June 17 Letter to Mayor Warren and County Executive Bello
The following letter was personally delivered to Mayor Lovely Warren and Monroe County Executive Adam Bello on Thursday, June 17, 2021.
The next day, the City of Rochester announced a plan for next steps for the RASE Commission’s recommendations.
On Friday, July 16, County Executive Bello and Mayor Warren responded directly to our letter.
Mayor Warren and County Executive Bello,
During the last two months, the Urban League of Rochester has convened a group of more than 200 leaders from across our community to seek action steps to shift power in Rochester toward equity and justice. Our most recent meetings of these Powerbrokers have centered on discussions of the Commission on Racial and Structural Equity (RASE)’s inaugural report No Time for Excuses: It’s Time for Action.
We first wish to thank the City of Rochester and Monroe County for investing the time, energy, and resources in the creation of the RASE Commission. It is heartening when our elected officials prioritize systemic racism and equity matters and take action. Additionally, the group applauds you both, Mayor Warren and County Executive Bello, for taking a stand for a true living wage and, Mayor Warren, for your work exploring reparations. These are steps in the right direction under the Commission’s “Solution 1: Expand Economic Opportunity.”
Our Powerbroker community is passionate about addressing the findings of your RASE Commission’s report, and, as the title says, we too believe It’s Time for Action. With that said, it is vital that you, our elected officials, make transparent what next steps look like and whom you will hold responsible for taking said action. We are deeply concerned that the Commission’s hard work could land on a shelf without a clear plan for implementation and follow-through.
Last Tuesday, Mayor Warren’s budget for fiscal year 2022 was approved by a narrow margin of 5-4 by the City Council. This budget includes $1 million that have been earmarked for the implementation of the RASE Commission’s recommendations. As a collective, we would like to better understand the spending plan for those dollars and offer recommendations as to how the funds should be allocated among the five solution areas the Commission has proposed. The RASE Commissioners themselves are the content experts, and we would expect that they would be reconvened to assist the City and County with the budget and action plan.
While $1 million is a substantial sum, we recognize that it may not be enough funding on its own to fully bring to fruition all of the Commission’s recommendations. In our Powerbroker discussions, it was suggested that establishing “quick wins” across all five solution areas would both boost the morale and faith of the community in its government and also attract additional public and private funding sources to facilitate the rest of the recommendations. One such quick win was the $15/hour minimum wage increase for City and County employees. Additional easily attainable improvements include
establishing a local process for becoming MWBE-certified;
enacting a local fair housing law to protect BIPOC;
creating an action-oriented racial justice task force that includes the voices of a diverse cross-section of community members;
collaborating with the Center for Governmental Research (CGR)—the preparers of the report—on transparent indicators of progress and future biannual reports; and
producing a community-wide, graphic-forward social and traditional media campaign to ensure all of Rochester understands the core findings of the RASE Commission’s report regardless of their educational and/or linguistic background.
We also strongly recommend that the City and County take the RASE Commission’s advice that services be decentralized and embedded in trusted community organizations as partners in this change process; many of them are represented by signatories of this letter. We would echo City Council member Mitch Gruber's sentiment that “We continue to ask critical services to do more with less and get less from those that have more to give.” Partnerships between community organizations and the municipality will require a significant investment of resources into these organizations: Many restorative justice, education, mental health, and workforce development program offerings are already serving as stopgap measures for ineffective or insufficient governmental services for youth and adults in our community. Our community might not need to create new alternatives to policing or municipal human services, but rather provide the ones that are already extant in the greater community the funding they need. (It is worth noting here that the approved Rochester Police Department budget is more than $95 million.)
Though COVID-19 and social distancing have understandably been a stumbling block for effecting change quickly, it has now been a full year since George Floyd’s death. The City and County have had the RASE Commission’s report in hand since March 16, almost a year after Daniel Prude was killed in our own streets. Three months later, we are not seeing the results we would expect with so clear a set of recommendations and ample community support and interest in a more equitable Rochester.
To be clear, we stand with you. We know you want positive change just like we do. But we cannot satisfy ourselves with mere discussion, even on the wide-reaching, highly organized scale of a one-time joint City/County commission. Through the RASE report, we all now better understand our enemy: systemic racism. Malcolm X once said that “if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.”
We the people need your support in creating that program. The RASE Commission receiving funding of $1 million is heartening, yet it remains unclear how these funds will be used. It is likewise unclear whether this represents a satisfactory sum to truly turn the tide of systemic racism in our community. But the people must be given adequate resources and be empowered to influence the plan of action against this common enemy. To this end, we respectfully request a substantive response to this letter from the City and County within three weeks’ time.
It’s Time for Action.
Respectfully,
The Powerbrokers of Rochester
Signatories:
Jim Armstrong
Eliza Benedick (Administrative Assistant, Urban League of Rochester)
Marlene Bessette (President and CEO, Catholic Family Center)
Anne Beyer (VP of Program Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Urban League of Rochester)
Dan Butler (Equity and Advocacy Division Director, Urban League of Rochester)
Stephen Cady (Senior Minister, Asbury First United Methodist Church)
Essie Calhoun McDavid (Board Member, Urban League of Rochester)
Bill Carpenter (CEO, RTS)
Beth Ciardi (Director, Golisano Autism Center)
Maria Cristalli (President and CEO, Hillside Family of Agencies)
Rick DeJesus-Rueff
Sr. Donna Del Santo, SSJ
Andrea DeMeo (President and CEO, Trillium Health)
Diane DeRuyter
Jackie Dozier (Project Manager, Common Ground Health)
Lori Drescher (Founder, Recovery Coach University)
Maisha Enaharo (Co-Founder, Black Women’s Leadership Forum)
Sarah Farash, LMSW, PhD (Researcher, Strong Center for Developmental Disabilities)
Dave Fiedler (Board Chair, CGR)
Councilwoman Patrina Freeman (Town of Irondequoit)
Marisa Geitner (President and CEO, Heritage Christian Services)
Mary Gifkins
Melinda Goldberg (Director, Council of Agency Executives)
Theresa Green (Senior Geriatric Care Manager, Urban League of Rochester)
Earl Greene (Director of Racial Justice, Family Engagement, and Equity, Children’s Institute, Inc.)
Dr. Seanelle Hawkins (President and CEO, Urban League of Rochester)
Dr. Myra Henry (President and CEO, YWCA Rochester and Monroe County)
Christine Hunt
Becky Jagla
Steven Jarose (Executive Director, NCBI Rochester)
Becca Delaney Johnson (Founder and CEO, The Cause Collaborative)
Julio Jordan (Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Ibero-American Action League)
Sandra Katz
Sharnita Lovette (Program Director, Urban League of Rochester)
Larry Marx (CEO, The Children’s Agenda)
Abigail McHugh-Grifa (Executive Director, Climate Solutions Accelerator of the Genesee-Finger Lakes Region)
Sasha Mitchell (Senior Coordinator for Equity and Advocacy, Urban League of Rochester)
Jacqueline Nelson (Minister for Outreach, Asbury First United Methodist Church)
James Norman (Retired President and CEO, Action for a Better Community)
Denishea Ortiz
Angelica Pérez-Delgado (President and CEO, Ibero-American Action League)
Terry Platt (Senior Coach and Mentor, NCBI Rochester)
Annette Ramos (Executive Director, Rochester Latino Theatre Company)
William Rivera-Bloodworth (Communications and Learning Officer, Urban League of Rochester)
Erika Rosenberg (President and CEO, CGR)
Dr. Hank Rubin (Founding Director, Frederick Douglass Center for Collaborative Leadership)
Courtney Shouse (Education Committee Member and Facilitator, SURJ Rochester)
Jonathan W. Siegel
Sally Sutphen (Senior Development Associate, Urban League of Rochester)
Robert H. Thompson (Director, The Center for Community Engagement at St. John Fisher College)
Phyllis Tierney, SSJ (Coordinator, Justice and Peace Office)
Jerome Underwood (President and CEO, Action for a Better Community)
Taurean Uthman (Program Director, Urban League of Rochester)
Christine Wagner, SSJ PhD (Executive Director, St. Joseph’s Neighborhood Center)
Sherry Walker-Cowart
Anne Marie White (Executive Director, Children’s Institute, Inc.)
Alyssa Whitfield (Founder, Dress for Success Rochester)
Kevin Wilson (Senior Career Advocate, Urban League of Rochester)
Karen Zandi (President and CEO, Mary Cariola Center)
Questions or media inquiries may be sent to wrivera@ulr.org.