America's North Shore Journal

From Stim­u­lus Watch, this list of projects for the Rochester New York area. My com­ments in bold.

• Brighton: $3.6 mil­lion for Sen­a­tor Keat­ing Blvd. This street is less than a mile long and lined by med­ical office build­ings. I was there last week and it is in great shape.
• Rochester: Broad Street tun­nel rehab: $10 mil­lion. An old sub­way runs under Broad Street. Due to lack of atten­tion over the decades, it is now cre­at­ing prob­lems over­head. Full of winos most of the time.
• Rochester: Mt. Hope Ave. recon­struc­tion $5 mil­lion. Busy street near Uni­ver­sity of Rochester Med­ical Cen­ter. Nar­row, poorly marked, lots of dri­ve­ways for busi­nesses and many pedestrians.
• Rochester: Art Walk 2. $3.3 mil­lion. To extend an "urban art trail" and improve a key inter­sec­tion. Inter­sec­tion sucks. WTF is an "urban art trail" and how is it dif­fer­ent than a sidewalk?
• Rochester: Milling and resur­fac­ing. $3 mil­lion. Dou­bles the City's exist­ing pro­gram for street repairs.
• Rochester: Jef­fer­son Ave revi­tal­iza­tion. $2.5 mil­lion. Mov­ing the hook­ers, gang­bangers and drug deals to another part of the city?
• Rochester: Gene­see River Cross­roads Park Plaza Deck $2.2 mil­lion. Fix­ing the place up for the four peo­ple who use it yearly.
• Rochester: East Hen­ri­etta Road Recon­struc­tion $2 mil­lion. Same dealio as the Mt. Hope work. Road is wider and not as full of pedestrians.
• Rochester: 2009 Haz­ardous Side­walk Replace­ment Pro­gram $2 mil­lion. Dou­bles the City's pro­gram. Guns don't kill peo­ple, side­walks kill people.
• Rochester: Gene­see River­way Trail Reha­bil­i­ta­tion $2 mil­lion. It's a nice walk in the sum­mer, but in Rochester it's unbear­able a good part of the year.
• Rochester: Brooks Avenue Recon­struc­tion $1.775 mil­lion. Another street project. Heavy truck traffic.
• Rochester: South Clinton/Mount Hope $1.25 mil­lion. Improve inter­sec­tion for hook­ers, gang­bangers and drug dealers.
• Rochester: Cul­tural Dis­trict Side­walk Replace­ment. $1.1 mil­lion. They failed to raise enough money for a per­form­ing arts cen­ter, but they can fix up the side­walks for the the­ater goers at the East­man, etc.
• Rochester: La Avenida Streetscape Improve­ments. $1.1 mil­lion. Ensur­ing that the riot­ers at the annual Puerto Rican fes­ti­val have a nice area to enjoy their ran­dom acts of violence.
• Rochester: 2009 Bridge Main­te­nance Pro­gram. $1.1 mil­lion. Dou­bles the City's program.
• Rochester: Stut­son Street Recon­struc­tion. $400,000. How this did not get down when they put the new bridge in sev­eral years ago is beyond me. Part of the "Port" revi­tal­iza­tion. Will be just as empty of tourists after it's completed.
• Rochester: Orchard-Whitney Brown­field Site. $200,000. Obvi­ously unable to make orig­i­nal pol­luters pay.
• Rochester: Durand East­man Beach Water Qual­ity Improve­ments. $1.6 mil­lion. To fil­ter the water being dis­charged from the water treat­ment facil­ity into Lake Ontario. Appar­ently water treat­ment doesn't mean what I thought it meant.
• Rochester: Char­lotte (West) /Summerville (East) Pier Safety Enhance­ment. $1 mil­lion. To keep drunken boaters from run­ning into the damn piers and killing people.
• Rochester: 425–435 Mount Hope Site Envi­ron­men­tal Reme­di­a­tion Project Erie Har­bor on the Gene­see River. $1 mil­lion. I don't have a clue. Sounds like it might be intended to sup­port a pri­vate devel­op­ment on the river.
• Rochester: Run­del Library HVAC Upgrades. $2.2 mil­lion. They have a new library build­ing. This is for the old build­ing. I have no idea why the build­ing is in use.
• Rochester: Revi­tal­iz­ing Vacant Prop­er­ties with Clean Energy Sys­tems Grant. $1.5 mil­lion. Will this be before or after the drug addicts and arson­ists set the places on fire?
• Rochester: Edger­ton Recre­ation Cen­ter Upgrades. $1.315 mil­lion. It might keep some at-risk kids out of trouble.
• Rochester: Mer­cury Vapor Street­light Replace­ment Project. $1.1 mil­lion. More light with less electricity.
• Rochester: Blue Cross Arena Energy Effi­ciency Upgrades. $831,000. Ice mak­ing made more effi­cient to sup­port pro hockey team at no cost to the team.
• Rochester: Chest­nut Street Fire­house HVAC Upgrades. $575,000. 70 year old fire­house. Worth all the trouble?
• Rochester: City Facil­i­ties Energy Effi­ciency Pro­gram. $500,000. You're gonna love this. Change exit signs to more effi­cient light­ing. Tint win­dows. Improve insu­la­tion in 18 build­ings. Change exit sign lights????
• Rochester: Rochester River­side Con­ven­tion Cen­ter Energy Upgrades. $400,000. The Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, where there is no place to park but it gets $$$.