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We're migrating The Batavian to a new server tonight. The switch is scheduled for 10 p.m.  This could lead to some down time. The site might be unaccessible for up to an hour.

Douglas Tuner of the Buffalo News speculates that Western New York could be ideally suited for to receive stimulus funds to build a passenger rail system between Buffalo and Albany (hat tip, Dan Jones for the link).

In one month, Obama has proposed sending $13 billion into the cause. And if Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport, has her way, upstate New York should get a good share of it.

Slaughter’s goal is what aides call “a third track” dedicated to passenger rail running 300 miles from Buffalo-Niagara to Albany along the current CSX right of way.

The economic stimulus plan contains $8 billion for engineering, tracks, passenger cars and other infrastructure for intercity rail. This money should be spent in the next three to four years.

Last week, Obama proposed spending an additional $5 billion for high-speed passenger rail in his 2010 federal budget outline.

I don't know my CSX right of ways, but this seems like Batavia would be on the rail line.

That would be good news for commuters who live in Batavia and work in either Buffalo or Rochester, it seems.

It might even encourage more people to call Batavia or the surrounding rural communities home.

Ten union fire fighters are among Batavia's higest 15 wage earners, according to documents obtained by WBTA.

Topping the payroll list is Craig Williams, a fire captain, who earned $116,629 in 2008.

Dan Fischer reports that the figures include "base salary, overtime, holiday pay and other cash benefits," but not including health care.

Fischer posted audio quotes from Charlie Mallow. Mallow is also quoted accusing the union of scare tactics.

Fischer reports:

In a paid insert in yesterday’s Daily News the fire fighters union accuses the city council of “targeting” public safety by eliminating the ambulance service.

WBTA posted a complete list of the city’s top 15 wage earners.  City Manager Jason Molino is eighth on the list as the top non-emergency personnel wage earner at $84,449.

Tune into WBTA by 12:30 for more information.

STAFFORD, N.Y. -- It seems like it was a bad morning for Santino Baliva.

According to a Sheriff's Office port, Baliva, 20, was a passenger in a car struck by a train. There's no word from the Sheriff's office yet on how serious that accident was, but it apparently wasn't as serious as it might sound.

Baliva survived, only to be arrested for criminal possession of a weapon. He was carrying a switch blade knife.

We'll see if we can get a little more information about the incident.

BATAVIA, N.Y. Units have been dispatched to 3207 Pratt Road for a reported trailer fire. Medics are responding, as well.

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UPDATE: 2:12 p.m.: Minor fire. According to Asst. Chief  David Winters, the homeowner was trying to heat frozen water pipes with a propane salamander heater when flames shot from it and ignited the underside of the trailer. The fire was contained to under the trailer. There were no injuries.

We received this press release from the city:

Please be advised that the Charter Review Commission for the City of Batavia will hold a meeting on Monday, March 2, 2009.  The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Community Room on the second floor of the Batavia City Centre.  

The public can speak at the meeting by signing in prior to the start of the meeting. 

John, can you add more detail on what might be discussed tonight?

Five people were arrested early Sunday morning for allegedly entering the United States illegally. The five people were found by police during an investigation into suspicious activity in Town of Bergen. Arrested were Efrain Jose Cruz-Hernandez, 22; Jose Morolas-Perez, 18; Hector Perez-Rameriz, 42; Mateo Torres-Ramos, 24; and, Valentin Campos-Baltazar, 32. All five individuals were handed over to the Border Patrol.

Christopher Ball, 26, of LeRoy, was arrested following a single-car traffic accident on Batavia-Stafford Townline Road on Sunday morning. Ball was charged with misdemeanor DWI, a violation for driving lef of pavement marker and speed not prudent, and aggravated DWI with BAC of .18 percent or higher. Police were called to the scene of the accident and discovered Ball was not in his vehicle. He was later found Ball at a nearby relatives house.

Joseph M. Armstrong, 51, of Medina, was arrested and charged with misdemeanor DWI following a two-vehicle accident at Route 5 and Route 63. The Sheriff's office reports that Armstrong was reportedly attempting to make a left-hand turn when his vehicle struck another car.

Mark E. Yasses, 48, of Bethany, was arrested early Sunday morning for harassment, 2nd degree, after allegedly getting into an fight with another individual.  Yasses allegedly pushed the other person to the ground. The incident occurred at Yasses' residence.

Brett Blair, 25, of Batavia, was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance (hyrocordone) and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, alcohol related after being stopped on Oak St. Saturday afternoon after officers noticed his vehicle with a broken tail light and loud exhaust. Officers report that Blair was driving with a revoked drivers license because of a previous DWI conviction. Blair was arraigned and remanded to Gensee County Jail on $750 bail.

Robert W. Mitchell, 30, of Pittsford, was charged with unlawful possession of marijuna Friday. Police arrested Mitchell during an investigation into suspicious activity. After contacting Michell, police discovered he was wanted on an arrest warrant from the Rochester Police Department. During a search of Mitchell, Mitchell told police he had a small amount of marijuna on his person.

Arielle R. Orlikowski, 19, of Batavia, was charged with speeding and DWI on Saturday after being stopped for speeding on Pearl Street.

James D. Kavanaugh, 19, of Batavia, was charged with "driving while ability impaired by alcohol" after being stopped on E. Main Saturday for driving without headlights. Kavanaugh was also charged with failure to notify DMV of an address change.

Sara E. Schimley, 19, of LeRoy, was arrested for tresspass Thusday after a homeowner in Pavillon told Schimley to leave his or her residence and Schimley refused. Schimley was released on an appearance ticket.

Robert Cummings, 22, of Pembroke, was arrested in Corfu Friday and charged with unlawful possession of marijuna.

Ruben BeCoates, 55, of Rochester, was arrested Saturday after he was allegedly spotted driving erratically. BeCoates was charged with driving while impaired, unlawful lane change and consuming alcohol while in a motor vehicle.

BATAVIA, N.Y -- Last week, Philip was right on top of an announcement by Sen. Charles Schumer's office of a nearly $1.7 billion package of stimulus money coming to New York for schools.

About $2.5 million will flow to Genesee County schools, including nearly a million dollars to Batavia schools.

Philip asked Patrick Burk for a response, and we received this via e-mail:

I am thrilled and excited that our district is receiving this investment in our City of Batavia Schools.  It will allow us to continue our level of excellence in the areas of educational programming and student services as well as employee training.  We will be able to maintain a higher professional/student ratio that has been extremely successful in promoting higher test scores and outcomes.  Rest assured this investment will be used wisely to do what we do best, educate ALL the children of the City of Batavia.

This morning, the Daily reports on "earth-friendly" plans for the new Wal-Mart in LeRoy.

Le Roy's store also will include what is known as "daylight harvesting," he said.

A sensor on the floor determines how much sunlight is entering the store. If it's a significant amount, the sensor automatically turns the lights down "so we don't use that energy," Serghini said.

Of course, not all environmentalist buy into a Green Wal-Mart.

This cannot be dismissed as greenwashing. It's actually far more dangerous than that. Wal-Mart's initiatives have just enough meat to have distracted much of the environmental movement, along with most journalists and many ordinary people, from the fundamental fact that, as a system of distributing goods to people, big-box retailing is as intrinsically unsustainable as clear-cut logging is as a method of harvesting trees.

Here's the key issue. Wal-Mart's carbon estimate omits a massive source of CO2 that is inherent to its operations and amounts to more than all of its other greenhouse-gas emissions combined: the CO2 produced by customers driving to its stores.

The post asserts that big box stores encourage us to drive further -- an average two miles longer each trip -- to do our shopping.

I've taken over The Batavian as my full-time and only job.

Over the next week, I'll be moving the site to a new server. I don't anticipate any disruption in service.

I want to thank Philip Anselmo and Brian Hillabush for all the great work they've done on the site. They're a huge part of the site's success. Philip is moving on to another reporting position.  Brian and I are discussing how we'll be able to continue working together.

Next week, I'll be in our Batavia office ready to cover the news and sell advertising.  As time goes by I'll have more announcements about what we'll be doing with the site. I still have new features to add, many of which will please local advertisers.

My wife and I are listing our house in Pittsford for sale and as soon as it sells, we will rent a place in Batavia (or maybe elsewhere in Genesee County).  I expect we'll see my wife's byline in The Batavian before too long.

Our old friend Jack Davis caught the attention of Robert Harding over at The Albany Project. Apparently, now that Dick Cheney is out of office, Davis is falling back into the GOP fold.

Davis was seen, reportedly, at a GOP fundraiser in Niagara county.

Surely, regional Republicans won't object to his cash switching sides.

Many of you have noticed -- I know because I've gotten calls and comments -- a link that joined the top navigation of the site a couple of weeks ago: Local Businesses.

It is a new online business directory for Genesee County.

Every business in Genesee County gets a free basic listing.  We encourage you to use it to find local goods and services.

For business owners and managers, here's what  is important for you to know: Upgrades are available.

For a fee, business get enhanced listings which includes more information about the firm.

Our first two enhanced listings have been posted:

• Diegelman's Plumbing
• Fastec Automative

But an enhanced listing is not the coolest part of this directory.

We're working with a company out of California called Search Initiatives to power our directory.

As most business owners now recognize, hardly anybody uses the yellow pages these days. When people with online access want to find a business, they go to Google or Yahoo.  If your business isn't part of the top search results, it's almost as if your business doesn't even exist.

Search Initiatives specializes in helping businesses get found on the Web.  They've been helping businesses for a number of years and is maybe the leading such firm in the world.  We're proud they picked The Batavian to launch its new directory product.

So when you buy an enhanced listing on The Batavian, you're not just buying an ad on The Batavian, you're helping improve your business's search ranking in Google and Yahoo!

The standard package is $49 to set up and then $59 per month.  Businesses that sign up prior to March 31 will get a free "trackable" phone number -- what that means is we'll be able to deliver monthly report showing you how many times you're phone rang because of the service.

We also can offer a limited number of upgraded packages that adds more features to help your business be among the best ranked in Google and Yahoo. These packages are $70 set up and $89 per month.

Here's a full media kit for directory advertising.  And as long as we're talking about advertising, here's our display advertising media kit.

If you want to get your business started advertising on The Batavian, or have questions, contact me at howard (at) thebatavian dot com.

Jerome Grasso, LeRoy representative of the Genesee County Legislature has posted 14 comments over the past four weeks as Michael Barney.

In a conversation this afternoon, Grasso admitted that he made the posts because in his new part-time job he is discouraged from blogging.

"I love the site," Grasso said. "I ain't going to bullshit you, but I missed the site and I enjoy the site immensely."

A few weeks ago, Grasso took a two-day-a-week job with State Senator Mike Ranzenhofer working out of his Erie County office.

"They haven't banned me from it (leaving comments on The Batavian), but they just don't want me on there.  But it's a good source for news and let's be real, it's damn entertaining. What can I say? I missed it."

We were alerted by local Democrats (we will let them reveal their identities in comments if they wish) that they suspected Barney was really Grasso. They noted similarities in outlook and writing style.

Upon further investigation, we found that on a handful of occasions, Barney left comments from the IP address associated with previous comments by Grasso. The Barney persona and Grasso where the only users to ever post from this IP address.

When we spoke to Grasso this morning, Grasso identified Barney as a good friend and member of the GOP county committee.  He said he wasn't surprised Barney might post from the same IP address because they were close friends.

During the conversation -- which covered a range of local topics -- Grasso mentioned that he didn't post as frequently on the site because his new employer "wasn't keen" on him blogging.

We checked with local election commissioners and found that there is no Michael Barney on any GOP committee, nor is there a Barney registered to vote in Genesee County.

During our second call with Grasso, he quickly fessed up and said he and his wife discussed the issue on a shopping trip around noon and agreed he should admit to the nom de plume.  "I can't bullshit you, Howard," he said. "I shouldn't have done it, but I just missed the site."

The Barney comments can be viewed here. Some of them do discuss county business, particularly related to the recent ambulance service controversy.

Outside of sticking up for the county's position on the ambulance service and a general conservative/Republican point of view, none of the Barney comments can be said to promote Jay Grasso. Though in one comment, he clearly contradicts the fact that Barney and Grasso are one and the same person:

Most local electeds will contact you if you reach out to them by phone. Perhaps you see Mallow and Grasso on here because they are younger. I am not sure how old they are. Does anyone know their ages? I am thinking older electeds are not familiar with blogs.

There is a term on the Web for prominent people who use fake names to promote their own causes: Sock puppets.

While I sympathize with Jay's predicament and constraints related to his new job, we clearly can't knowingly allow elected officials to post under false identities. The sock puppet issue is one of the primary reasons we do our best to enforce a real name policy on The Batavian.

There's an underlying assumption in today's Daily News story on murder suspect Scott Doll's mayoral candidacy in Corfu that Doll shouldn't be on the ballot.

Two phrases related to America's judicial system spring to mind: presumption of innocence and innocent until proven guilty.

Doll hasn't even been indicted yet for the beating death of Joseph Benaquist.

The evidence against Doll, as reported so far, is pretty damning.  But none of us where there. None of us yet really know what's going on.  There could be as yet some undiscovered or unreleased piece of evidence exonerating Doll.

I'm not saying or even suggesting that such evidence exists.  The issue to me is it seems a violation of due process to remove Doll's name -- a punishment of sorts -- from the Corfu ballot until he's convicted.  Shouldn't we just drop the question of whether his name is on the ballot until he is either convicted or admits the crime?  If neither happens before the election in March, it's up to the voters of Corfu to decide whether they want to stand behind a man suspected of murder.

BYRON, NY -- A small plan has  reportedly crashed into trees behind 6946 Ivison Road.

There are no reported injuries and minor damage to the plane.

There is reportedly a small, personal runway behind the house at that location.

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UPDATE 2:00 p.m.: John Sackett of Batavia said it looked like a beautiful day to take in World War II era Ercoupe prop plane for a short air patrol. Unfortunately, the battery was a little short on juice, so he needed to start it by turning the propeller.

That's where things went wrong. Sackett said the engine got a little too much gas and when the engine started, the plane pushed over its chocks and started rolling down the runway.

Sackett was able to avoid getting hit by his own plane, but the grape vines of a neighboring house were less fortunate.  As the plane entered the yard from Sackett's private runway, it headed straight for the grapes, hit a post, spun nearly 360 degrees and rolled into three pine trees, where it came to rest.

There were no injuries.

Sackett valued the plane -- used to train pilots near the end of WW II -- at $25,000.  One wing was damaged and there's dent on the engine compartment. He said he isn't sure how much it will cost to repair the damage.  He's owned the plane since April.

BATAVIA, NY -- It's cold. There are still patches of snow on the ground with more fluffy showers predicted for this week. But it's not too early to start thinking about spring.

In Arizona and Florida, pitchers and catchers have reported. And Friday Muckdogs faithful gather for the team's annual hot stove league dinner.

But before we look toward a new season, let's reflect once more on an incredible 2008 Muckdogs season.

How incredible? According to Brian Walton of Scout.com, it was remarkable in a number of significant ways.

With a record of 46-28 (.622) the Muckdogs posted the best winning percentage of any team in the St. Louis Cardinals system.

It was Batavia's first championship since 1963 and the first New York-Penn League championship for a Cardinal's affiliate since 1994.

The last Cardinals New York-Penn League affiliate to post a better record than the Muckdogs was the 1992 Hamilton (Ontario) Redbirds. That club went 56-20 (.737). Ironically, their manager was the current leader of the Memphis Redbirds, Chris Maloney.

No Cardinals minor league club at any level had registered a better record than the .622 2008 Muckdogs in the last 15 years! It is tops in the entire system since the 1993 Savannah Cardinals of the Single-A Sally League had a .662 winning percentage (94-48).

For more on the record setting season, read all of Brian's post.

Don't miss Friday's dinner. The 2008 season is well worth Batavians remembering, and we look forward to a great season in 2009 thanks to the Cardinals and Red Wings' organizations.

An ice damn that formed on Oatka Creek caused some flooding in the Village of Le Roy, according to a report on the R-News Web site.

LeRoy Fire Chief Bill Wood told R-News that crews spent the day pumping water from basements along Munson Street.

There were also problems with the sewer system, according to the report, but those issues have been cleared up.

No word on an estimated amount of damage to any property.

We're upgrading our web server.  We're moving The Batavian to a bigger, better, faster server (you should notice the site loads faster after the move).

We're making the switch at 11 p.m. tonight.  The Batavian will be off line for about 15 minutes.

In an article by Tom Rivers on legislators calling for caps on spending, we find this interesting passage about Assemblyman Steve Hawley's musing on secession:

Hawley last month sent a letter to seven universities in the state, asking them to consider the potential political and financial pitfalls of separating upstate from New York City, and creating two different states. The divergent interests of rural upstate and the city of 8 million people makes it difficult to govern the state, and create laws and regulations that work for both regions, Hawley said.

He isn’t necessarily pushing for an upstate-New York City separation, he just wants some facts on the long-simmering issue. He knows many upstaters would like to divorce NYC.

“Can there be a new New York and a New York? I don’t know,” Hawley said. “But it would be foolish to introduce some legislation without knowing the impact.”

He sent letters to universities across the state, from the University at Buffalo to Columbia University in New York City, seeking their help with the study.

Now, secession in New York is an old idea, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea.  If Hawley's requests for information and studies are answered, the information would certainly be useful. It could be the nail that closes the coffin on talk of breaking apart the state or it could nail a revolutionary manifesto to the door of every town hall in Upstate and Western New York.

Bill Kauffman is expected to have a book out in the spring on secessionist movements in the United States.  Here's an article along those lines from a few months back. Kauffman writes:

Some of the contemporary secessionists are puckish and playful; others are dead serious. Some seek to separate from the main body of a state and add a fifty-first star to the American flag while others wish to leave the United States altogether. Some proposals are so sensible (the division of California into two or three states) that in a just world they would be inevitable; others are so radical (the independent republic of Vermont) as to seem risibly implausible—until you meet the activists and theoreticians preparing these new declarations of independence.

My sense is, that while many in the state outside of The City, are dissatisfied with the direction of government and have a long list of complaints -- from unequal services to high taxes to overregulation -- there's no sense that splitting the state will mend any of the people's grievances.   On the other hand, it contradicts the flow of history to assume that today's boundaries and political alignments will remain indefinitely as insoluble marks on maps .  Somehow, someway, things will change someday.  The question is, will we be  masters of our destiny or victims of historical fate?

The longer we wait to repair the mounting problems confronting New York, the less control we will have over the final outcome.