Every cop in town appears to have been at one bar, celebrating the swearing in of the new chief, who is also there. One ends up hitting a bunch of kids with his car hours later. What is the new chief supposed to do about that, considering he was at the same bar? Now our mayor is nowhere to be found, evidently. One trustee is calling for an “independent investigation.” Well, yeah: there isn’t anybody left who can investigate, is there?:
Here is the thing: if four cops walk into a bar in Rochester, worst case scenario, every one of them could get into a drunk-driving accident and there would still be a police department to handle the situation. That isn’t the case in East Rochester. In East Rochester, two cops in any one location represent a bench-clearing back at the precinct.
And then you think to yourself: wait, how many cops do we have patrolling a mile of village, anyway? How much is that costing us? When the one time there is a crisis, they’re completely worthless?
Administrators – seemingly at pains to explain our young mayor’s notable absence – have very little to say on the matter themselves. It is painfully obvious that the government of East Rochester operates as a paper-pushing system that could be replaced by a single website. Anything more complicated than “when is garbage day” is too much to ask of our local government.
In the three years since we moved here from Rochester, I’ve really come to love East Rochester. Its a nice place with a lot of local character. But in a state with 5,000 local government agencies, in a time when budget-cutting measures are costing us teachers and band programs and health care initiatives…. it just seems like we could use a few less governments.