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Here is an excellent opinion article in the Buffalo News about revitalizing the area. It is geared at Buffalo, but is very applicable to Rochester as well.
Buffalo should look to Boston for a lesson in recovery : Opinion : The Buffalo News (http://www.buffalonews.com/149/story/417990.html - broken link)
Interesting article. I always thought that about businesses around here. If they cut the taxes for a business/factory to move in, for something the city is already paying on, could it really hurt anything? Even if the city broke even and earned nothing on the taxes from a property that once cost the city money, the income generated from peoples taxes/spending has to account for something.
I was born in Rochester, but lived in Mass. my entire adult life. All the natives say, Boston was as dangerous as Rochester in the 1970s, until Proposition 2 1/2 passed. Since that time, the city has become more and more gentrified. Where in Rochester, you worry whether your neighborhood will grow dangerous, in Boston you worry you will get priced out of it someday.
I am amazed that people in New York aren't outraged by property taxes. How can you possibly take it? Nothing discourages investment more than your ridiculous tax rates. Maybe you can't see it from the inside, but it's clear that property taxes are the root of most of your problems--crime, poverty, the whole lot of it. When taxes started easing in Mass., slum lords realized their properties were suddenly worth more to sell than to rent to tenants on public assistance.
Mass. also has better schools than New York by far, and has great public assistance programs. It's not some stingy Southern state that hates all government no matter what. But here the money comes from a vibrant economy, not homeowners' pocketbooks.
Mass. also has better schools than New York by far,
That might be an exaggeration as New York is constantly rated among the best schools along with Mass. I hear you on a lot of that though. However, the upstate vs. downstate issue and entrenched political establishment of NY are the biggest obstacles to changing taxes. Of course, I am just rehashing the article at this point.
I know this thread is really old, but that link above is now dead. Did anyone snag a copy of the Buffalo Revitalization article? I'd love to give it a read....
I was born in Rochester, but lived in Mass. my entire adult life. All the natives say, Boston was as dangerous as Rochester in the 1970s, until Proposition 2 1/2 passed. Since that time, the city has become more and more gentrified. Where in Rochester, you worry whether your neighborhood will grow dangerous, in Boston you worry you will get priced out of it someday.
I am amazed that people in New York aren't outraged by property taxes. How can you possibly take it? Nothing discourages investment more than your ridiculous tax rates. Maybe you can't see it from the inside, but it's clear that property taxes are the root of most of your problems--crime, poverty, the whole lot of it. When taxes started easing in Mass., slum lords realized their properties were suddenly worth more to sell than to rent to tenants on public assistance.
Mass. also has better schools than New York by far, and has great public assistance programs. It's not some stingy Southern state that hates all government no matter what. But here the money comes from a vibrant economy, not homeowners' pocketbooks.
Western NY has a ton of their local fiefdoms, every little town has a authority for this a PD a school district, the locals elect these people because they think they look and think like them when in fact most of them are nothing but crooks who are infected with the selfish criminal culture that is more the norm than the exception in western NY. Folks pay out of the arse for schools that produce graduates that go out in the world and do not out earn kids from other states where their parents pay much less for their schools.
Monroe County and the city should merge governments, police schools the whole 9 and absorb all the little seperate town governments with them.
I doubt that will ever happen and many in the burbs fear their kids attanding school with too may youth from the city. It wont take much for a local pol to figure out the scare tactics to for that.
I know this thread is really old, but that link above is now dead. Did anyone snag a copy of the Buffalo Revitalization article? I'd love to give it a read....
Cheers
I read it awhile back and I used it as reference for awhile too. Personally, on different levels, I though Boston would be a good role model for the Upstate NY cities. Boston/Mass was able to cut taxes, clean up the city and make it grow. The highway system scandal, is maybe something we should learn from also.
Personally, I think the big hurdle in NY would be cutting taxes. This would probably involve cutting and consolidating government to do it. Massachusetts for example, has NO counties. Think of how much money this could save by cutting out all that government.
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