- FILE PHOTO
- A day of reckoning may be approaching for Medley Centre's developer.
On Tuesday, Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks will speak to the
Monroe County Industrial Development Agency about what she’s called “the ongoing saga of Medley Centre.”
Mall owner
Bersin Properties missed a deadline to make $3.9 million in tax incentive and penalty payments to COMIDA, the Town of Irondequoit, and the East Irondequoit School District. Officials are now demanding payment by May 1.
During her State of the County address last week, Brooks said she’ll ask the COMIDA board to back a resolution terminating the agreement with Bersin on May 2 if the company doesn’t pay what it owes.
“This is really an issue that goes beyond one developer and one project,” Brooks said during her speech. “You and I don’t have the luxury of missing our tax payments. We don’t get a pass when we don’t pay our bills. We cannot hold developers or companies to a different standard.”
The COMIDA board meets at noon on Tuesday at the Watts Conference Center, 49 South Fitzhugh Street. The agenda and summaries of the incentive packages up for approval
are available here.
The local Sierra Club chapter’s annual Earth Day forum will center on local action to address climate change. It will be held on Thursday at First Unitarian Church, 220 South Winton Road; an environmental fair starts at 5:30 p.m. and the main program starts at 7 p.m.
The featured speaker will be
Mark Lowery, a climate policy analyst in the State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Office of Climate Change. The office leads the state’s multi-agency Climate Smart Communities program.
Communities that sign on to the voluntary program typically develop plans in two key areas: reducing communitywide greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for hazards related to ongoing or anticipated climate shifts.
But organizers also hope the audience can have an honest discussion about what climate change means for the Rochester area, and how communities can adapt.
The
Sierra Club’s website has more information.
BY JEREMY MOULE
Take Back the Land Rochester and community supporters will demonstrate and form a n
onviolent eviction blockade to stop what they say is the
unjust foreclosure-eviction of Akhom Phetphanh and his family at 256 Durnan Street. Tuesday is the first day that the eviction could be carried out.
The protest is at 11 a.m. on Tuesday at 256 Durnan Street.
BY CHRISTINE CARRIE FIEN