The Batavian site was down for at least 30 minutes today after one of the databases used to manage the site developed a problem and required an emergency rebuild.
After the site came back up, there was another database problem that prevented users from logging in.
All seems back to normal now.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Join us at 11:30 for a non-partisan celebration of a free country's peaceful transfer of power, to witness history and to see if Barack Obama can live up to the hype of his inaugural address (will it be Lincolnesque, FDResque or Clintonesque? If like Clinton, we won't be getting out of their until late in the afternoon).
We'll be at TF Brown's and The Batavian will be providing free finger foods (you'll need to buy your own drinks or own full lunch, if that's what you want).
We don't cover Medina, but the Daily News does. Good coverage by Virginia Kropf, with a couple of dramatic photos, of a Saturday morning fire that destroyed a home there.
Is Batavia well positioned for an economic renaissance? Reading a post on the rural-themed blog the Daily Yonder this morning, I'm thinking the question might very well be yes.
Big rural towns may have even better luck than large cities when it comes to attracting and keeping manufacturing jobs. (It seems the formula for success includes being a home to higher education situated at the crossroads of major highways.) Big towns usually boast health care facilities located inside the city limits, or at least nearby. Having an industrial park within an economic enterprise zone doesn’t hurt either.
Here's are what I see of Batavia's assets:
The article goes on:
Where big towns fall short is population; they need to draw labor from rather broad areas of the surrounding countryside, perhaps as many as four or five counties large.
Batavia is certainly surrounded by rural counties with additional workers, but the close proximity of Buffalo and Rochester may also be an asset. The idea of people commuting from those cities to work in Batavia might drive up transportation costs, but Batavia is close enough that it might not be a stretch to imagine people relocating to Genesee County. They would still be close to their friends and families in Rochester or Buffalo, but living in a great community.
On the other hand, I imagine many people now living in Genesee County and commuting now to Rochester and Buffalo might welcome new job opportunities right in the middle of Batavia.
The biggest negatives facing Batavia, however, remain high taxes and a state government overzealous about regulation and red tape.
Still, with the proper planning and the right effort correctly applied, there's no reason that Batavia can't realize some significant economic growth over the next 10 years.
A new study shows that consumers who shift even just 10 percent of their spending from chain stores to locally owned stores help grow the local economy and creates jobs.
Local Works: Examining the Impact of Local Business on the West Michigan Economy, which was conducted by Civic Economics, found that, if the 600,000 residents of Grand Rapids and surrounding Kent County were to redirect just 10 percent of their total spending from chains to local businesses, it would create nearly $140 million in new economic activity for the region and 1,600 new jobs.
...
In addition to analyzing the economic impact of independent businesses overall, the study also took a close look at four sectors: pharmacies, grocery stores, restaurants, and banks. In each category, the study found that a much larger share of the dollars spent at locally owned businesses stayed in the region, supporting other businesses and jobs.
One of the philosophical underpinnings of what we want to do with The Batavian is to support the community. We do that by covering more local news, by providing a virtual town square for discussions of local issues, and by doing all we can to support local businesses. We offer, for example, the ability for local businesses to post their own press releases on the site for free. We also concentrate our ad sales efforts on local businesses.
It's important to remember that the buying decisions you make effect your friends and neighbors.
On The Batavian, we have a policy -- which most members of the site seem to support -- of requiring people to post using their real names.
From the first week of the site, we had a user with a first name of Laz who posted quite regularly. I had initial doubts as to whether this was a real name, but the way people responded to him initially, I kind of got the impression that this was somebody that other people knew, so I let the name go.
A couple of weeks ago, I got complaints suggesting that Laz wasn't his real name. I wrote him an e-mail and asked for confirmation. I didn't get a response.
Earlier tonight, I banned his account.
He sent me an e-mail after the banning suggesting another name was his real name, and then later suggested that name was one of three aliases he uses.
Here's the thing: We can't check physically the ID of everybody who posts to the site. To some extent, this is an honor system.
But if I have any reason to suspect that a user is not posting under his or her real name, I'm going to suspend that account, or at least challenge the user on the name.
We can't guarantee everybody on The Batavian is posting under his or her real name, but we will make every best, honest effort to ensure real names are used.
Join The Batavian and your friends and neighbors Tuesday for the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States.
Whether you're a Republican, Democrat or independent, you're surely mindful of historic event we'll witness Tuesday as Obama takes the oath of office and delivers his First Inaugural Address.
The Batavian will supply some appetizers/finger foods. Guests will be responsible for the purchase of any lunches or beverages.
The Inauguration Party starts at 11:30 and will run until shortly after Obama completes his speech. Obama takes the oath at noon.
We look forward to seeing you Tuesday at TF Brown's, 214 East Main Street.
Here at The Batavian, we're in a constant mode of making improvements and upgrades to the site.
One feature requested a while back was discussion boards, or forums, a place for people to start their own topics of conversation.
Tom Gilliatt, whom many of you have known as Tom G since the site launched, has agreed to help monitor and manage the forums.
Thanks, btw, to both Tom and Gabor for recently changing their user profile to include their full real name to comply with our requirement for real names on the site.
You can reach the discussion boards through the Forums link in the navigation bar across the top of the Web page.
Daily News writer Paul Mrozek has a lengthy piece out today on Gov. Paterson's plans to tell parents how to raise their children -- specifically how to control their diets.
He includes all the facts from the governor's perspective, but passes over one lone skeptical voice deep in the article. There is little focus on the propriety of New York engaging in social engineering, nor the degree to which this plan is going to create new bureaucracies and hence new expenses, whether there is any evidence such a plan will work, nor how the plan will impact businesses and create new costs that will be passed along to all consumers.
The most far-reaching of the proposals is an 18 percent sales tax on sugar-sweetened beverages such as soda. Juices from fruit such as oranges and grapes are excluded from the proposed tax.
In the past 40 years New York residents have increased their consumption of pop from an average of five 12-ounce cans or bottles per week to 11 per week. Research has shown that consumption of non-diet soft drinks is one of the primary factors that increases the risk of obesity in children and adults.
"No question about the link. We have a core fact in front of us," Daines said.
Not so fast. There is a question. A big fat question.
To blame all low-income obesity on soda pop alone is myopic. Low-income diets tend to be heavy in empty carbohydrates of all kinds, not just sugar. Children living in food insecure homes consume less healthy food. One reason there is such an abundance of empty-carb foods can be traced to farm subsidies for corn, but even that connection is a rather simplistic view of the obesity problem among poorer children.
There is also the question of proper exercise. In too many homes, children are allowed to watch TV or play video games rather than being required to run around outside.
These are largely parental issues, not government issues.
If the government wanted to do something to help, they would restructure aid programs to make it easier to buy healthier food. Given a choice, most parents would pick more meats, fruits and vegetables. But right now these options are beyond their budgets.
Driving up the costs of the high-carb foods isn't going to help them afford the good foods.
The article says, "You raise prices. You provide alternatives." But what are those alternatives. How are they paid for and provided? If the alternatives are paid for by the tax, how does the state ensure sufficient revenue for those alternatives once consumption of the taxed items goes down?
Will taxed drinks receive some sort of stamp like alcohol and cigarettes? If so, aren't we just creating yet another environment for potential illegal black market activities?
And one issue about the proposed tax I've not seen discussed anywhere is the impact on business: Who will levy the tax? Will retail outlets be burdened with the the expense of tracking and tallying the tax, which could include the expense of reprogramming cash registers? And if the tax is imposed at the wholesale level, won't it just get passed along to all consumers of soft drinks and other beverages from those particular wholesalers?
What about vending machines? Will vendors be required to have two prices on drinks in their machines -- one for taxed items, and one for non-taxed? Or will us diet drinkers just pay more? Who pays for the expense of reprogramming machines or replacing machines that aren't capable of handling tiered prices on soft drinks?
Per usual, any time the government starts interfering in private lives and private enterprise, there are as many if not more problems created than solved.
Here's an appropriate and timely video from Reason Magazine.
Most viewed posts on The Batavian for December:
Many people love those big box, big chain stores. Often, they have a better selection of items then smaller, locally owned stores, not to mention the potential of better prices.
But is going to Wal-Mart, Target or Home Depot first, instead of one of the many local merchants that might carry the same wares the best choice for your community or yourself?
USAToday carried an interesting piece this past week on the virtues of shopping local.
There are good reasons for buying local. It reduces the need for shipping, which reduces pollution, and it supports the local community. "A study we did found that for every $100 spent in a chain store, $14 went back into the local economy. For a locally owned business, it was $45," says Stacy Mitchell, author of "Big-Box Swindle" and researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. "Locally owned businesses buy a lot of services from other local businesses. So by buying from one local business, you're not only supporting that business, you're supporting other local businesses."
The author offers examples of how she shops local. Of course, not all of those options are available in Batavia. At times, unfortunately, the big box stores seem unavoidable. But what are you doing to make a better effort to support your local economy?
(via Rochester Turning)
Jordan M. Hadfield of Batavia was struck by a car -- allegedly on purpose -- in Watertown yesterday.
The Watertown Daily Times reports that Eric W. Walker, 27, of Watertown, is being charged with two counts of second-degree reckless endangerment and one count of falsely reporting an incident as well as leaving the scene of a personal injury accident.
Allegedly, Walker struck Hadfield and then drove home, where he called police and said somebody had smashed the windshield of his car while it was parked outside.
No word on the condition of Hadfield, or even if he was taken to the hospital.
Congratulations to Justin Forrester and Malissa Moore, proud parents of the fist baby born in Batavia in 2009.
Newspapers do the "first baby" every year story, but reporter Joanne Beck does a good job with the story of little Jayden Mariah. Click on over a read it.
Roger Muehlig has a fascinating story this morning on a 40-year-old master planning document that would have aligned the land use planning for both the city and county.
When you drive around Batavia and contemplate the disorganized approach both entities took to commercial and retail development, you have to wonder: Why was the plan ignored?
The report, "A Comprehensive Master Plan for the Batavia Area," was done by Herbert H. Smith Associates of Rochester as consultant to a Batavia Area Planning Board. It is not dated, but was apparently done in the late 1960s.
Purpose of the area planning board, established in 1966, was "to provide foresight and guidance on matters of concern to both the city and town," according to the document that's on file at the Genesee County Planning Department,
The plan was commissioned in late 1967, the report said, and there are several references to a 20-year planning period up to 1990. The plan, it said, projects the area board's thinking approximately 20 years into the future, "and is therefore an effort to envision the Batavia of 1990."
Review of the 88-page plan is especially timely considering the current proposal to considate the town and city, but isn't there also an element of a little too late? Batavia has undergone a lot of development and revedevelopment in 40 years. It might be a little hard to organize things now.
What would be more helpful, especially if consolidation goes through, is a completely new master plan -- one that builds on Batavia's historic strengths, finds solutions for catastrophic mistakes (like, the Mall), and focuses on creating a dynamic business environment to create jobs and grow revenue.
Quick thinking and the amazing athleticism of a 72-year-old resident of a Bank Street townhouse may have saved the lives of him and his wife as he single-handily battled a fire, according to a Democrat & Chronicle story.
Something awoke the couple at about 3:40 a.,m. this morning, and the man -- who is not identified -- jumped from his second floor window, grabbed a shovel, smashed a window and extinguished the fire before firefighters arrived using water and a five-gallon bucket.
The couple was treated and released for smoke inhalation at United Memorial Medical Center. The man also sustain some cuts on his feet from broken glass.
The apartment, at 337 Bank Street, suffered enough damage to make it unlivable. It did not have a working smoke detector, according to Chief Tom Dillon.
From all of us at The Batavian, Happy New Year to you and your family.
The first eight months of The Batavian has been fun, interesting and challenging. The site has grown quickly and we appreciate your support and participation in the site.
We're looking forward to the promise of 2009 and hope that your New Year will lead to many happy returns.
Some of you have already noticed the site color has changed.
Those of you familiar with the first three months or so of The Batavian's existence will recognize this site design. It's what we started with. It was a default theme for the content management system we use and never intended to be a long-term site design. For various reasons, however, we haven't yet been able to invest in a formal redesign of the site. As a stop-gap, I went out and found that black-based theme and liked it at first.
But we all grew tired of it pretty quickly. We always got a few complaints about it being hard to read, especially the links in the right and left columns. But because the site had grown so much, we couldn't just switch back without some effort. We're making that switch now. There's still some kinks to work out, but we're not going back to black.
Eventually, we'll come up with some snazzy redesign and stick with that for a while.
There's also been a couple of other site upgrades that you may have noticed over the past couple of weeks.
First, if you go to the People page now, you'll notice that for any member of the site who isn't your "Friend" yet, you will see a link that says "Add as a Friend." This will help you better identify people whom you know and should be on your friends list, or people you would like to know.
When people are on your friends list, it makes it easier, through the "Friend Feed" on the left side of the page or your own profile page, to follow their contributions to the site.
Second big upgrade is a new photo sharing tool. Now you can have, essentially, your own photo blog on the site. You can upload as many photos as you like.
To add a photo, click "Create Content" and then "Share Photos." The process for adding a photo should be pretty self-explanatory, but let us know if you have problems.
Unlike adding a photo to a blog post, which requires you to manually resize the photos, you can now upload photos just as they come out of your camera (if you like) and our software will automatically resize the photos for you. You can also use this feature to upload photos that you plan to use in a blog post. There is now a button on the blog entry form to allow you to easily navigate to your own photos, find the photo you want to use and add it to your post.
As always, we will continue to work on expanding and improving The Batavian.
UPDATE: I forget to mention: If the new template seems faster: It is. The code is a little cleaner than the old template, plus we made some other performance enhancements to the software and the server.
If you haven't guessed by now, our small staff is pretty much in holiday mode. Expect posting to be light through the weekend.
Of course, we'll continue to monitor the site and if you hear of any news -- do a blog post yourself, or leave a comment, and we'll pick up on it.
It looks like the crew at WBTA is also taking a well deserved break for Christmas. There are some fresh stories on the Daily's site, if you're looking for some news, and I suspect they will continue to post on their regular editorial schedule.
Merry Christmas.
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