City Council nixes Mayor Warren's feasibility study for a Broadway style theater.

Mayor Warren received a shock yesterday.
Our usually complacent City Council refused to do as they were bidden and approve a feasibility study for a new theater downtown.
Previous studies and plans for such a project always concluded with the fact that a theater of such magnitude in downtown Rochester was not economically feasible. Such a project would require continued public subsidies to keep it in operation.
That means we, the taxpayers, would get stuck footing the bill for something most of us would never use.
Councilmember Carolee Conklin referred to those previous studies and their conclusions. She asked what had changed.
Nothing has changed, except perhaps that Rochester has gotten poorer.
Mayor Warren based her campaign on a "two cities" rhetoric: one for the rich, one for the poor. Especially the black poor.
Unfortunately, the mayor built better than she knew.
Her associates could not approve a feasibility study that would result in building a downtown playground for Rochester's rich and not so famous, and try to pass it off as something necessary to the poor voters who repeatedly elect them to office.
That would be rather hypocritical. City Council does not wish to appear hypocritical.
Conklin also asked why it was necessary to hire a consultant to do the feasibility study. Wasn't City Hall's own department of neighborhood and business development be capable of doing it for nothing?
The NBD might be capable of conducting such a study, but if it was honest in its research, it probably wouldn't come up with the results the mayor and Arnold Rothschild want.
Nobody but the mayor and Rothschild's Rochester Broadway Theater League want such a theater, anyway.
If you buy and pay for a study of some topic, you can generally be assured of the desired prognosis.
The Broadway style theater will again be put on the back burner, an object of apathy to most Rochesterians.
But you have to hand it to Carolee Conklin. She has bigger brass balls than anyone in City Hall.

The poor to pay for the pleasures of the rich.

Rochester is one of the poorest cities in America for its size.
So, to combat poverty, Rochester will be hiring consultants to the tune of $211,000 ( plus change ) to study the feasibility of building a Broadway style theater downtown.
The city got a state grant for $100,000 for this purpose.
Rochester, and that means you and me, will cover the rest.
Plans for such a theater has been on the table for years. The stumbling block has always been the cost.
Its chief proponent is the Rochester Broadway Theater League, led by local millionaire Arnold Rothschild. They argue that a theater of this nature is a necessity.
For what? For whom?
For them, definitely.
The solution is clear: They want it, they need it, they can pay for building it themselves.
But the neat, well-heeled elite who meet to eat overpriced meat at 2Vine have no intention of paying for it themselves. They want your tax dollars to do it so that they can better enjoy their lifestyles of the rich and not so famous at no cost to themselves.
Mr. Rothschild, it might be recalled, was a heavy contributor to Mayor Warren's election campaign.
Ms. Warren has been scrupulous about paying her debts to her rich supporters, so she has already asked for $100 million dollars from Governor Cuomo for the purpose of building an entertainment center downtown.
She was turned down. So now we are going to have a feasibility study about such a theater to convince the government to pay for it.
Perhaps the Mayor can also convince the government to pay for their polo ponies.
What a way to fight poverty.