Rochester Junto

2006-10-19T20:57:00.000-05:00

Random, Yes. Amazing, Absolutely,

2006-10-19T09:13:00.000-05:00

City Schools, Reevaluate Your $3M Purchase

Today I learned that the Rochester City School district announced a deal that basically gives all the schools (voice over internet protocol) VOIP phone service. Basically, the data lines for your computer's internet connection also carry the phone signal. The great part about this is that the district will save $1M a year. Great thinking... but with $3M what could we do in the IT world. For starters, consider the fact that a crafty school IT department might have realized that you can get those phones free. Go to Vonage.com and sign up for VOIP service and you can get a free phone. I realize that large networks take a bit more than a free phone, but hear me out.

My dream is that one day we will have visionary people making the big decisions for this community and make Rochester a leader again. The bigger picture that we are missing out on is municipal wifi. Municipal wifi is a wireless internet network, generally provided by the city, that enables all residents to access high bandwidth wireless internet connections. Rochester is trying to position itself as a knowledge economy to compete for the jobs that are still being created on our shores, and this would really enforce that branding message. Based on the cost of the Philadelphia wifi system I calculated our cost to be between $2.5 and $3.75M to cover every square inch of our city with high bandwidth wifi that the school district could retail to residents and provide for free to low income households. Imagine if the school district had the foresight to build this network (for the same cost), put Rochester on the map for yet another innovative decision, and MAKE money off the installation.

If anyone who can make a purchasing decision from the school district is reading this, I would implore you to seek unbiased council on this matter with the RIT Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences to validate my claims. ICS Telecom, the guys doing the current install will tell you I'm nuts. If they're smart, they just might fill out the RFP to install the municipal wifi instead and plug the phones into that. $2.9M spent with 7000 phones and no network, or $2.9M spent with wifi for 220,000 city residents and 7,000 free Vonage phones. We need to demand more of ourselves.

2006-10-18T22:42:00.000-05:00

Klein's Comments on State's Woes Praiseworthy

An article in today's Democrat & Chronicle highlighted the RBA Small Business Council's Businessperson of the Year, award winner Joe Klein. Mr. Klein is a native Rochesterian who has built a customized steel manufacturing company here, Klein Steel, which employs about 135 people. During his acceptance speech he criticized specific legislators, union officials and companies doing business with state government whom he felt made New York, "not a fair, honorable state to live in." Amen!

New York has been hijacked by a bunch of power hungry, self righteous, pork barreling goons. They have managed to turn the state completely upside down. We are currently rated as having among the worst state governments, sales tax rates, property tax rates, income tax rates, highest, workers comp rates, and overall business climate. Why the heck is everyone else in the business community taking this lying down? I don't know Mr. Klein well, but I did have the privilege of serving with him on Bob Duffy's Economic Development Transition Team. Joe Klein loves this community and has been fighting hard for years to keep a business growing despite the obstacles of doing business in this state. I applaud Joe for standing up and making the case that New York is on its knees and unless more people stand up against the status quo, we're in for some serious hard times.

The Rochester Business Alliance and the Small Business Council president, Thomas Ioele, both distanced themselves from Mr. Klein and his remarks after it became clear that feathers were ruffled. It is a shame to see an organization created to help businesses thrive in Rochester, NY pass on the opportunity to build support around Joe Klein's comments.

Admittedly I have not yet heard the full content of the speech and will be making every effort to find it and make it available to you.

2006-10-17T10:46:00.000-05:00

Rochester - Then and Now

This is a 1963 promotional video highlighting Midtown Plaza & Rochester

Here is a spoof someone recently made using that video to illustrate what poor stewards of the city we have been for the past 40 years.

Hopefully this reminds you of Rochester's historic optimism and contrasts it with our current "woe is me" attitude. The community's attitude towards the city's future needs to be more in line with the attitudes of 40 years ago if we are going to turn this city around. There's a lot that needs doing, but there's nothing we can't do.

2006-10-16T11:17:00.000-05:00

New York: 4200 Local Governments and Growing

One of the primary goals of this blog is to identify critical problems that keep our region stifled from its true potential. It is no mystery that New York State has been consistently rated among the worst and most inefficient governments in the Nation. There are so may areas for improvement that I could write an article a day for the rest of my life and not run out of topics. We need to look for the big ones, use that paretto principle - the 80/20 rule - and pick our battles.

Former Mayor Bill Johnson was a lot of things, and nearly all of them left me wanting more from Rochester’s leadership. One of his more controversial proposals was to begin merging parts of county and city governments. On the surface this sounds innocuous enough, but it is really an excellent way to streamline government. There are nearly 30 towns and villages in Monroe County alone. Nearly every one of those has zoning boards, fire departments, police forces, and countless other layers of government. Here are some interesting statistics on New York from a recent D&C article about this topic:

· 932 towns
· 554 villages
· 62 cities
· 57 counties
· 700 school districts
· 867 fire districts
· More than 1,000 special-purpose local

How is it possible that we need 1500 different town and village governing bodies in one state? Consider that the town of Penfield’s web site lists 20 departments. If each of these governing bodies had 20 departments with only one employee in each that’s a minimum of 30,000 state employees… who do largely redundant tasks. If New York was a company it would be long overdue for some major restructuring. Until our citizenry actually gets disgusted enough with our government to turn up at the polls, we will just have to keep on being the highest taxed people in the country.

2006-10-15T21:52:00.000-05:00

Feeling Bored?

Frank Caliendo Doing an Amazing George Bush Impersonation

List of the top 100 websites in the United States

Ever Wonder What a Depth Charge Detonation is Like?

A Farewell to Habeas Corpus

2006-10-13T23:32:00.000-05:00

TEDTalks: Talks By World's Biggest Innovators

I have been watching these videos for the past few weeks off and on. They are a series of 20 minute talks by some of the most gifted and innovative people of our time. Each one has the opportunity to speak for 20 minutes about anything they desire to share that has, or could possibly, benefit society. TEDTalks is the name of the video section but be sure to look into TED.com. They are a group with an amazing mission.

2006-10-13T14:13:00.000-05:00

Avoid Power Outages and Improve The Environment

The big story in the paper today reads, "Snows close down 105 miles of I-90, leaves 350,000 without power." In our part of the world we are spared from the torment of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and nearly every other form of natural disaster. The exception being Rochester's notorious winter storms that have been known to leave people without power for up to several weeks. Googling around for a few minutes led me to a fantastic technology called Combined Cooling, Heating, and Power (CCHP) that delivers distributed generation of energy, heating, and cooling. The basic premise of distributed generation is that nearly 50% of all the energy in the US is lost to production losses at the plant and transmission losses over our huge, antiquated, grid.

Home CCHP systems have the chance of freeing us from the notoriouisly abusive pricing of New York energy companies. In a nutshell CCHP systems are onsite gas fired turbine generators that use the waste heat to heat and - believe it or not - cool your home. Power generation is often over 90% efficient, has no transmission losses and you don't need to pay for it to be delivered to your home. The result is a clean efficient generator/furnace/air conditioner in a box located in your basement. When the power goes out in your neighborhood, you will only notice when your neighbors show up at your door to enjoy your heat and functional appliances!

This technology is also the kind of thing we should be integrating into the Renaissance Square LEED Platinum building design. The Transamerica Pyramid building in the financial district of San Francisco is in the process of installing a 1.1 MW CHP system. Some interesting savings they expect to see that we should demand of RenSquare are:

Recovered waste heat from the engines will be used to heat the building, displacing 100% of the steam currently purchased for heating purposes.
Waste heat will drive a 320-ton absorption chiller that will be installed to create chilled water for the building”.
Double the overall fuel efficiency over utility-produced power.
40% reduction in greenhouse gasses.
Zero downtime of electricity availability due to on-site generation

To that point, the CHP system installed at Saddleback Community College in San Diego, CA is estimated to produced a monetary savings of $11.2 million over the next 15 years. Are we demanding enough of our city?

2006-10-12T17:24:00.000-05:00

RG&E Sued for Excessive Pollution

Last year RG&E emitted 1,800 tons of nitrogen oxides and 15,000 tons of sulfur dioxides into the air that you and I must breathe on a daily basis. Can anyone say "asthma"? My lungs hurt just thinking about it. Plus, air pollution is the cause of acid rain, and acid rain pollutes our rivers, lakes, and groundwater, which creates an entirely new set of problems. It is a list that could go on and on. Luckily, somebody has decided to do something about it.

The Democrat and Chronicle reported this morning that RG&E is being sued by the state for its harmful emmissions. They've quoted Attorney General Eliot Spitzer as saying, "The state informed RG&E over six years ago that its plant was violating the law, but the company refused to cut its air pollution. A lawsuit will ask the court to compel the company to take appropriate steps to curtail its harmful emissions." Spitzer has come under some criticism for announcing this lawsuit just before the impending elections. His critics are calling this a publicity stunt. Well, obvioulsy this is a publicity stunt! The thing is, its a good one. Eliot Spitzer is doing our community a tremendous service by holding RG&E accountable. Each household that consumes energy provided by RG&E pays upwards of thousands of dollars a year. To find out that a company that takes in a huge portion of the dollars we work so hard for is spending them frivolously should cause outrage amongst everybody who uses their services. Instead, people are pointing their fingers at Spitzer's motives and ignoring the real issue.

It would cost RG&E less money to make cleaner energy. That's really all there is to it. There are so many things that the electric company could do to create cheaper power for the community. RG&E should be advocating LED light bulbs. They should be working with the companies that use the most power to lower their demand by integrating more efficient technologies. And above all, they should be finding a way to create more efficient power. Its not like they would have to come up with totally innovative solutions, because the solutions already exist! The best way to create power in our climate is wind turbines. We should have a turbine anywhere that a turbine will fit. Perhaps the port of Rochester, or the Southern Tier, or on top of industrial buildings. Smokestacks sit on top of many urban buildings that no longer even use them. Add a little bit of height, and a wind turbine on top, and you have yourself a clean source of energy that takes a heavy load off of RG&E. The average commercial wind turbine would be capable of powering 1000 or more homes. Plus, it would say a lot about the kind of progressive place that Rochester is if we had some wind turbines sprinkled across our skyline. It would give us national branding as a clean city that would draw new businesses and residents.

It is my deepest hope that RG&E will take the publicity caused by this scandal, and turn it into an opportunity to brand themselves as a company that cares about its customers and their environment.

2006-10-12T11:13:00.000-05:00

Could Renaissance Square Be a Turning Point?

RenSquare, as it has come to be known, has the potential to be a huge money pit that drives smaller theatre venues out of business and sinks like our last major experiment. It is also just as likely to serve as a beacon in the middle of downtown showing the resolve, commitment, and compassion that city residents feel deep down for our embattled city center. The difference is in the management and high-level decision making that will be ongoing until its completion some time in 2010.

Let's be honest, the business plan that preceded the fast ferry would not have gotten me a passing grade in my RIT business classes. Somehow, it was good enough for Bill Johnson to stake our collective financial futures on with no downside protection. Rochester could easily support a trans-Ontario ferry service to Toronto and make a buck doing it. If we had two smaller boats with mutually convenient schedules on both shores and the option of running one boat during off-peak periods at a fraction the cost of the "Cat." The planning and management were catastrophic and the ferry failed.

Now we find ourselves, as a community, at the brink of putting nearly a quarter of a billion dollars into Renaissance Square. Believe it or not, I am all for it and I am going to do everything in my power to ensure we knock this one out of the park.

Last night I attended the fifth public workshop for the project along with a pitifully small group of other interested onlookers and members of the media. While listening to the lead architect, Moshe Safdie, I realized that we had a very talented man at the helm of this project. Further research revealed that we have one of the most prolific architects in the world designing a complex for us that embodies more than a building. Safdie is a brilliant man who sees his creations as tools to improve the very substance of urban living. Late last night while watching video clips of Safdie discussing projects he completed in Toronto, Israel, Vancouver and Montreal it occurred to me that he seemed more alive than he did discussing Renaissance Square. Why?

I don't think that we, as a community, have demanded enough of this facility. Safdie has been described as a "maverick" and is undoubtedly one of the most innovative architects around. Our project may be huge by measure of dollars invested, but it is the innovators equivalent of being asked to design you a paperweight. We’ve invested millions of dollars in a very capable architect. Let’s make sure he invests his full attention and skill set in us. Safdie has a soft spot for cleaner, greener urban living and we are poised to become one of the leading alternative energy economies in America. Let's make Renaissance Square a beacon of progress and innovation, something to put us on the map and be proud of.

The U.S. Green Building Council has created the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ as the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings. The four levels of certification are Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. Amazingly there are only 15 Platinum certified buildings in the US, and they can be seen on this map made by fundinggreenbuildings.com.

The notion of having a more efficient building in our city is not just some treehugger’s pipedream, but a commonsense solution for a number of our problems.

LEED buildings have dramatically reduced total cost of ownership because of the green building materials and techniques that can save up to 100% of some utilities cost. The last thing this city needs is to be paying the bills for another albatross.
Building the necessary excitement in the community to raise $30+ Million in private money will take more than your average public building project.
Platinum certified buildings are rare enough that having one would put Rochester on the map for building innovation. As companies look for site selection, we will find ourselves on a very short list of sustainability-minded knowledge economies.
This would do more to brand Rochester as a progressive place to live than any other initiative publicly discussed to date, especially as we try to re-brand ourselves for the clean energy economy.
Once completed, RenSquare would be an iconic symbol of pride for the people of Rochester and lead to future pollution-fighting building development in our region.

For a building that tax payers will be paying operating costs for over the next century or so, I would say that Platinum LEED certification should be as high a priority as where to locate the bus terminal.

Let's make a stand, and demand more for our city. There aren't too many opportunities for the community to direct $230 Million in development downtown. We can't afford another fast ferry, and we really need a homerun to bring back some desperately needed civic pride. Mr. Safdie, please consider this a personal and professional challenge to deliver to Rochester one of the most innovative, sustainable, and pivotal green design projects in North America.

2006-10-10T16:25:00.001-05:00

Rochester Junto - Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Rochester, NY was once well on its way to becoming a major city in the American landscape. Some of the most significant inventions of our time in photography, xerography, and optics have been developed in our city. Despite this rich history of innovation and entrepreneurship, Rochester's population has decreased to its lowest level since the census of 1900. What were the public and private sector successes that led to our becoming

America

's first boomtown? Where have we gone wrong since? Like you, I have plenty of opinions about our politicians, laws, taxes and local business policies. My hope is that we can come together to use this blog as a forum to learn, share, debate and innovate.

This year marks my first full year back in Rochester since moving away in 2000 after getting my Bachelors in Finance from RIT. I see opportunity all around me. When I left, I never wanted to come back to Rochester. My family had moved away in 1997, my friends had all taken jobs in big cities, and I saw no potential for me here. Having since spent time in Boston, Richmond, Philadelphia, NYC, and Atlanta as well as getting some international travel under my belt I began to see the true value in Rochester. In 2005 I purchased two multifamily homes in the city, quit my six figure consulting job and moved back to my hometown.

I have been blessed with an amazing network of friends and colleagues who are every bit as dedicated to turning this city around as I am. In December I was lucky enough to be called upon by Bob Duffy to be a member of his Economic Development Transition Team. The discussions we engaged in there opened my eyes to the wealth of possibilities that lie within our reach. Currently, I am neck deep in starting a website with business partner, Daniel Mooney. We hope it will be a major victory for local small business. Please, help me engage our community members and leaders in meaningful discussions by contributing heartfelt productive commentary on this blog.

As this effort evolves I will try to make the format more interactive with forums and increased interactivity. Stay tuned.