a lot of freedom to run the race that I wanted to, to run because all outcomes were good.

You know, I knew that if I was not successful, I still have two years left on council and everything that we've built will help me do a better job on council, because the mayor has marginalized, and the mayor and the majority of city council have marginalized the three progressive members.

And Willie, and it's incredibly difficult to get anything through, without engaging the community and the community showing up for, honestly years to get things passed.

And so now, so many more people have awareness of the types of things that we could be doing at the city level.

And we're not.

And much more people are aware of who I am.

And you know, what we're trying to do on council.

Did you go into election night with any expectation of how it was going to go?

I had no idea.

You really didn't know?

No.

I mean, early on, maybe a month or two before the primary, we had heard the results of the mayor survey, the mayor's, poll that he did that showed the three candidates tied, which was very interesting to me because I didn't think that Shashi was doing had any much had any chance because his, you know, so many of his ideas weren't thought all the way through.

And he has.

No I had no idea about Rochester.

He just kind of dropped in.

But he was getting, some support from part of the city that was more, I think, disengaged.

And I heard a lot in the community, like a lot that people were angry at Malik, that they didn't think he was doing anything, that they felt abandoned, that he wasn't connected with the struggles that they were feeling.

And I think they just didn't come out, but I did not know how it was going to turn out.

I knew, you know, my numbers were showing that I was doing well.

But we didn't have the resources to hit as many doors as we needed to.

So correct me if I'm wrong.

Here's what I think you're saying.

We could look at just the numbers of who did vote right and of who did vote.

The mayor got 57% in a three way race.

Yeah, I mean, that's a that was a resounding victory for the mayor.

You're indicating that you think that is not representative of how people in the city feel.

Definitely not.

But there was ten days of early voting.

There was primary.

There was a will.

You know, that it was a historically low turnout.

It was a low turnout.

And I think that we're going to be unraveling this, trying to figure out what happened.

I'm very interested in the people that didn't come out.

You know what kept them home?

Was it feeling disenfranchized that their vote didn't matter?

You know, I know it was very hot on election day, but the ten days of early voting showed it was consistent all along with how, little turnout there was going to be compared to, you know, the previous contests in there, the previous few elections.

Okay.

And so, I am curious to know now when you say no matter what was going to happen, whether you won or lost, right, that good things are going to come out of this, that there's.

So tell me a little bit more about that.

I mean, so you're not looking at this and saying, hey, I was in a three way race.

I got a third of the vote, I didn't win.

It wasn't enough traction.

You're you're looking at some positives.

Are.

Absolutely.

There were so many variables in this election.

And it's obviously very hard to challenge an incumbent who doesn't have a scandal, doesn't have something that you can get him on other than he's not doing enough.

And a lot of people just were like, what?

You know, there's no scandal.

Isn't he doing a good job?

But it wasn't the people who are feeling the pain of us not doing anything.

Those were the people that were telling me, like anybody but this guy, you know, just me walking down the street, people would shout that at me, like, go ahead.

Like this, this.

We got to get this guy out of here.

And I think there's a real disconnect from, parts of the community that are really struggling.

And the positives that I see, you know, being that it was it's very hard to challenge an incumbent.

And we had way less resources, you know, than my two, opponents.

In terms of people and money.

Stanley Martin got the most votes out of every candidate on council.

That tells me that it's not the progressive policy that people that this this election was not a referendum on the progressive policy.

She is arguably to the left of me, and she got the most votes.

And that that shows me that people are listening and people it resonates.

But if you look at New York City, which I know on election night, you were looking at New York City show us, and you were very happy about what happened to York City with Zoran Mamdani winning a primary handily in a race that not only had a lot of candidates, but a massive political name.

And Andrew Cuomo.

Yeah, who, according to the best guesses and polling all the way up to Election Day, you know, people aren't going to be betting against Cuomo.

So Mamdani wins and I told Mary before the program, I got an email this morning when we had teased the program, Tony wrote in to say New York City defeated Andrew Cuomo.

We had the chance to do the same, and we chose not to.

Is that how you see it in Rochester?

Again, I don't it's not that black and white.

I think there's a lot going on here that wasn't present in New York City.

You know, we don't have ranked choice voting.

We don't have public funding for elections.

I think we did have a choice as a community to create solutions that center people, that fund and invest in people and the 13,000 that showed up to vote.

Yes.

You know, seven, 70, 800 of them chose to keep things the same that we live in a 200,000 plus city.

You know, I I'm again, very interested to understand why people didn't come out and vote.

Where in New York City, mom Danny brought thousands of people into the electoral process.

So they had the the reverse, you know, they had a higher turnout because of, the excitement that, you know, people had for mom, Danny, for a change.

And I think, you know, I said this before the show, you know, Andrew Cuomo is not only governs not even close.

Andrew Cuomo is a evil human being.

And, you know, all of the the things on his record from the deaths in the nursing homes to the women that he sexually harassed and is dragging through the legal process, it's a very different dynamic.

And, you know, I think ranked choice voting wouldn't have, altered the outcome of this race.

But I do think it's something that we should look at at local elections, especially for the council race.

You don't think Andrew Cuomo is a good man?

I do not.

Do you think the mayor of Rochester is a good man?

I wouldn't call him evil.

I think that we have different priorities.

You know, I, I value judgment on good or bad.

I'm not going to make that call.

Well, and so, you know, I mean, Tony, it was Tony's email who brought this up making the comparison.

But at the same time, you know, mom, Danny became, a kind of sensation because of how he conducted his campaign, the traction that he got with people who had never heard of him until months before or weeks before.

And I think some people will look at your campaign and say, why were you not able to do that.

You know, why was he successful and you weren't.

If you're, if your ideas are similar for how to govern a city, why was he able to do what you weren't.

Well, I think his resources were much greater than mine.

You know, I raised, about $110,000, which is less than half of what both of my opponents started at.

You know, they have a system of public financing in New York City.

And he was able to he raised 4 million and was able to get 8 million.

Had I had more resources, I think that I could have done so much more.

You know, and I was working with a lot of people that were new to the process.

And it is hard to get people that have done this before, because the consequences are so great for going against the political machine.

And so I had a lot of support from people.

You know, behind the scenes that couldn't officially, you know, be on my campaign, they couldn't donate more than $99.

That, you know, had I been able to fully use my network and raise the kind of money that Mamdani did raise.

I think we could have done more.

I think I just ask because I. I want to make sure I understand your perspective on it.

You view your campaign as you were up against resources.

You were up against, probably, in your view, a political establishment.

100%.

Okay.

But have you entertain the idea that the reason you didn't win is that this is a popular mayor, that that people do feel pretty good about the direction the city is going and that your ideas did not resonate enough.

No.

Absolutely not.

When we got to the door, everyone.

I would say everyone that I talked to, you know, and some of my volunteers, you know, maybe not able to communicate as well as I do.

But when I said we need to be investing in our people, that resonated.

No one was like, no, we should spend $27 million on the convention center.

That's how we should spend our money.

Zero people said that.

And I, I really don't know.

I can't tell you.

You know, I had, Mitch Gruber going around telling people he wouldn't trust me to run a lemonade stand.

You know, so I had I had people that we share voters, you know, that were working to, not just promote the mayor, but, you know, spread misinformation about my campaign that guaranteed basic income isn't.

And I know we've had this conversation.

You know, it's it's just not possible.

If it were, we would have done it already.

It's this attitude of, like the adult in the room, they know better.

We can't possibly be spending our money on people, and they convince us that it's not.

It's not feasible.

It's not possible when it absolutely is.

And it's just a policy choice.

So you know, it could be people's, you know, lack of faith.

It's it's possible, but Mamdani, if he's allowed to become if he's allowed to go forward and wins the general election, he will show that these policies are possible when we have the political will and the courage to change things, how they've always been done.

And I think that's why he's so dangerous.

That's why India Walton, it was so dangerous.

And that's why, you know, they were really afraid of my candidacy.

Because when we show, it's possible that, defense goes away.

So, you know, for, for all of the cities in New York, what's our excuse?

Well, but let's talk about g-b-i, because when you say, you know, you get you seem annoyed that your political opponents were saying, this is pie in the sky, it's not possible.

So Stanley Martin, who got the most votes on Rochester City Council, said, you know, we could we could take $5 million for GBI and we could find that money, $5 million, $500 a month.

That's $6,000 per year.

A $5 million allocation would serve 833 people.

4/10 of 1% of the population of Rochester.

So if you go to ten times that number, it's a $50 million allocation.

Now that you got to come up with, and it still serves 4% of the city of Rochester, 8330 people.

You go to 100 times that.

It is still serving less than half the population, and that's $500 million.

What?

Where is the money?

Can I help me understand?

I know you're laughing at this.

Like I do want to understand it.

Yeah, and we've had this conversation before.

I know, and I know you get kind of frustrated with me, but I'm just looking at numbers.

I'm looking at math.

I think have the math.

Any any allocation is better than what we're doing now.

And take the two little over 2 million that we did spend on our guaranteed basic income pilot, which has now ended, that served 300 families at $500 a month.

$6,000 per family.

We spent $2 million, $2 million of Arpa funding, almost the equivalent of what we spent on the GBI program to fix up the four streets around Constellation Brands new building.

So think about what that says.

So we we have Gvi, which is a program that we know works.

We didn't wait for the report.

You know, the report is still outstanding, but we know that everybody agrees that it it is successful.

Absolutely.

Even even the the Democrats who won that that are not in the block that you're in.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They agree that it's good.

Yeah.

So we know this program works for those 300 families, and we would give the same amount away in a corporate giveaway to Constellation Brands, whose, owner has $3.4 billion.

So that's the equivalent.

So nobody is like, wow, where are we going to get the money to fix up for streets around Constellation Brands?

It's just a shift in priority.

We didn't have to do that.

We could have had a $4 million GBI program.

And there's money like that all around the budget.

You know, we just in the Arpa funds alone, the money we spent on capital projects that, you know, we had in the capital improvement plan for years out and we just said we just want to do them earlier or, you know, expanding the convention center terrace for $6 million.

We can find the money when we want to.

And the way that we spend our money is predominantly on these big projects.

These luxury, you know, apartments that we'll we'll give $1 million to here and there.

To attract people here.

And what I'm saying is, if we invest that money in our people, it matters to the families that we invest in, and we're not going to get out of our poverty.

We have over, half of our kids in childhood and extreme childhood poverty.

We're not going to get out of that overnight, but whatever money we put towards guaranteed basic income makes a difference for those families to get out of poverty.

And every every 300 families, how many kids does that affect?

Right.

It's not nothing.

And I was looking at, you know, with with like a holistic approach.

I was saying, let's scale up our community responder programs because the study that, you know, I pushed for from the Law Enforcement Action Partnership that did a deep dive on 911 calls, found that only 18%, you know, police response, the other 82% could be answered by a community responder, which is infinitely less expensive.

You know, the police have a $5 million vacancy allowance.

We said you I'm trying to remember the exact numbers.

It might be 14.

It's a it's a huge number.

We overspend that, you know, $14 million is the overtime and we overspend it every year.

Whatever.

We budget for overtime.

We the police budget is infinite.

Whatever they use, they get, we find it.

But if we can rely less on police, we can actually take that vacancy allowance, which is I think it's 5700, $5,700,000.

But that towards GBI and the less we rely on police, which is more than a third of our budget.

When you consider pension, when you consider benefits which are not calculated in the 150 million that it shows, the department gets in the budget.

That's money right there.

And again, that won't happen overnight.

That's a scaled up approach.

But then there's, you know, revenue generation like public banking, which I've been fighting for and, you know, looks like it's going to, two years ago looked like it was going to pass.

Passed the House and the Senate and, and the state legislature.

And it has support for Rochester Public Bank, which allows us to use our deposits like the taxes that we pay, sit in Wall Street banks and those Wall Street banks, lend out our money and make interest on our money.

And a public bank would just allow us to do it ourselves, which would spur development by allowing us to give out low interest loans and we make free money off of our money.

So looking at other revenue generation, are there, you know, extra, surcharges that we can put on things that have a low impact on people, but, you know, in aggregate generate a lot of money, but there's no will to do that.

I understand the idea of saying, looking at the police budget.

Third, the city budget, I know they're chunks of millions of dollars of the margins.

But when you talk about it's not the margins, okay.

Okay, fine.

Okay.

I understand that, but when you talk about the streets around Constellation Brands or the aqueduct, the big city projects downtown, a lot of that money is coming from New York State that is earmarked for economic development.

That is not the kind of thing where a city can just say, well, we're going to actually spend that on GBA.

Yeah, that's what they'll want you to believe.

The $2 million that I just mentioned was Arpa money.

So yes.

So our Arpa was more flexible that money.

There's no more Arpa money?

No there's not.

But how we spent that money is indicative on how we spend our money all of the time and what we prioritize.

That money should have been for people to recover from Covid, not capital projects that we could have done years out and didn't or don't need to at all.

But when we ask the state for money, we ask for that money.

We could ask differently.

And I get that there's different pots of money, but we're not even trying.

So yes, once we get that money, it's earmarked for the these capital project that we've asked for or you know what we what I quoted a lot was that the city asked for 75 million, no, $33 million to build 75 houses.

We asked for that.

We could ask for different.

And I don't, you know, have I understand that that's a harder ask of the governor, because the governor is backed by the same real estate interests that our mayor is, and it's easier to give money that eventually ends up in those people's pockets.

But let's use our advocacy.

Let's ask for this because we know we have a city with the five highest, poorest zip codes in the country.

In the state.

We have a unique problem here.

And if we know that guaranteed basic income will help our people.

Let's use our advocacy to ask for that money from the state.

We just got $25 million for, you know, antipoverty money.

It can happen.

We're going to talk violence prevention, public safety in a moment here.

But just kind of tying up a couple of points here.

So you've talked about Constellation Brands moving downtown.

Do you view that as a win for Rochester?

I nominally you know, I proved to me a fortune 500 company moving downtown at a time when so much is left.

It's a nominal move to me that their employees are patronizing businesses downtown.

Are we seeing more businesses pop up because of their workers?

I you know, I think they like other, businesses.

You know, they have a lot of remote workforce now.

And so, okay, they I'm sure they pay taxes, but it's not what is it done for the city?

How can we, put a value on that moving downtown.

You know, we gave them $2 million.

We're talking about this $200 million project that we're funding.

The way I look at it.

What's the return on investment if we're putting out all this public money?

And it was specifically a sweetheart deal.

The aqueduct project was a sweetheart deal to get Constellation Brands to come down town, because it's building them a park in front of their building.

Proved to me that that's a net benefit to Rochester.

I, you know, I, I guess I understand the point.

I think it's this is a city that has lost its big three, its big anchors.

And that's not how we go forward as a city.

I don't think we're going to get another Kodak or Xerox.

I don't think people think constellation's on Kodak.

No, but but attracting fortune 500 companies to come back to your actual physical downtown when we have a trained workforce, like businesses go where there are employers to hire, and there are even businesses here in Rochester and in the outskirts of Rochester that are desperate for employees.

But there's not any with the skills that they need.

So again, when we invest in people, we we give them what they need.

And, you know, I don't think corporate giveaways, it creates loyalty.

You know, the second Constellation Brands can get out of here.

I don't doubt that they will if they find a better deal elsewhere.

So then when it comes to GBI, then I, I know that there's not a hard and fast we're going to fund it.

And this is many households we're going to do.

I know that you want that.

I, I do just because I want to know what the vision is like is the vision for, for 5000 households.

Is it for 10,000 households?

Is it, you know, if you do 500, I don't know what your vision is.

And I know you kind of seem annoyed with me, but what we need to do, I don't know what the vision.

I very much rely on data and I don't have the data.

I don't have the resources to do the kinds of, you know, evaluations that we need to really understand.

What is our need?

You know, how long should the program be?

What's what amount of money should be given out?

You know, what requirements should there be, if any?

And there's so many different.

There's a hundreds of pilots across the country that all operate slightly differently.

And I really want to understand, you know, what are the best ones in in each you know what will work in Rochester.

Where do we start?

And I think that targeting different populations is the way to go.

You know, whether it's families of the city school district or youth aging out of foster care or seniors that are raising their grandkids or survivors of domestic violence, right.

The populations where extra cash to help them, move themselves out of poverty in the way that only they know how, makes a bigger impact.

It's intersectional, right?

When you're helping seniors, we all know seniors are struggling.

If they're on fixed incomes.

And God knows, you know, if some of these programs are going away at the federal level and they're the ones raising their grandkids, and, you know, these are the same kids that are, you know, potentially stealing cars or, you know, getting into trouble.

And if we do not invest in our youth, whatever problems we have now are going to multiply because the youth are not getting what they need.

And any anyone who understands anything about human psychology, like when humans don't have their needs met, they try to meet them in whatever way they can.

And that's what these kids are doing.

And we also know that when we meet their needs, they choose more positive paths.

And that need could be stable housing.

That need could be a positive adult in their life.

You know, that need could be, an after school program.

But whatever it is, those interventions cost much less than, police enforcement and so on.

Council now, and really with this administration going forward, as I said, GBI is getting a lot of love from this mayor and from members of council.

The difference is where does the funding come from?

But you say it gets a lot of love.

He cut the program.

He's saying this is something that should be happening and it should be funded at the federal level, not universal basic income should be funded at the federal level.

Guaranteed income is funding.

All of these pilots that I speak of are at the local level.

And this is something, you know, it's just passing the buck like, yes, it works, but we're not going to prioritize it.

And there is going to be a guaranteed income program for pregnant mothers coming from the county through the anti-poverty money.

But again, one shot, right?

We're not talking about sustaining this program that we know works.

When you talk about maybe it's raised families or seniors or survivors of domestic violence, that also sounds like another pilot, though it doesn't sound like a well defined idea that, you know, has a set of goals.

Targeting those populations is a goal.

Oh, okay.

No, no, I I'm these are populations that need extra support.

And as a way of a pilot means that we're we're testing it out.

Right, right.

We're not testing.

You know, if you can we know that it works.

We know that it will benefit these families.

But knowing that we can't have the full scale program on day one, this is a way to start, right, to impact populations that have an intersectional, impact.

You know, that you're helping seniors and kids or these youth that are reaching out to foster care.

We know what happens when they don't have the support.

So we are impacting public safety by helping this population.

There's no there's no doubt in anyone's mind that it won't help them.

It will help them.

So your concern is that your colleagues in city government might say that they support it.

Yes, but their actions don't match that.

Now, is there any momentum to get a local GPI with the current construction of council on the administration now, is that one of the reasons you voted against this budget?

I voted against every budget that has ever been put in front of me.

And it's for the same reasons, because we continue to fund enforcement and capital projects, and we are not funding the things that help that directly help people.

You know, they'll say the convention center, well, you know, that that brings X amount of dollars into the city.

And, you know, that helps the businesses.

And then the businesses will create jobs and the jobs.

It's trickle down and it doesn't it hasn't had that trickle down impact.

And the convention center, the convention center traffic peaked in the 90s.

And it's not going back.

It's just to try to compete with other big cities for these larger conferences.

We could be focusing on a niche market like, you know, the city with union hotels or black owned business district, you know, some other reason that people would choose Rochester other than the size of our convention center.

That's the that's what they think is going to solve Rochester's problems.

And my campaign was about that being fundamentally wrong and investing in people is how we need to move forward.

So these budgets that I voted no on have not done that.

And someone needs to object.

We could be proposing our own budget like the state legislature does.

In addition, you know, and the, the, the House, the Senate, the governor all proposed their budgets and then they try to work it out.

We don't do that.

We don't use the powers that we have to put forth our own vision.

You know, we we have priorities that we answer in a survey before the budget.

And, you know, that's they don't listen to public input.

They don't listen.

Our input.

You know, maybe people will get some pet projects in to secure their vote.

But we are not fundamentally changing anything about how we're doing, how we're spending our city money in Rochester.

And the the 2122 budget.

Both the mayor and Mitch Gruber, the mayor, is a finance chair.

Both of them voted no on the budget.

And they said it doesn't go far enough or fast enough.

That was disingenuous.

It was because the mayor was running against all they weren't in the primary that month, had nothing to do with the budget because arguably her budget had more visionary, programs in it than the mayor's did this time around.

Or the, you know, his last budget.

And so many of the programs that he claims credit for were actually from that budget.

You know, the financial empowerment centers, came out of the Office of Community Wealth Building.

He says, you know, he was the first person of the Office of Violence, the Mayor's Office of Violence Prevention.

But that's only because he took the Office of Violence Prevention and put it in the mayor's office.

It started out under Leslie Warren in the Rock and Human Services Department.

So, so much of what she did, I think was visionary.

You know, obviously she had her issues and I didn't you know, I didn't support the budget then, but the budget that he voted no on that said, didn't go far enough or fast enough was better than the budgets that he's put forward.

I was struck during the the debate when the candidates were asked, I think, by Cheryl McKeever, about what the future downtown should look like.

And Shashi Sinha said, you know, we need more business districts, we need more vibrancy, we need more safety.

The mayor talked about, I mean, and I'm going to sum up here, but the mayor talked about the ongoing projects that you have been kind of bustling here.

So the aqueduct and bringing constellation downtown and bringing more vibrancy, a strong, revived set of anchors downtown.

And he said that that people should be proud of the downtown, people should.

Rochester deserves to have a great downtown.

And you and your answer was very different.

I mean, you you said essentially that what you heard was someone talking about spending money on buildings, not people.

And that you talked about the needs of the people who are struggling from addiction, people who are hurting.

Right.

You talked about, drug overdose, centers to help people, a very different vision of downtown.

Why isn't downtown more vibrant?

Right there?

It's because our deep issues are showing.

And with the business improvement district and the impact and the quote unquote, ambassador program that was supposed to show tourists to where the restaurants were, but it was really to get our problems off the street.

And I don't think that's the way that we deal with it.

I think it's backwards to focus on building up downtown, because that is only successful if we sweep our problems under the rug because people don't feel safe.

They don't feel safe, not even because it isn't safe, because I think that's also widely recognized that in terms of crime numbers, downtown is one of the safest place to place to be.

But there's people that are unhoused.

There are people that have addiction.

There are people that are housed but just don't look like the people that we're trying to attract downtown.

And I want a downtown that where everyone is welcome and that we don't have to hide our problems because we've addressed them.

So I don't think we get that thriving downtown by ignoring the problems that we have in our city because they're they're coming out.

You can't you can't hide them.

And I don't think we should have downtown be so policed that nobody feels welcome there.

And so, it's I think about it like, this is gonna sound silly, but I think about it like a woman trying to attract a man.

Right.

So you can put on all the lipstick and you can call yourself up.

But if you don't deal with your internal issues, people can sense it.

It's desperate.

You actually push away the people that you want to attract to you.

But when you focus on your and who's here now, our people and invest in our people, knowing that they're all they're enough.

We just need to support them right then.

People are naturally attracted to the city because it's a great place to live, and we're a place where a city that values its people and takes care of our people, and we won't have a problem attracting people.

So I want to do it backwards, and I don't think it'll take 20 years to deal with the problems that we have.

You know, there are solutions out there that that's what gives me hope.

There are cities out there that have they're already addressing their issues.

You know, we have Austin that brought us to downtown hotels to turn it to low income and housing for, the unhoused.

You know, we have, cities like New York City that have an overdose prevention center, and that show is to reduce crime.

And, you know, people shooting up in doorways because you give them a medical, a medically supervised place to go.

So if you want people off the street, give them a place to go.

You know, they're really common sense solutions focused around humans, right?

We know how humans behave.

So instead of working against it, let's work with it.

And I know that when we when we have those solutions, we will start to see an improvement right away.

We're talking to Mary Lucien, member of Rochester City Council.

I am very late for the only break of this hour, and we come back here.

We're going to talk a little bit more about how, how the council members sees the issues of public safety, violence prevention and where resources are being allocated in this budget versus perhaps where she wants to see the resources allocated to deal with these problems.

Take a little bit of feedback from you in the remaining minutes.

With that, we have Mary Lucien next.

I'm Evan Dawson, Friday on the next connections on Independence Day, special programing and our first hour.

A program called the declaration does not apply.

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Who sewed the first American flag?

A lot of people think it was Betsy Ross, but this special explores the history of the American flag and what could be the tall tales behind it.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Let me grab Robert, who was listening in Fairport on the phone.

Hey, Robert.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Thanks for taking my call.

On an earlier show with Stanley Martin, she said that the GBI would be funded from $5 million taken from the police budget.

She was very specific about that.

And, you know, in the wind up to the question to Miss Lupine here, it was kind of vague, but she was specific on the show.

I'm kind of curious to see what Mary Lupine would have to say about that.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yeah, I think I addressed that, you know, it's debt, and Stanley Martin and I didn't talk about that.

So that that was just, you know, their, assessment of what a GBI program could look like.

And certainly that would be a great way to start.

Because that is about the same, amount of money as their vacancy allowance.

But what I and you may not have heard it, but what I said was that I'm really focused on evaluation and research and finding out what the best, GBI program for Rochester would be.

And then, you know, what?

Populations made sense to start it.

But my goal is that everyone who needed that would be able to get it, and researching other ways to even increase our city revenue.

Robert, thank you.

David on YouTube says, I walk the South Wedge daily.

Where do we get the money to keep playgrounds clean, keep the sidewalks cleared of overgrowth, the streets plowed and free of ice during the winter?

I wish city leaders would focus on the fundamentals of running a city, and then do the aspirational stuff.

Well, first, I'd say taking care of our people is not aspirational.

That is why we started a system of taxation and collective governance in the first place.

Right?

So we can do more when we work together.

And I do I do agree.

You know, I feel like potholes.

Street plowing, sidewalk plowing, playgrounds.

Things have never been in such a state of disrepair.

And, you know, we that money comes from, capital improvement, dollars and in the next few years, a lot of that money has been slashed.

You know, they cut big in things like sidewalk, repair and playground maintenance and, you know, we are dipping into our fund balance, which is kind of like our rainy day funds.

And it does, you know, raise the point of how are we going to continue to do these projects?

But in that same capital improvement, you know, plan, there was like $1,500 for or $1.5 million for a downtown revitalization, which is really, amorphous.

I don't know what that means.

But I it is very important to make sure that our city services continue functioning.

But again, it isn't all that much money in the grand scheme of things in this budget.

You know, it's it's, maybe, I wish I had the numbers in front of me, but I think the sidewalk repair programs, like $2 million.

Again, what we spent on the Constellation Brands project Roger on YouTube says I was overcharged by RGA, and now I'm in collections years later with no recourse.

I was forced into making a payment plan and being charged for that until they looked at the meter and realized they were wrong.

The underpayment amounts to their financing or program charges.

This is now on my credit and affecting my ability to survive.

How are you going to fix this for residents utilizing our geni?

That's from Roger.

Yeah.

Roger, I'm sorry you've had that experience.

I myself am fighting with our Jeannie for like, three months in a row of getting a $700 bill.

I'm sorry I didn't use that much electricity.

And I have a line to, you know, the intergovernmental relations person who is supposed to be able to just, like, solve these issues.

So anyone out there listening, if you have an issue with our Jeannie, send me an email, because we can often get it resolved very quickly.

But their first stance is like, no, you're wrong.

But much of the time they are wrong and you know, we don't have much recourse with our Jeannie except, issuing a study to understand how we could buy out our genie and have a public utility.

And, you know, we've had whole shows on that.

And I encourage you to go out and research them.

But, basically, we would be able to bond to buy the infrastructure and then pay back that bond with the profits that we would make, from the ratepayers.

And our Jeannie makes over $100 million a year in profits from Rochester.

But can you make sure the audience understands where in the process we are in terms of any possible public utility?

Right.

So, there have been, you know, motions to make it seem like, the mayor and the majority of city council support the study.

But, you know, they said, well, the county won't do it, and we should it shouldn't really be on the back because our taxpayers, they say we shouldn't be the only ones funding the study.

Yeah.

Which which is, a great way to say we're not actually going to do this, because the real reason we're not doing the study is because Bob Duffy is on the board of Avangrid, our Jeannie's parent company, and gets $250,000 a year to be on the board.

And Joe Morelli, son, is their lobbyist.

So they're not going to do this study.

We need to elect people that are interested in the study or that the public pressure outweighs the pressure that they would get for doing it.

But it's $500,000 for a phase one study to understand if and how we could take over our Jeannie.

And that's what we need to be able to put.

It ultimately needs to go on the ballot for the public to vote on, but they need the information and to be able to know if they should, how they should vote.

So right now it's stymied.

It is stymied.

Okay.

And that is very few people came out to speak on this year's budget, but the people did come out almost predominantly.

asking us to pass the study.

Interesting.

So on public safety, tell me a little bit more about how you see, I'm kind of pulling back my notes here.

So, this budget includes, and, there's oh, Mary, you know, council member, I had this thing that I was going to ask you about.

So this is really good hosting.

It's good.

We we cut funding for violence prevention.

You know, we increased funding.

I'm going to go ahead and go ahead.

We are adding an action team to further diversify.

Here it is 300 $332,000 for the action team housed in the Office of Violence Prevention, a part of the mayor's office.

The team offers a police alternative response to non-emergency calls for service.

Yes.

Is that a positive thing?

Yes.

And that that idea came from me.

Not that the mayor would acknowledge that, but you know, you can see that in prior, council meetings where where he did before election time.

It is a positive step forward.

But there are more.

This is just for phase one, you know, there are more phases to this.

It is not the it should not be in the mayor's office.

This should be in the same department as the person in crisis team.

But why is that matter?

I mean, like, effectively it's going to do the same thing, isn't it?

Exactly.

So you have to duplicate all of the infrastructure.

But when Council member Stanley Martin says, she laments that the bill.

This budget does little to allocate funds to public safety alternatives to police, do you agree with that?

It's how much did you say 300, 332,000 to, 150, $10 million plus benefits, plus pension?

Yes.

It's a drop in the bucket.

So you're saying it's not enough?

No.

We need to scale it up in that same study from the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, where those recommendations for this team came from, 18% of 911 calls need a police response.

We are sending police to all kinds of things that they do not want to be at.

They do not need to be at, and we are wasting their time.

And so when we do need help, they're not available right now.

You know, I got into I got into a car accident, the Sunday before election because somebody tried to pass me in oncoming traffic and I turned into their car.

We waited three hours for the police to come.

They never came.

Now I'm fighting with my insurance company because I have a police report.

Why are we sending police to just take the report?

Right.

They're not more, skilled at writing down what each of us said, right.

But this is we.

And they weren't coming because they had other important things to do.

But there's there's more things that we are sending police to than they have time to come and attend.

Because, you know, we are down 120 patrol officers.

We're in a retention and recruitment crisis.

We can't just go out and hire more cops.

We have eight in the academy.

And beyond the fact that we need to hire more from the city, more officers of color that understand our population.

Right.

We just don't have the ones to go to these calls.

So we need to scale up our community responder programs to meet the 82% of calls that could be answered by that in our remaining minutes here.

And we've talked about GBI, which in itself is a way to potentially address some housing.

But let me be specific.

On housing, Bonnie called to ask what about taking older housing into co-ops in general?

Okay, so yes to that, you say.

So I want you to take some time to be specific about where what you think could be done regarding housing.

Yeah.

And what is being done.

I think that there needs to be a variety of housing options and cooperatives as one, one really important way that we could, help people do more together.

And, you know, I, I come from an intentional, community background where I've lived in a couple of cooperatives and even even sharing, pooling our money to buy food together, to buy it in bulk.

There's so much efficiency that we could be doing.

You know, Dana miller, who is the commissioner of neighborhood business development, one of the his ideas that he champions as a mom.

One so having single moms come together in a living situation where they have shared, you know, shared kitchen where they could easily, you know, share childcare, these, these ideas that a communal mom, a mom, you know.

Yeah.

Which I love.

But we haven't done it.

You know, it's just kind of one of those ideas out there, you know, maybe someday.

But, accessory dwelling units, which are, you know, smaller granny flats, you might have heard them called in backyards, converting garages.

You know, tiny homes, those allowed or not ADUs, they are sort of allowed in this next zoning code.

They are allowed everywhere as a right if they are attached and the zoning codes coming out.

One great question.

We don't know.

Okay.

The zoning, zoning, department has been done with it for like a year.

It's just people will ask the zoning department when it's going to come to council.

And he's like, I don't know, as council.

And we're like, I don't know.

You tell us.

It's I think it's, some of the things maybe were politically unpopular and so definitely wasn't going to come out before this election.

And maybe the fall.

Okay.

But in our last 90s then, so you've talked about some of what you'd like to see with housing.

Realistically, what is going to happen with housing right now?

Not very much is going to change at all.

You know, the mayor did put out an RFP for modular housing after both Shashi and I were talking about this, but it was for nine units, and it was for people who make 66 to $91,000 a year.

So that's the mayor's idea of innovation.

Nothing will change unless people turn out and demand that change.

Last minute here.

Do you think that this campaign that just wrapped up last month, does that damage your ability to work with people, to work with this mayor?

My ability to work with the mayor was zero before the campaign.

He won't even pick up my call.

He won't even look me in the eyes.

This campaign gives me more political power because I had people that it resonated with them.

And you could tell by the way that he adopted my ideas and he adopted my language.

He knows it resonated, and that gives me much more ability to have my ideas out there in the public and work with my colleagues, you know, that are, aligning with these ideas to get the public, which is ultimately our only power as a minority on council.

When you look at New York City and the music's going to play here, you're very optimistic about what a possible Mayor Mamdani would do.

Absolutely.

If publicly owned grocery stores, if things like that, if they don't work, will you change your mind on some of that stuff?

I'm always open to being wrong.

I do think that they're going to work.

I mean, people watching on YouTube.

Mary's got a big smile talking about Mamdani.

I do, but I think it's important for leaders to accept that their ideas may not be the best one and be open to new to new information.

When government passes budgets at different levels, we invite, the people in government to come on this program and talk about it.

And we're grateful when they're willing to do that.

We're grateful for the time that you give Mary Lou being a member of Rochester City Council.

Thank you for making time, I appreciate it.

Nice talking to you.

Thank you, listeners, for being with us viewers on YouTube and from the whole team.

We're back with you.

We've got some special programing tomorrow on Independence Day, and we'll see you next week on member supported public media.

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