Councilmembers approve funding, but disagree on what caused delay 

Six weeks after a proposal to provide funding for refugee service organizations fell short of City Council approval, the measure passed unanimously.

Approval of the $125,000 expenditure was delayed, Councilmember Stanley Martin contends, in retaliation for her vote in May against the city’s proposed sale of School 29 to RocSci Academy. However, some of the councilmembers who voted against discharging the measure from committee on June 16 said they had other concerns.

Martin says that after working with her fellow councilmembers on the ordinance with a provision to help fund Refugees Helping Refugees, Mental Health Education and Legal Code for Refugee Rights and Rochester Refugee Resettlement Services, she was informed by Council President Miguel Meléndez that some of her colleagues were unwilling to support the funding. 

At a June 16 meeting, the measure was not discharged from committee after a 4-5 vote, with Councilmembers Mary Lupien, Stanley Martin, Bridget Monroe and Chiara Smith voting in favor. Opposed were Meléndez and Councilmembers Mitch Gruber, LaShay Harris, LaShunda Leslie-Smith and Michael Patterson. A stormy discussion broke out about the failed vote.

“I was definitely blindsided when we got on the floor, and the folks who had said they were going to support it (Gruber and Meléndez) reneged,” said Martin, who spoke with the Beacon hours before the funding was unanimously approved on July 28. “Ultimately, the reasoning was they were trying to do some kind of trade-off. If you vote to sell the school, we will then vote to support the immigrant community. For me, that was a non-starter.”

A vote on the proposed sale of School 29 by the city to RocSci Academy, whose students currently share a building with Bishop Kearney High School in Irondequoit, was tabled in May after Martin, Lupien and Smith voiced opposition. The sale remains tabled following the Council’s July 28 meeting.

Councilmembers opposed to the sale of the empty School 29 building to RocSci argued that the request-for-proposals process, when the city allows community members to propose specific uses for city-owned properties on the market, should follow a housing-first approach rather than focusing on selling properties as quickly as possible.

“We have always been clear that we believed that the school would be best suited for housing. And that was based on reading a very strong RFP, a very strong proposal to make the school (building) housing,” says Martin. 

“We also wanted to change the RFP process to make sure that housing is prioritized instead of how quickly a building can be sold,” she adds. 

Councilmembers in favor of selling the building to RocSci say that the charter school needs its own facility, and that the city needs the money from the sale and cannot afford to maintain the building until a viable housing proposal is made.

During discussion following the June 16 vote on discharging the funding for the refugee resettlement services, councilmembers who voted against the measure said it needed to be amended to include other organizations more equitably and add more details on how the money would be used.

Gruber, chair of the Budget Committee, who worked with Martin on amending the ordinance, responded directly to her during the June 16 meeting. He pointed to a lack of clarity on what the city would ask the refugee service organizations to use the funding for. Other concerns were how funds were to be distributed among the three organizations, and the need for more time to write up contracts with the organizations.

For his part, Patterson said he would “offer no apology to anyone for advocating for the 130 children that are city of Rochester residents that attend RocSci. Those are our kids; they need to go to school in our community. … “You (Martin, Lupien, and Smith) have the right to be opposed; I can’t make you change your mind, but votes have consequences.

“To the folks in the immigrant community who we are looking to be funded … in a normal situation this would have been passed and done, but I need those kids to go to school in the city of Rochester,” he added. “So one month, you (Martin) vote against Rochester children and the next month you come in and ask for something, and we’re supposed to ignore it? No ma’am. That we will not do.” 

Leslie-Smith, who voted against discharging the ordinance, said during the subsequent discussion, “I’m not in agreement with the statements of my peer Mr. Patterson.” 

She added: “The whole notion that votes have consequences and that people should not be able to vote on their personal convictions, their value system, is just a flawed system. … This is the ugly side of this work. No organization should be used as a bargaining chip. No young person should be used as a bargaining chip. Yes, our votes have consequences, but those should be based on our values and wherever it lands that should be OK.”

Meléndez said that while he had voted “no” that evening, he was amenable to changing his vote in the coming weeks. He also corroborated Martin’s statement that he and Patterson had met with her, saying that he was searching for a viable path forward for both the sale of School 29 and the funding for immigrant families. 

During discussion before the ordinance was unanimously passed on July 28, Meléndez talked about his June 16 vote. He remarked on the Council’s “fiduciary responsibility” to sell the school building, while also saying he was proud to support the funding for the refugee resettlement organizations. (Meléndez did not respond this week to a request for additional comment.)

Martin originally proposed providing funds to RHR, a refugee services organization. Later, the ordinance was amended to include MELCOR and RRRS. In the amended ordinance, RHR is allocated $85,000, while MELCOR and RRRS are allocated $10,000 and $30,000, respectively.

“This funding is going to allow Refugees Helping Refugees and, I believe, the other two organizations that received funding help migrants navigate our broken housing system,” said Grant Marthinsen, RHR chairperson. “As many folks know, there’s really not enough affordable housing to go around and, of course, navigating that is even harder when, perhaps, English is a second language, or you lack a local support network. 

“So, organizations like Refugees Helping Refugees, when they have sufficient funding to provide housing assistance and other critical support, are able to help some of our community members make that work a little better.”

David Wazana is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s second cohort. 

The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to comment on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].