Richards dumped as chairman of the school modernization board. Clifford has a hissy fit at City Council.

Politics in Rochester has been rather boring during our long, hot summer.
Most energy has been wasted upon the presidential election, debating the relative merits of electing one or the other of the most evil people the two major political parties have ever puked up for the delectation of American voters: Clinton's Bitch or The Donald.
Concern about local crime, murders and police arrests of disobedient protesters pass into collective oblivion almost as soon as they make the front page of the local newsrag, the D&C.
Last night, local politics heated up again. Ex mayor Tom Richards was ousted as chairman of the school modernization board. The majority of that board didn't trust his leadership to supervise a $1.3 billion modernization plan for the Rochester City School District.
Replacing Richards is Allen Williams, Mayor Warren's director of special projects. Nobody knows exactly what Williams' job is in the Warren administration, not even most people at City Hall.
The reason for Richards' ouster is the union contracts involved in the modernization plan.
The D&C stated "At issue in the vote was whether a similar agreement for the project’s Phase I was successful. Only five women or minority apprentices ended up working on Phase I as a result of that agreement, although larger goals for minority hiring were met. More than 20 percent of all workers in Phase I were minorities."
Richards wanted to keep the union agreements intact. The unions backed both him and the notorious Molly Clifford, after all. He and she owe them. Big time.
Williams did not, and so he replaced Richards as chairman.
Richards might take this as a sign that it is time for him to retire. He only took the appointment to the board to stick it to the mayor, to get back at her for beating him in the 2013 election.
But there is more to this story.
At last night's monthly city council meeting, Clifford needed to vent publicly about those union contracts.
She was put promptly into her place by Adam McFadden, who equally publicly stated how those union contracts had failed.
Carolee Conklin eventually jumped in to break up the fight and referee, while Mayor Warren put an end to Clifford's hissy fit by tartly stating that her concerns had been noted.
It was odd that the D&C never bothered to make any mention of that in their newsrag.

Update: Carlos Carballada is named deputy mayor.

Looks like Mayor Lovely Warren is into recycling.
Carlos Carballada was appointed deputy mayor this afternoon. He starts in June.
Carballada was touted by Mayor Warren as having experience in city government.
That's true enough.
He was a fixture in the Doofus and Richards administrations.
Toilet bowls are also referred to as "fixtures."
He was acting mayor from January to April 2011, during the succession crisis and special election that year.
Carballada is also a publicly acknowledged perjurer. That has never been a hindrance in politics.
He was also the commissioner for neighborhood and business development, overseeing the continuing decay of Rochester.
Good choice, Mayor Warren.

Bill Johnson to get key to the city.

As part of the celebration of the Urban League of Rochester's 50th anniversary, ex mayor Bill Johnson will be presented with a key to the city.
I assume it's because of the work he is credited with doing when he headed that group before he became mayor of Rochester in 1993.
His three terms as mayor of Rochester benefitted him enormously, but were an unqualified disaster for Rochester.
His legacy of failures include High Falls, Midtown, the Fast Ferry, to name the most obvious ones.
They all cost the taxpayers millions.
The only notable monument to his twelve years as mayor is the tacky, multi-colored sign on the Inner Loop bridge over State Street that reads "Welcome to High Falls."
It might just as easily have read "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter."
The only notable success about Bill Johnson as mayor is that he was Rochester's first black mayor.
Bleeding heart liberals ooohed and aaahed over that.
He will be given the key to the city by Rochester's second black mayor, Lovely Warren.
She is therefore not unique in that respect.
Lovely Warren and her mentor, David Gantt, were opposed to Johnson running for mayor again during the special election in 2011. Johnson's campaign might have upset the deal Gantt claims he made with Tom Richards during that election so that Warren might run unopposed in 2013.
Ironic, isn't it?

Hitting rock bottom.

The figures have come in and the verdict is out.
After forty years of Democratic misrule, Rochester, New York, is now the poorest city of its size in the entire US of A.
Coupled with the fact that we have the worst school system in New York State and one of the worst in the country, we are clearly up Shit Creek without a paddle.
This is one thing you can't pin on the Warren Administration.
Truly, Warren Administration has enough mortal sins and fatal flaws in its makeup to answer for, but they inherited this mess from previous incompetent and inept mayors.
The downward slide in Rochester's fortunes goes back more than twenty years, to the Johnson Administration.
This subject has been covered in depth elsewhere, so only a brief summation will be offered here.
Rochester's prosperity was based on heavy industry. The change in technology resulted in heavy industry being discontinued, with tens of thousands of jobs in those areas being eliminated.
The precipitous decline of Kodak, Rochester's sacred cow and largest employer, and the ripple effect it was producing was evident during the 1990s.
The Johnson Administration, a less than creative bunch, chose to ignore it and concentrate on enjoying themselves. It was more fun to have fun than come up with any definite plans for Rochester's future.
Mayor Johnson himself was concerned with creating his legacy, which has proved disastrous, and amassing a fortune, at which he was much more successful.
It also raised the spectre of racism here.
Critics of the Johnson Administration were branded as racists, which helped muffle his opponents in the city, at least.
After twelve years, Johnson was succeeded as mayor by his endorsed candidate Bob Duffy.
Duffy promptly double-crossed Johnson on the subject of political appointments and began to dismantle Johnson's ill-devised memorials to himself.
Rochester's economic decline was clearly evident then. Rochester was making the national poverty and poor school performance lists.
Duffy substituted his height and folksy charm for policy, which accomplished nothing for Rochester, but it convinced him that he was in way over his head and beyond his capabilities.
He fled for Albany at the first opportunity, where his ineptitude was so conspicuous that he did not seek to remain on Andrew Cuomo's ticket in 2014.
Duffy's hand-picked successor, Tom Richards, was a willow the wisp. Labeled as a "progressive," he was no such thing. Rochester's fortunes continued to decline ( Duffy proved to be of no help in Albany whatsoever ) because he inherited Duffy's do nothing administration.
The few jobs he created did not counter the massive job losses that continued to occur in Rochester because even he had no clear-cut program to grow business here.
Rochester continued to decline during Richards' brief tenure as mayor, and he was ousted in 2013.
That's where Lovely Warren comes in. She inherited more than twenty years of neglect.
While her administration hasn't accomplished anything visibly beneficial yet, and it has been barely a year since she took office, she, personally, has her share of blame to bear for the sad state of Rochester. She was in city government for 6 years before becoming mayor, as a city councilor and then city council president.
They came up with nothing to turn the city around, and have no sense of shame about anything.
The big question is, is it too late to turn the city around? Especially a city that has been neglected for decades and where the only evident policies are political correctness and reverse racism?