batavia

The River Street Bridge over the Tonawanda Creek, which is owned and maintained by Genesee County, received more than $2 million in federal aid to help develop a plan to rehabillitate the structure.

The total estimated cost to rehab the bridge is $2,155,000, divided between three seperate funds:

• 80 percent funded by Federal Highway Administration
• Estimated 15 percent funded by New York State Department of Transportation
• Estimated 5 percent funded by local share (taxpayers)

At an information meeting at City Hall Wednesday night, County Highway Superintendent Timothy Hens said the project would take between four to six months and will begin next June. Construction will take place in eight-hour shifts beginning at 8 a.m.

The bridge was built in 1975. Senior project engineer Jonathan M. Walczak said one of its fault is that the joints were placed at the bottom of the beams and the saltwater and severe weather of Western New York winters took its toll on the bridge joints. He proposes raising the joints so that it's harder for salt and river water to reach them.

A River Street resident asked about raising the actual roadway of River Street and Walczak replied "It's so flat out here, the geometrics just won't let us raise the bridge." 

The engineer's team is already in contact with National Fuel talking about the eight-inch natural gas main; the gas main will be maintained.

River Street residents debated about how handicapped individuals who live at the Birchwood Village Apartments would get to work without bridge access, since several of them work at Tops Market in Batavia.

"I will try to be in touch with local employers to see if we can get an alternate way of transportation," Walczak replied.

Residents suggested installing a temporary sidewalk and Walczak seems open to such ideas.

He was also asked about the dimensions of the sidewalk, five-feet wide, and bridge railing, 45-inches high, and said both will be kept the same.

River Street resident Nann Zorn wasn't at the meeting but wrote to Highway Superintendent Hens espressing concern about the bridge's months-long closure.

"There are hundreds of pedestrains who use this bridge every day as a main route to their employment and to obtain provisions and necessities for their daily lives," Zorn wrote.

That sparked spirited debate on whether it was possible to keep a temporary path open over creek during bridge reconstruction. The proposed detour would be approximately 1.7 miles long and consist of using West Main Street, Oak Street and Pearl Street instead.

Press release from City Department of Public Works:

The contractor for the Summit Street reconstruction has begun work, and as a result, traffic access will be limited during this project.

Please observe the posted detours, and use caution when traveling in the construction zone.

The initial phase of this project will impact the Summit Street sidewalk on the east side of the road, but the west sidewalk will be open and passable for pedestrians.

Summer is here. Mini Golf is, too. Terry Hills Miniature Golf Course opens Friday, June 17th! Excitement for all ages as you putt your way over ramps, bridges, dips & other fun obstacles in pursuit of those Hole-In-Ones! Bring Dad this Father’s Day and he plays for FREE (and if you let him win, that’s OK, too).
Make it a day and stop into the restaurant before or after you play for a delicious lunch, dinner or Sunday Brunch! Click here for our menus (Restaurant Hours: Mon-Fri 11-9, Sunday Brunch 10-2). Terry Hills is located at 5122 Clinton Street Road, Route 33, Batavia, NY. (585) 343-0642

Press release:

The City of Batavia Audit Advisory Committee was established to provide oversight to the financial and compliance reporting process, external audit process and control environment. 

If you are interested in serving on the Audit Advisory Committee, please submit your application (which can be obtained from the Clerk’s Office or found on our website, www.batavianewyork.com) to the City Clerk’s Office by June 30^th.

The Committee aids in the communication between the City Manager and the independent auditor in areas including integrity of the City’s financial statement, compliance with legal and regulatory requirements and the performance, qualifications and independence of the auditors.

The Committee will be responsible for meeting with the auditor’s prior to the audit, reviewing risk assessment, reviewing the draft financial statements and making a recommendation on acceptance of the external audit reports to the City Manager. Additional responsibilities include reviewing the management letter and establishing internal controls. The Committee is made up of three City residents and two Council members.

Thank you for your interest!

Press release:

The City Council is seeking interested individuals to take part in a Deer Management Committee. The committee will be comprised of both citizens and city staff members and will seek to identify and quantify the deer problem within the city and explore all deer management techniques.

The outcome will be a definition of the problem, an outline of all techniques utilized by other communities and identified as best practices to deal with the problem, and a comprehensive list of resources including costs associated with each management practice.  From there, City Council will decide which, if any, deer management practice to initiate for the City of Batavia.

Council is seeking individuals from a diverse background and who are interested in this subject matter. Individuals should reside within the City of Batavia. All interested individuals should submit their application, which can be obtained from the City Clerk’s office or online at www.batavianewyork.com, by June 30th.  Thank you for your interest in this committee!

The National Warplane Museum's C-47 W7 was using the Genesee County Airport this evening for flight operations. W7 served in World War II forn 1943 to 1945. It was a lead plane on one of the first waves of attack starting the D-Day invasion. 

Michael Mazutta, an Afghanistan and Iraq war veteran, was the keynote speaker at a Flag Day ceremony this afternoon at the VA hospital in Batavia.

Included in the ceremony were certificates of appreciation to Vernon Rowe and Joe Gerace. After Rowe received his certificate from Mazutta, he volunteered to present Gerace with his certificate.

Students from Batavia Middle School presented handmade gifts to the veterans who are residents at the hospital.

The St. Joe's band performed after the ceremony.

Prior to his invocation, Chaplain Robert Chambers called for a moment of silence to honor the victims of the mass shooting in Orlando and then prayed for them and their grieving families.

A tree reportedly fell on a house at 3 Madison Ave. in the city. Wires are down, too, and it is blocking the roadway. City fire is responding.

UPDATE 5:18 p.m.: National Grid, Verizon and Time Warner are contacted. The tree has been removed from the roadway.

City police are dispatched to a pending complaint at West Main and North Lyon streets. The caller, who is no longer in the area, told dispatchers a male goes from the sidewalk out into the middle of the roadway and dances approximately one minute, then returns to the sidewalk, and "he's done done this a few times now."

A man is lying roadside with unknown injuries following what is believed to be a motorcycle accident on the westbound Thruway at mile marker 386. Town of Batavia Fire Department and Mercy medic #2 are responding.

City fire is dispatched to Maple Street near Thorpe for a tree stump on fire in a yard.

If you visited Valle Jewelers today, you probably met Megan Williams, mother of Brady, 9, who was diagnosed with neuroblastoma at 20 months.

The Williams family of Oakfield is one of the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation families around the nation that raises money to help fight pediatric cancer. The family has raised more than $30,000 for the foundation, mostly through the lemonade stand they set up every year at Oakfield's Labor Days festival.

Today, as they did last year, Valle's donated 10 percent of all sales to the foundation. 

Plus you got a free cup of lemonade from Megan.

The foundation today had a goal of raising $1 million nationally, through the participation of 36 families, representing the 36 children diagnosed every day with cancer.

The new public market -- a merger of the Business Improvement District's public market and the Genesee County Farmers' Market -- opened at Bank Street and Alva Place today.

A new vendor this year is Big Bossman's BBQ, run by Anthony Person, of Lockport.

Person said his family has a long tradition in the food business, and after his mother died recently, he wanted to keep the tradition going.

Fighting back tears, Pearson told WBTA's Alex Feig that he was president of his mother's company, Mrs. Ribs, but after she died, he didn't want to trade on her name, so he bought his own truck and called it Big Bossman's, a name his parents used for their first restaurant, which they ran out of their home.

The recipes have been handed down generation after generation in his family, from mother to mother to mother, going back to the family's days as slaves in the South. 

He was pleased to get invited to be a vendor in Batavia, he said.

"I’m a small businessman just trying to make an honest living just like anybody else, always looking for a way to expand my market, sell my product in new areas, and Batavia, I’ve always wanted to come this way and the Farmers' Market offered me a chance to showcase my cuisine," he said.

The market will be open for business from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and will run through Oct. 28, weather permitting.

It's probably never happened in Batavia HS history -- three players participating in three different sports across the course of a single school year winning Section V title patches.

This year, Andrew Mruczek, Jake Schrider and Adonis Davis did it in football, basketball and track.

At a school that won six sectional titles this year, a few of other athletes came close, but the trifecta is a singular accomplishment.

"It means a lot to us," Schrider said. "It means we worked hard."

Davis agreed.

"It means hard work paid off," Davis said. "Going to summer camps and workouts to try and reach our goal to be sectional champions. It showed more this year."

It's also an accomplishment that hasn't drawn a lot of attention at school, Davis said. Everybody knows they're champions, but the never-before trifecta hasn't sunk in with the student body.

"They know we've won," Davis said. "They're proud of us, I guess, but they probably just haven't put it all together."

Athletic Director Michael Bromley said it's a great accomplishment that is rarely achieved by athletes in the region. In boys sports this year, Andrew Mruczek, Trevor Sherwood (football and basketball) and Noah Dobbertin (football and wrestling) came the closest when the baseball team lost a title game to Aquinas 2-1, and though several girls got two titles this year, none got quite as close to a third title.

Batavia was blessed with a great group of seniors this year, Bromley said, but also, a great homegrown coaching staff that is also very focused on success and the hard work it takes to achieve it.

The senior athletes, Bromley said, really came together this year and supported each other and their teammates as they competed throughout the year. Athletes not in competition jumped the stands as part of the Blue Zoo, the school's cheering section. They also rallied the school throughout each school day.

"They’re really going to be missed around here," Bromley said. "They were good leaders. They were positive leaders. They were role models. Sometimes you get classes come through who are not those things and this class really was and the school is going to miss them."

The support of classmates and teachers was really a motivating factor all year long, Davis said. 

"Everyone tells us they will come out the games and stuff and you don’t want to disappoint when you have a bunch of teachers and a bunch of students saying they’re coming," Davis said. "That motivates us when people are watching to do it for them.”

It's especially helpful, he said, with road games against bigger Monroe County schools.

"When we travel to other places against bigger schools, our fan base goes with us, and just having people behind us to cheer us on to at the other schools, the bigger schools, it’s more fun," he said.

Brennen Briggs, football, Buddy Brasky, basketball, and Nick Burke, track, are all Batavia HS graduates and lifelong residents. Bromley thinks that further fuels their dedication to the school and the athletic program.

"The time commitment they put into ti and the love they have for Batavia High School is evident," Bromley said. "Those guys are 12-month-a-year coaches. If you go by the track, come by the football field, go by a weight room, come by a gym, one of those guys is probably doing something.

"The real special part about it," he added, "is it seems over recent years is they’ve really come together. They support each other, they share kids, so that’s why we’re seeing a lot of success."

All three share a high level of commitment to hard work and motivating their kids to work hard and stick through the tough things, but given the nature of team sports, Briggs and Brasky also model hard work by watching hours and hours of game film week after week.

"They spend days each week on just looking at film and trying to figure out what we can do to be successful," Bromley said. "The kids have bought into that. They know the coaches are going to work hard for them, so that’s why they work hard."

Asked which coach is the toughest on them, Mruczek, Schrider and Davis said Brasky is, hands down.

"He takes you to a whole new level," Mruczek said. "You've got to be tough. He drives you hard."

Schrider said there's no slacking off during a Brasky-led practice.

"You've got to give 120 percent the whole time," Schrider said.

Davis said that drive made Brasky kind of an "old-fashioned coach," but in a good way.

"When we do stuff, he wants us to be perfect and I think that’s what helps us in games," Davis said. "When we’re practicing, we're doing reps over and over and over again and then we’re more prepared than the other team."

Of the three athletes, only Mruczek has another upcoming season with Brasky, and rather than fearing the intensity, he's looking forward to it.

"It makes me want to be successful," said Mruczek, whose goal for 2016-17 is to repeat the trifecta.

The hard work, the focus on success, has helped each of the young men grow, they said, carrying over to school work and the rest of life.

"I think success on the field is helping me to be successful in school, because being on a sports team, it takes hard work and then in the classroom you’ve got to work hard there, too," Mruczek said.

Davis said he thinks he was still pretty young when he first joined the football team and got exposed to the dedication demanded by Briggs, but he learned quickly that dedication and hard work pays off and that has helped him beyond just athletics and even beyond academics.

"At first, I wasn’t really into putting into much time into sports," said Davis, who now intends to attend SUNY Brockport, compete in track and pursue a degree in athletic training. "Once I did, then everything else, plus the sports, I put more time into it, school, helping out in the community. I volunteered for a camp, a football camp for little kids and I never thought I would  do that. I just put time into stuff. It transfers over to everything else and I think it helped me."

There is a clear connection between athletic success and academic and life success, Bromley said. In athletics, you learn about the value of practice and repetition, how to deal with setbacks and how to work on a common goal with others -- all lessons that carry onto all aspects of adult life.

"Sports are life lessons," Bromley said. "That’s pretty much what it is. That’s probably the area in the academic world where you learn it the most. I would say, after school from 3 to 5, those kids are learning life lessons that they’re going to use forever. Hopefully, they leave after this year and they go on and they’re successful in college and they’re successful parents and some of them come back and coach. That would be great."

(File photos of last year's Penny Carnival held during the Holland Land Office Museum's History Summer Heroes program.)

Press release:

The theme for the 2016 History Heroes Summer Program is "Carnival Days" at the Holland Land Office Museum. This year the children will work together to create a Penny Carnival.

Each day of the summer program is packed with exciting and educational activities, field trips, games, crafts,and more!

The program ends with the carnival and a multimedia musical production showcasing our local history with the children taking on the persona of a famous Batavian.

The program begins on Tuesday, July 19^th and runs for eight week days (Tues.-Fri.), ending on Friday, July 29^th.  Time is 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. A snack is provided each day, but children must bring their own lunches.

The cost is $25 per day for non-members and $20 a day for museum members. The program is open to children ages 7-12.

Please call the museum at 343-4727 for more information and to save a place for your child.