Batman doesn't smile. He doesn't smile when posing with Bill and Joy Hume. He doesn't smile when he has a new book out. He doesn't smile while making a public appearance on a Saturday at Foxprowl Collectables.
In this case, Batman is cosplay specialist, public speaker, and author William Lorenz Jr., of Buffalo, and his new book is "The Ballad of Buffalo's Best Batman."
This is a photo of a field of flowers off Route 77 in Alabama that I took a few days ago.
The following people were arrested by the Genesee County Sheriff’s Office during the Chris Young concert at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center on Friday:
Danielle M. Molisani, 19, of Black Street Road, Caledonia, is charged with false personation after allegedly providing a false name while being ejected from the concert venue.
David M. Filion, 22, of Redlein Drive, Lancaster, is charged with trespass after allegedly reentering the concert venue after being ejected and told not to return.
Michelle S. Scheib, 41, of Fulton Street, Buffalo, s charged with harassment, 2nd, after allegedly punching a security guard in the head.
Donald D. Mikowski, 21, of Wabash Avenue, Cheektowaga, is charged with harassment, 2nd, after allegedly pushing and hitting a security guard inside the venue.
Anthony R. Mason, 30, of Marsdale Road, Buffalo, is charged with DWI and driving with a BAC over .08 percent after allegedly being found operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated.
Eric J. Rejman, 33, of Maishoss Street, Cheektowaga, is charged with DWI, driving with a BAC over .08 percent and refusing to submit to prescreen device after allegedly being found operating a motor vehicle in an intoxicated condition in the parking lot.
Submitted photo and information.
Girl Scouts from Alexander troops 42031 and 42103 along with residents of Havenwood Apartments made 150 stuffed animals over the past few months for first responders to give to children whose families are experiencing stressful difficulties.
The idea began with Marilyn, a resident of Havenwood who passed away but had told the Erin Saile, service coordinator at Havenwood, that she used to make stuff animals in Florida for first responders there. Saile is the wife of Sgt. Jason Saile, Sheriff's Office, so she immediately thought it would be a good project to undertake locally.
Saile contacted Meghan Ripstein, a Girl Scout leader in Alexander, to enlist Girl Scouts into the effort. Several donations from the community also helped make the project possible.
On Friday, the stuff animals were presented to the Sheriff's Office, City fire, and Batavia PD.
Previously:
Memorial Day ceremonies in Batavia.
A car fire has apparently started a house fire at 3625 Telephone Road, Alexander.
Alexander fire dispatched along with Town of Batavia.
UPDATE 10:58 p.m.: The structure is NOT on fire. An ATV was on fire. It was moved away from the house. Town of Batavia can stand down.
Jim Beverly, a hunting retriever trainer from Oakfield, hosted his second annual Companion Retriever Hunting Challenge at Godfrey's Pond in Byron on Saturday. The challenge is primarily for retrieving-trained dogs who are more often pets than hunting companions.
An audit by the state comptroller is more than welcome, officials with Western OTB, operator of Batavia Downs, said this week.
The board of directors unanimously passed a resolution pledging transparency in its business dealings and Henry Wojtaszek, president and CEO of Western OTB, sent a letter to Thomas DiNapoli inviting an audit.
"Over the past several weeks, some media reports have focused on our finances and promotional operations," Wojtaszek wrote. "In order to continue to meet our high standards of transparency and compliance, I would like to inform you we welcome an additional audit of the corporation's finances by your staff and of course will follow any recommendations we can to improve moving forward."
The moves come as a result of reports, based on information from anonymous sources, that Western OTB is the target of an FBI investigation into allegations that "politically wired" companies have received preferential treatment in contracts with the corporation.
It's a charge officials with Western OTB deny.
A source on the board characterized the news reports as based on "rumors."
In his letter, Wojtaszek noted that Western OTB has generated more than $231 million in revenues for the 15 counties in its region and that prior comptroller audits have not revealed any financial impropriators or irregularities.
"(That) is something we are very proud of," Wojtaszek wrote.
Farmworkers have the right to form unions and collectively bargain for wages and working conditions, a New York appellate court ruled this week in a decision that also denied the respondent in the case an opportunity for a hearing on the topic.
The ruling drew a swift rebuke from the respondent, the New York Farm Bureau. The Farm Bureau issued the following statement:
“We are extremely disappointed in the majority’s decision and the breadth of its ruling. The Appellate Court was considering the trial court’s decision on a motion to dismiss, which, if denied would have permitted Farm Bureau to fully litigate this case in the trial court.
"Instead, the majority of the court decided to make a far-reaching determination by declaring the right to collectively bargain as a “fundamental right,” on par with the freedoms of speech and religion. We believe that the majority’s conclusion is unsupportable and disregards decades of precedent.
"The court’s dissenting opinion exposed the flaws in the majority’s ruling and identified that the decision eliminates Farm Bureau’s right to defend the constitutionality of the statute in a trial court.
"Speaking more broadly, if the legislature, and now the courts do not recognize the value of preserving a viable and economically sustainable food production system in the state, New York agriculture will continue to shrink under a mountain of mandates.
"Our rural economy and local job opportunities will suffer. And New Yorkers will find it harder to access New York grown food, instead, relying on food brought in from out of state, or worse yet, out of the country to feed their families. New York Farm Bureau fully intends to appeal the court’s ill-conceived ruling.”
Assemblyman Steve Hawley also criticized the ruling.
“The New York state Appellate Court got this wrong. I’m deeply disappointed, both in the substance of the ruling and in the judicial overreach which prevents the New York Farm Bureau from appropriately litigating this case in trial court. Make no mistake, if the Court of Appeals doesn’t overturn this decision, it will mark the end of family farms in New York state, wiping out hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in economic impact and generations of time-honored tradition older than New York state itself. It’s imperative that the New York Farm Bureau’s appeal is successful,” said Hawley.
The issue is also part of a contentious dispute in the state Legislature over proposed changes in state labor law that, if passed as currently written, would give farmworkers the right to organize and also institute for farmworkers an eight-hour workday, and a 40-hour work week. These provisions, farmers, and farmworkers say would devastate the state's agriculture industry.
The ruling potentially takes away a bargaining chip from opponents of the bill by granting the bill sponsors one of the changes in law they are seeking.
State Senator Rob Ortt, the ranking minority party member of the Agriculture Committee was also unhappy with the ruling.
“After today’s ruling, the last thing we need to do is pass the Farmworkers Fair Labor Act, which goes far beyond today’s ruling, and adds even more regulations on the backs of those responsible for growing our food.”
The ruling, of course, was applauded by those who support labor unions for farmworkers.
“The court’s ruling today was unequivocal that denying farmworkers basic labor rights is flat-out unconstitutional, and farmworkers, like other workers, have the right to organize,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of NYCLU told the New York Law Journal. “The workers on whom we depend for the food on our tables have the right to be treated humanely and with dignity, like any other hardworking New Yorker.”
The Cuomo administration has recently openly supported the move to allow farmworkers to collectively bargain and Attorney General Letitia James said she supported the decision.
The state did not defend itself from the lawsuit filed three years ago by former farmworker Crispin Hernandez, leaving it to the Farm Bureau to represent farmers' interests.
The lawsuit challenged the State Labor Relations Act, passed in 1937, that granted broad rights for workers to organize but specifically excluded farmworkers.
Critics of the exclusion claim the exclusion has its roots in Jim Crow practices (not, at the time, unknown in New York, though generally thought of as practices in the early 20th century in the Deep South) that discriminated against blacks. That history factored into the plaintiff's arguments.
The case was heard by the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department. The majority opinion as written by Justice Christine M. Clark.
The plaintiff's attorneys argued that the 1937 act denied their client equal protection under the law and infringed on a fundamental right to organize and collectively bargain and also violated New York's Constitution. A provision passed at a constitutional convention in 1938 afforded employees the right to organize.
Clark found that constitutional meaning of "employee" included farmworkers.
Indeed, there is nothing in the language of the constitutional provision to support the suggestion that the drafters intended for the term "employees" to be narrowed or limited in any way. Accordingly, when the term "employees" is given its natural and ordinary meaning, we think it clear that the constitutional right to organize and collectively bargain extends to individuals employed as farm laborers
In his lone dissent, Justice Stan L. Pritzker noted that the constitutional convention was held a year after the labor act was passed so the framers certainly had a very clear understanding of the law as written and did not intend to include farmworkers in the constitutional provision allowing employees to organize.
He also did not include the right to organize in his list of fundamental rights even though the right to assembly (and by extension, according to prior Supreme Court cases, the right to free association) is part of the Bill of Rights.
From his dissent:
Fundamental rights are those deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition. They include the right to marry; the right to have children; the right to decide how one's children will be educated; and the right to engage in private consensual sexual activity."
Fundamental rights also include the right to vote, the right to travel, the right of free speech and the right of a criminal defendant to appeal. One need only imagine and compare laws that would prevent farm laborers from exercising freedom of speech, voting, traveling, marrying, raising children or appealing criminal convictions to recognize the distinction and understand why a fundamental constitutional right is not implicated here.
Further, the inclusion of the right to organize and bargain collectively in the New York Bill of Rights does not, per se, confer upon it fundamental constitutional right status (citations omitted).
The dispute over whether the right to organize is a fundamental right is important because if it's a fundamental right, it would carry more weight than the 1937 law as passed by the Legislature.
The Farm Bureau will be able to appeal the ruling to the state's Court of Appeals.
A vehicle has reportedly run under the back of a semi-truck on the Thruway in the westbound lane at about mile marker 388.4 and a female is reportedly trapped in the vehicle that is under the semi.
Extrication will reportedly be required.
Town of Batavia fire and Mercy EMS dispatched.
UPDATE 10 p.m.: The victim has self-extricated with minor injuries.
UPDATE 10:01 p.m.: Mercy Flight cancelled. Fire crews needed for fluid spills.
(Above, Hannah Tiede, Batavia, with instructor Bob Yates, and her new boss, Darryl Horzempa, of Stan's Harley-Davidson, where she interned and will work after graduation, and her parents, Meghan and Rich Tiede.)
When sports stars sign letters of intent to attend a university, the schools' athletic directors invite the media to cover the letter-of-intent signing but students moving onto careers rarely get the same attention.
Batavia CTE/BOCES corrected that oversight earlier this week by holding its first-ever signing day with three students who graduate this spring with jobs in their chosen careers already in place.
"As many of you know, we’re at a critical shortage of skilled workers these days," said Principal Jon Sanfratello. "There are many different avenues that kids have today, whether it’s going through school onto college or technical school or straight out into the workforce.
"And so we try to provide those opportunities for kids each and every day, so we have three great stories of these hard-working seniors who are going to go straight out into the workforce."
Hannah Teide, of Batavia, will be working at Stan’s Harley-Davidson in Batavia.
"When she first started coming into our shop I thought she was already friends with all of our employees," Horzempa said. "I thought if she's that enthusiastic about working in our shop, maybe I should give her a try and she's been that enthusiastic ever since."
(Above, from left are Todd Sloat, his parents, Rebecca and Richard Day, Bob Yates, and Jon Sanfratello.)
Jake Day signed with Sloat Tire.
"Jacob approached and said he would like to stay and we were already thinking, 'what are you doing this summer?' " said Todd Sloat, owner of Sloat Tire, and a former BOCES student himself. "It worked out that we asked him to stay. It worked out and that's why we're here today."
(Above Jenna Montgomery signs with The Exchange in Attica with her are, from left: Renee Ackert, owner of The Exchange; Jenna’s father, Jim Montgomery; Jon Sanfratello; Jenna’s mother, Bethany Montgomery; and cosmetology teacher Mary Beswick.)
Jenna Montgomery signed with The Exchange in Attica. Beswick said what turned Montgomery around was a student was her internship at The Exchange, where she really started to shine and that carried over into her course work.
"She's so talented in what she loves to do," Ackert said. "She's fit in wonderfully at the salon."
Press release:
Youth Detective Rich Schauf retired today after 32 years of dedicated service to the City of Batavia and City of Batavia Police Department.
Schauf started his law enforcement career in June of 1983 as a Jailor at the Genesee County Jail. He was hired by the City of Batavia Police Department on Jan. 25, 1987, and promoted to Youth Detective on Oct. 20, 2003.
Schauf spent the majority of a career dedicated to the youth of the City. He was an integral part in the creation of several organizations designed to provide support services to the youth of the community.
A luncheon was held at City Hall to honor Schauf ’s 32 years of service and to wish him well in his retirement.
Jeremy J. Barnett, age 27, black male, 5’8” 135 lbs., black hair and brown eyes, LKA Chili Avenue, Upper Apt., Rochester, NY
Wanted for grand larceny, 4th, bench warrant PL 155.30-1 (E felony) Batavia Town Court DOW 4/29/19
Jessica M. Horton, age 28, white female, 5’5” 130 lbs., brown hair and brown eyes, LKA Telephone Road, Pavilion, NY
Wanted for violation of probation, bench warrant CPL 410.40-1 (felony) Genesee County Court DOW 5/13/19
Isabella S. Lackey, age 25, white femal,e 5’1” 190 lbs., blond hair and blue eyes, LKA Emery Street, Fulton, NY
Wanted for endangering the welfare of a child, bench warrant, PL 260.10-1 (misdemeanor) Darien Town Court DOW 7/31/18
Wanted for bail jumping, 3rd, arrest warrant PL 215.55 (misdemeanor) Darien Town Court DOW 9/17/18
Kimberly N. White, age 30, white female, 5’1” 110 lbs., black hair and brown eyes, LKA Wyoming Road, Covington, NY
Wanted for aggravated unlicensed operation, 3rd, bench warrant VTL 511-1a (misdemeanor) Pavilion Town Court DOW 2/5/19
Wanted for bail jumping, 3rd, arrest warrant PL 215.55 (misdemeanor) Pavilion Town Court DOW 4/2/19
No photos available:
Taylor M. Miley, age 22, black female, 5’5” 280 lbs., brown hair and brown eyes, LKA Heidt Avenue, Middletown, NY, wanted for harassment, 2nd, bench warrant PL 240.26-1 (violation) Batavia Town Court DOW 4/11/17, wanted for bail jumping, 3rd, arrest warrant PL 215.55 (misdemeanor) Batavia Town Court DOW 10/26/17
Peter Carey, age 46, asian male, 5’5” 145 lbs., black hair and brown eyes, LKA 78th Street, Niagara Falls, NY, wanted for aggravated unlicensed operation, 2nd, bench warrant VTL 511-2a4 (misdemeanor) Darien Town Court DOW 3/21/19, wanted for bail jumping, 3rd, degree arrest warrant PL 215.55 (misdemeanor) Darien Town Court DOW 4/29/19
If you are able to assist the Sheriff's Office in locating these people, the Sheriff's Office asks that you do not approach these people and that you call (585) 343-5000 with information that may assist in locating the suspects.
A traffic stop in the City of Batavia last night by police officers working a Neighborhood Enforcement Team detail yielded a cache of drugs and a pair of felony arrests.
Germayne D. Sessions, 25, of Cummings Street, Rochester, is charged with: criminal possession of a controlled substance, 3rd; criminal possession of a controlled substance, 7th; unlawful possession of marijuana; promoting prison contraband, 1st; falsify business records, 1st; criminal impersonation, 2nd; driving without a license; and a license plate violation.
Sessions was allegedly found in possession of crack cocaine and marijuana during the traffic stop. At the jail, he was allegedly found in possession of nine bags of heroin. He is also accused of providing police officers with a false identification.
Shakerra B. Walker, 18, of North Goodman Street, Rochester, is charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance, 3rd. She was allegedly found in possession of 35 baggies of crack cocaine.
Both Sessions and Walker were jailed without bail.
Participating in the traffic stop, along with Batavia PD, were the Sheriff's Office and members of the Local Drug Task Force.
The U.S. Marshall's Office says a man who is accused of running over his ex-wife multiple times with his truck, seriously injuring her, May 17 could be in the Batavia or Albion area.
Crime Stoppers Buffalo is offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest of Shane Hescox, a 5-foot, 11-inch, 190-pound white male.
His last known address is 8422 Carol Court, Wheatfield, in Niagara County.
Investigator Brent Novak said Hescox has known ties to Batavia and Albion.
He also has a violent criminal history, Novak said, and though he's not known to have a weapon, citizens should not try to apprehend him.
Novak said he has several tattoos, including the ones seen on his neck as well as tattoos on his fingers.
Hescox is wanted by the Niagara County Sheriff's Office and the Marshall's Service and is facing a charge of assault in the second degree.
People with information that could lead authorities to locate him should call Crime Stoppers at (716) 867-6161 or call 9-1-1.
The Batavia Muckdogs hosted auditions Thursday for community members to sing the National Anthem at the start of a ballgame sometime this season. In this video, Jessica Beal, of Batavia, auditions and Kerri Schmidt, director of sales and marketing for the Muckdogs, explains a little about the process.
Last year, the Batavia Muckdogs hired Cooper Thomson, trained in Australia, as new head groundskeeper. But visa issues delayed his arrival in Batavia, so he didn't get to work on the field the two months before the season that is ideal for getting it ready for professional ballplayers.
This year, he's back, and he's here early. He said both the players and the fans will be pleased with the field in 2019.
Previously: Muckdogs hire minor league groundskeeper with major league dreams
Thursday was United Way's annual Day of Caring, where people volunteer for various projects around the county.
UMMC's annual Teddy Bear Clinic was Wednesday in Batavia. Here's a video for you (warning: cute kids).
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