From WXXI news, this is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made this past October when a local man attended a city auction.

Shashi Sinha is a real estate investor, among other pursuits and he was invited to an auction on foreclosed houses.

And he told WXXI Fanelli that he was hesitant to attend.

He said he was wary about, you know, being perceived as kicking people out of their homes.

Somehow I attended the auction and he left angry.

He told Gino Fanelli, quote, it stayed with me for two weeks and it made me angry every single day.

Why is this happening?

That's when I told my wife, I'm going to fix this damned thing.

End quote.

Just a few months later, Sinha announced his candidacy for Rochester mayor.

While the auction might have been the trigger point for his decision to run, Sinha told Sky news that his campaign is fueled by years of seeing unmet potential across the city.

He knows he is largely unknown in this race and that's okay, he says.

If that kind of individual, average people like me, people like me won't stand up, then who will?

He asked.

Simha is one of three candidates that Democratic voters will see on the ballot in the June primary next month.

Mary Lucien is also on the ballot, the member of city council.

She is challenging the incumbent who's running for reelection, Mayor Malik Evans.

As with every election season, we aim to give candidates in as many races as possible.

Time on this program to share their backgrounds, their platforms, their priorities, and to give listeners and viewers a chance to ask them questions.

This hour, we begin the series of interviews for Rochester Mayor with Shashi Sinha.

He's an IT executive, a real estate investor, and a first time candidate whose priorities for office include lowering taxes and increasing the availability of housing for everyone.

Shashi, welcome to the program.

Nice to have you in the studio here.

Thanks for having me.

Shashi Singh, how come she C.N.

Shashi Shashi Sen Handycam is his website.

He's running for mayor.

And before the program began, we were talking a little bit about your background.

I mean, no way in the world you would have.

I told you ten years ago.

20 years ago.

You're running for mayor in Rochester, New York, 20 years ago.

I'm not sure you would have found us on a map.

Probably not.

Probably.

Probably not.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little.

We're going to talk about what you want to do as mayor and why you're running in a moment.

But I want you to introduce yourself to our audience about where you grew up, who you are, and what led you to Rochester.

Yeah.

So my name is Shashi Sana.

I grew up in India.

and then moved to France to study business and came to us about 28 years ago and moved to all of the places, the coldest place in U.S., Minnesota and spent two years there, spent time in Philadelphia, but moved to a register about 15 years ago when my wife got the job at City.

And, yeah, it took me a while, to kind of get used to Rochester.

But then I realized this is a beautiful place, and this is home now.

So that's how I got here.

What were your first impressions when you moved here?

It's a beautiful place.

we live in Park Avenue area.

Really nice old buildings.

Beautiful architecture.

Then we kind of ventured out a little bit, to the northeast and west side, and we saw struggle and some of these houses and places went the same.

we found that people are struggling and that, you know, that's life.

And, so we saw the differences between the socio economic differences.

It was quite staggering.

We lived in Philadelphia for ten years.

it was the same there, but not to this extent.

Here it seems to be really clear line of have versus have nots.

And, that was very eye opening.

it's interesting that you.

It feels more extreme here.

It is.

It is more extreme.

Yes.

and, you know, you moved to Rochester well, after its sort of heyday of the so-called big Three Kodak, Xerox, BNL.

Is it your sense that the city has never recovered in that post Kodak period?

And then you that it's not doing something that it needs to do?

I mean, is it is it local governance?

I mean, how do you see what is driving this extreme level of inequality?

So as you said earlier, I jumped into it after the auction.

I wasn't invited to it, but I heard about it when a friend asked me to if I was interested and as I looked into it, found out that this is not right.

So that's how I jumped into it.

And then I started thinking about, okay, how do we fix this?

So if you kind of take a moment and kind of zoom out to going back to the time you're talking about of, Kodak days and Xerox days, when they left.

A lot of jobs left.

People left.

and this is what I looked up, and the right.

Before that, with that struggle, it started to happen.

Education system started to kind of crumble.

Then came the.

Poverty.

Probably at a it has been in decline for many, many years.

poverty is a big piece of it.

Then came the crime.

And over the last probably ten, 15 years, the housing crisis, the old stock we have in the city never got really taken care of.

so I started thinking about it.

Okay.

We have all of these problems.

Essentially, it is part poverty is driving a lot of it.

But what is causing it and what is it that we need to fix to really get back on our feet?

And it became very clear to me.

Education is one is the root cause of it.

Housing stability is very important and safety comes first is the immediate response that if you don't feel safe, then is the flight kind of response or kind of defensive response that we get.

And so we need to feel safe.

But in the long term, if we really want to get back and I don't want to say get back to the good old days, but go into the future and have this economic revival that I keep thinking about or planning for.

it is possible, but it starts with fixing those three things.

And as a result of those three things, a lot more things follow.

And we have seen it.

Mental health issues.

We have seen drug use and abuse.

So all of these three things are many things are interconnected, especially safety, education and housing.

So you have to address all three.

If you leave any of these three out.

Honestly it's not going to work.

So let's talk a little about housing.

Listeners of this program might remember that last week.

I think we talked about housing on this program.

And we looked at the Zillow heat index, which is an indication of whether a city, a market is a good market for sellers or buyers or if it's in the middle and the average middle score for an American city metro area.

And again, these are kind of arbitrary numbers for me.

But just to paint a picture, the average city market is 70.

If you're above 80 you're in the top ten in this country in terms of better for sellers, hard for buyers.

Rochester is at 150.

Oh my God, no.

Number one in the Zillow heat index.

And it's been like that for months.

And it's because there's no inventory.

There's almost nothing for sale.

300 plus homes for sale in the Rochester area.

compared to a decade ago when it was ten times that.

So we're not building new houses.

And when I when we talk about policy, whether it's cities, whether it's states that lead to a lack of new supply, I often am told you can't just wave a wand at this and say, build more because it's so expensive to build a new house.

It is so difficult even to build a small or a 1200 square foot house, a 1400 square foot house.

It's not a 3000 square foot East Avenue mansion.

It's on a 5000 square foot mansion.

Even smaller homes are very expensive to build.

Have you figured out if you're the mayor of this city?

What's not getting done that you would immediately start working on that says, okay, Housing's a big problem.

I think I've got it figured out.

And here's where we start.

Yes.

I've got to figure that out.

You've got to figure it out.

Yes.

Okay.

Well lay it on us.

All right.

I'm going to give you some information first.

Okay.

62% of our residents live in rental units.

That is one of the highest in the country of city of this size.

And and this is part of the problem.

When home ownership goes down, the ripple effects that leads into in decline and crime going high.

So we do need to bring home ownership up significantly.

Something close to 50%.

Now this is when I propose and this is core of my agenda.

Building 4000 affordable housing unit within four years.

People ask me, how are you going to do that?

There are 3000 vacant lots owned by the city.

You have seen those, six by six, pylon in front.

There used to be houses there.

they got probably condemned and knocked down and we can use every single one of them.

Well, some are garden and and and, the majority.

You think you can use a majority of them?

I can use majority of that 3000.

You can build single houses, duplexes and triplexes, depending on the area and density that if it's duplex metroplex, but it's a single family.

I keep hearing that building houses are expensive.

There is no way you can build affordable housing in those units.

If you think about the traditional way of building.

Of course you can't.

But if you gotta think differently later already there utilities are there, right on the front.

You don't have to give the contract to developers.

You can build modular, penalize home.

And if you look at the information, it costs anywhere from $75 to $225 per square feet.

So if you do a simple math thinking that if that data is correct, which it is, and I have more ideas around how to bring the cost even further down, we're talking about 4000ft home.

If you go in the middle is 100,000 $100,000.

I was just doing them.

So on the high end, $125,000 to build.

Yes.

And the way you build it.

And so you can build $425,000 at the max, thousand square feet home.

And you can sell it at cost or at very small profit.

To people who really wanna move into ownership from rental units or just residents in the city.

Now you can build workforce to build these houses from within the city.

You can hire people.

who are doing their job.

some have gone into life of crime.

this could be a way out.

Train them.

take them out.

Okay.

Learn something.

And we are going to give you a career.

Because this is a long term path out of that life.

so it is very possible to do this cheaply.

And I'm talking about really good quality houses.

You don't have to build a basement.

Those are expensive.

you can do that slab on grade.

Or even better.

screw piles.

our little piles, they're very cheap, very effective, energy efficient houses, insulation at the bottom.

And, so it is possible.

You just got to think differently.

So a big part of this is utilities already exist.

A lot of the infrastructure that you would need exist because those lots exist.

Exactly.

If what you are saying is true, if it would be.

I don't want to say this easy but this is achievable.

Why hasn't been why hasn't it been done already.

I keep scratching my head why people are not doing it.

You don't think you've got something wrong on your end.

No, no.

So city under a lovely bore.

And this is started by the black program.

and, and it happened.

So city has built about 24 houses so far as part of that.

And there are 32 in pipeline.

But the problem is they spend way too much money building this.

It went to developers and for different reasons.

Some of this I don't even know why they're costing so much.

City spent $535,000 each.

Building a single one of this, and they sold it for 110.

I mean, great people who got it.

But that's not a housing plan.

It's not sustainable because it relies on subsidies.

Okay, but but part of your argument about the cost of this.

My colleague Gino Fanelli reported that, quote, sin has an estimate for new builds, appears very conservative.

Home Builders Digest, which is a national trade publication, estimates that the lower the lowest cost for a new house in Rochester is actually $265 per square foot, more than double what you are claiming.

The cost would be correct because if you think about traditional method of building and giving it to developers and contractors, of course is going to be a lot more higher because there are different layers of profit involved in there.

But if you bring it in-house and do it modular or penalize home, the cost goes significantly down.

And this is publicly available data that you can look into.

But yeah, if you go into the building a mansion house, $265 per square feet, yes.

If you're going to give it to a contractor, that's how much is going to cost.

And I'm going to give you an example of that.

I own Dartmouth House.

it's the end.

And it was fire destroyed back in 2012.

I did not want it back then.

Completely from inside and sat there for two years.

Nobody wanted to buy it.

because nobody wants fire damaged property.

It's very expensive to build.

Eventually, I ended up buying it, saying that somebody's got to do something about it.

I went to this city and talked about it, and their answer was, knock it down.

So I did not buy it to knock it down.

I want to save it.

The next question was, do you know it's going to cost you more than $1 million to build this first?

That's not possible.

but then I talked to contractors.

They said, yeah, this is going to be a little over that.

I ended up hiring my own people carpenters, plumbers, electricians, framers.

I sourced my own material.

I did that at the quarter of that cost.

Just by taking the general contracting myself.

So that's for one property, though.

You're not going to be able to do that for 3000 properties.

No, no.

of course you can.

You can.

Of course you can.

You apply the same method saying that city or some, some entity runs this.

I'm not giving that to a developer or a contractor to do this.

My goal is to build this cheaply and effectively.

So I'm going to build a workforce.

We're going to source the materials.

We can have a plan.

We're going to have in-house engineers and architects.

And everybody else is going to be 20, 30 different models that they can build.

And it's like building assembly roughly 1000ft slab home, no basement utilities.

The existing modular.

Modular.

Yes.

they're there more things around it that the way you can make it even cheaper than that.

Like attacked by scruples.

So if you did this, let's say 2500 of the 3000 lots that you're talking about, you can put these homes on a lot of these lots are the way they are because they used to be drug houses.

They fell into disrepair.

Neighbors asked them to be torn down or they became dens that were used by people who were addicted.

And and the city was struggling with what to do with them.

That means that they may be in neighborhoods where different prices might look gaudy.

If you're asking someone to spend $240,000 in a neighborhood where everything else on the street is selling for 80.

Can you do that?

Can can?

Do you think you'll find buyers for people who want to live in these places?

You have to identify places where you have more than one single land available, and there you will see different places like five, six, seven, eight lands open together.

Is there like a street that stands out?

I think Saint Joseph Street.

Saint Joseph and what?

And then what happens if it's a bunch of landlords or out of out of town corporations who come in and say, hey, thanks for doing that, Mayor Sin, You know, we're going to buy 7 or 8 of those properties right off the bat here.

No no no no no.

You're going to deny.

I'm going to deny and buy those properties.

People need to live and own those.

House has to be willing to hold on to find.

Yes.

And you can set, the rules that say we're going to make sure.

Yes.

That's I'm thinking yes, I'm going to set the rules are to council are that this are these houses are for homeowners people who live in the city in this homes.

This is not for investors okay.

So it's similar to buy the block.

by the way, how do you like the Buy the Block program?

I like the idea, but it's a disaster.

Why is it a disaster?

It cost $535,000 to build for 1100 square feet.

House.

This is not sustainable.

So you're saying the city is getting a bad deal and taxpayers are getting a bad deal?

Of course.

Of course.

Think about this.

1100 $1,200 at 1200 square feet.

House.

Would you pay $535,000 to build that as well?

I don't think they're asking people to pay $535,000.

Right.

But it's a waste of money.

They're not being efficient.

They are giving contracts to people and there are different things involved.

So profit is going somewhere.

It's not helping the city.

I think there is.

I think they're going to say that either you have some knowledge about how to do this for half the price or less than they have, and that you ought to share that with them, or that you're engaging in magical thinking.

I just walked you through it.

Okay.

Shashi Simha is my guest.

He's running for mayor of Rochester.

By the way.

The primary.

It's a June primary.

And I know primaries are not always well attended, but you ought to know who's on the ballot.

And you ought to get a chance.

Especially in places like Rochester, where the Democratic primary is often where the next mayor is chosen.

just as the Republican primary in many towns would be where the next mayor or supervisor would be chosen.

Shashi Singhal, one of three candidates.

Mayor Malik Evans is running for reelection.

Mary Lucien, a member of council, is running and Shashi Sinha is also running.

This is a series of conversations we're doing on this program, so you get to meet them at length, and it's a chance for you to ask questions and share your thoughts as well.

It's a good chance to sit down at length with them.

By the way, what does it mean to you to be a Democrat in 2025?

Why are you a Democrat?

I have always been a Democrat.

and what is happening with Republican Party?

I can think of being a Republican, to be honest.

are there Republicans you admire?

I don't know.

I can talk about myself that I'm a common sense, get it done kind of guy.

I'm not left.

I'm not right.

Just what makes sense?

Let's do it.

So, middle of the lane.

Middle of the lane.

Okay.

Do you have any political heroes?

I like Barack Obama.

Unabomber guy.

Yeah.

He wasn't always middle of the lane, though, right?

It's okay.

I mean, he got country energized, and he got things done, and, So.

Yeah, I like them.

So let me just share a few other names, get your thoughts on them.

What do you think of the current president?

It's chaos.

he has gotten us into a place.

I don't know what's going to happen to country in the next four years.

You were just.

Yeah.

Yes, I do, I do worry.

but time will pass.

And we just have to wait and see what happens.

especially the trade war and, immigration issues.

we just have to wait and see.

We'll come back to that in a second.

What do you think of Mayor Malik Evans?

I'm sure he's a nice guy.

I think of him.

He's maintaining the city as it is.

but we are not progressing.

And what I'm talking about is making a big change.

To move away from the maintenance mode and take us into the future in the growth pattern.

Have you spent significant time with him?

No, no.

Have you met him?

just through the designation process.

Okay.

Just basic.

Hello.

Have you shared any ideas that you have about housing and things like that with him?

I have never talked to him in Oakland.

Okay.

And so now you're sharing these ideas through the campaign, and we'll see.

okay.

And and then I wanted to ask you about another national figure, Tom Homan, who came to Rochester this week.

the the chief of ice.

They made a pretty big show of, of talking about what is happening in the city with, illegal immigration, with Ice crackdowns, etc..

If you were mayor over the last two weeks, what would you have done in regards to Tom Homan visit the talk about what's happening.

What would you have done?

So I am an immigrant.

As I said earlier, and I have friends who are fearing people born here.

people came here at very early age, legal, people's visa getting canceled.

So fear has taken root in the immigrant community.

And one of the yesterday, I was talking to a lady over the phone, from Puerto Rico.

She was born here in New York City and Brooklyn.

Moved here about 30 years ago.

She is scared.

She is looking into buying a house back in Puerto Rico to go back.

So fear has taken root in our community, and it's a shame that president and the federal government has done it.

And.

Rochester is a sanctuary city.

But there are so what happened with RPD, in that incident that brought all of this?

Yeah.

I think they I should not have had that knee jerk reaction to do the press conference, to be honest, that hindsight is 2020.

But what is happening now?

We just have to wait and see that.

What comes next?

Do you think the mayor was too critical of Rochester police officers?

I would have taken a slightly different approach.

Yes, those officers should not have been involved and doing the arrest because this is city policy that you don't participate.

I mean, if there was some kind of emergency, great.

But once you got there, if you saw the situation, I think the police should have walked away saying that this is not a emergency situation.

And as mayor, I would not have publicly chastised those officers.

But yes, I would have talked to them and the police department that why did this happen?

and this should not be happening.

And but knowing that we are in a political season, I think we have to think better.

we have to keep calm and collected and not just react to something quickly without thinking about it.

I have to talk about.

Let's do an investigation.

Exactly what happened, why it happened, why those police officers did not follow the policy.

Okay.

would you have met with Tom Homan if he came to Rochester and you were mayor?

Yeah, I would have met with him and talk about, what our policies is.

And, because as mayor, you got to talk and engage with everybody, whether you like their view and their approach or not.

But you can stand firm on what you believe in and what the law of the land is.

When you said that Rochester is a sanctuary city.

Do you think it should be a sanctuary city?

Do you support Rochester being a sanctuary city?

It was decided, I think back in 1986. through city council vote, that Rochester would be a sanctuary city.

So if people think that Rochester would be a sanctuary city than it should be.

And this is where we are.

I'm not asking about people that I'm asking about you.

What does that mean?

Sanctuary city.

That city would not enforce immigration laws.

That's a federal policy.

And I think we are tight on resources.

We talk about crime and and I believe our police should be focused on focusing those violent crimes and not get involved into immigration enforcement.

And that's the choice we made.

and I agree with that.

Okay.

Forgive me.

It doesn't sound like to me you're passionate about the issue.

You're more pragmatic.

And if that's a wrong characterization, please say so.

I am passionate.

I'm an immigrant, so I know that.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And.

I have to think about it.

but this is where we are.

And I care deeply about immigrant community.

I am one of them.

So seeing people getting picked up, without any reason is just mind boggling.

You think?

You think ice is at times, going too far?

Of course, of course.

Think about this.

People on valid visas, getting their visa, getting canceled.

People who were born here.

Citizens getting picked up.

it's all over the news.

And people getting deported without any due process.

I'm all for following the law.

But there needs to be due process for everything.

So now we gotta figure it out how to handle this.

let me grab a phone call from the MLA in Rochester for Shashi Sinha, who's running for mayor.

Good to meet him.

thanks for taking my call.

Sure.

I just want to say I. I think along the same line.

This guy thing is why I get so upset when, uncle gave way $650 million for a stadium in this.

The type of projects this would be going to the housing, okay, not the stadium.

The other thing else, the sanctuary city thing, I don't this, but I don't know when they first came over to maybe was in 86, I'm not sure.

But but the situation dictates.

So let's say you have a sanctuary city.

It's fine.

I'm all for everybody.

They're good people.

But when you have a serious housing shortage and you're bringing in people from around the world, when you know you have a serious housing shortage and you're doing virtually nothing to address, seriously address that housing shortage, that creates a serious problem, and you end up creating a powder keg and putting people against each other.

Okay.

Jamilah.

Thank you.

What do you make of that?

Shashi.

Yeah.

we we do have to address the residents who are living here and their needs.

We do have housing shortage and that is why I keep proposing and talking about that.

We have to build more houses for ownership.

For everybody.

So I do not disagree with.

Thank you.

So you sound to me like an abundance Democrat.

I'd say abundance because there's a new book called abundance from Derek Thompson, Ezra Klein, and they are both on the political left, but they are very critical of Democratic leaning cities and states where housing costs are very, very high and their point over the years is, if you care about housing, why is it so hard to buy a house in your city?

You're failing if that's what you claim to care about.

You sound to me like an abundance Democrat.

I have not yet read the book.

Okay, I haven't read the book, so I don't know.

But yes, it should not be that difficult.

Your party has not met the need.

You think it's fair to say, it's fair to say that the government has not met the need.

And we happen to be Democrat here.

Let's take our only break.

And when we come back, I want to talk about public safety.

if Shashi Sinha is the next mayor of Rochester, he will have to address as everyone in government is addressing now questions about the PAB.

You may have seen a recent court, opinion on the PAB, public safety and many other issues.

and I'm also curious to know what he thinks the economic beating heart of the future of Rochester is.

He's not wrong to point out that he moved here 15 years ago.

It was post Kodak was post big three.

But what's the future look like for a strong economic Rochester?

We'll talk with the candidate for mayor, Shashi Sinha, next on connected.

I'm having Dawson Friday on the next connections.

RFK Jr recently had a lot to say about autism, and his department floated the idea of creating a national autism registry.

They have since scrapped that, reportedly, but it has a lot of people talking.

My colleague Sarah ABBA monte joins me to talk with parents of children with autism and to talk to people with autism who can talk about their response to RFK s remarks.

Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Mary Carey.

Yola center, providing education and life skills solutions designed to empower individuals and the families of those with complex disabilities.

Mary Carey, Yola Center Transforming Lives of people with disabilities.

More at Mary Carey, ola.org.

This is connections I'm Evan Dawson.

If you were following along with news this week, you might have seen that the Police Accountability Board was dealt another blow in Rochester with the state Supreme Court ruling that the PAB, not only doesn't have disciplinary power, but that subpoena power, and all of a sudden, the investigations that the PAB wants to do, whether they would lead to discipline, even the investigations may now be in jeopardy.

What information they could get access to.

So the PAB gets voted into existence by the city of Rochester by residents by a 3 to 1 margin.

But from the start, the PAB did not have disciplinary power, which they wanted to have.

Which means you can I you can, investigate claims of police misconduct.

The PAB could only offer recommendations on what to do.

Then it's up to the police chief.

It's up to the city on how to handle that.

Now, they may not even be able to investigate with all the information at their fingertips, and it's going to be a tough road for the PAB.

We're going to talk to them, I hope, very soon on this program, perhaps as soon as next week.

We're working on that.

And, meanwhile, it's a question of if council is going to keep funding the PAB with these parameters set now by the courts.

So let's walk back and have a couple questions before we kind of get into this week's news.

Let me go back a little and say, as a Rochester resident for a number of years now, did you want to see a PAB in this town?

I want to see police accountability.

I agree with the mission.

I have we have seen so many incidents happening.

incidents in which it looks like police acted inappropriately.

Inappropriately.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

We have seen, that nurse are getting beat up, and, only about a month ago, this police officers knocking this girl or lady on the ground violently and nine year old girl getting pepper sprayed.

All of those.

And I've had some personal experiences.

You have?

I'm not I'm not going to go into it.

So.

So, yes, police accountability is needs to be there.

It's been for many, many years.

We know about it.

So we need to make activities.

Police activities, transparent.

What's happening be through PAB or something else?

It doesn't matter.

Is as simple as police is there to protect you and I have talked about this.

I'm not pro-police.

I'm not entire police.

People need to feel safe.

The police serves a purpose.

They have big responsibility.

They are part of our society that keeps us safe.

But at the same time.

These gun incidents cannot be happening.

That's not acceptable.

They need to be held accountable.

okay.

And so with the with that in mind, the Police Accountability Board has been conducting investigations, publishing their findings, sometimes recommending discipline, in their words, at least alerting the public and putting pressure through the system even if they can't discipline.

Now the courts are saying they may not even be able to get access all this information.

and if that's the case, I listeners are asking.

I've got I think Gary wrote in asking if you're the mayor, do you want the city?

Do you want council?

Do you want the city of Rochester to keep funding the PAB to the tune of millions of dollars a year if they don't have disciplinary power?

And now they may not even have full investigatory power?

Answer may be very simple for me.

In the business world, if something doesn't work and you know that is not going to work.

You stop it.

My goal is to keep police accountable.

If it's not PAB, there needs to be something else.

Yeah.

Well, the Rochester Locust Club, the police union.

They have heard the complaint that you can't ask the police to police themselves that you need a PA. You need an outside entity.

And the Locust Club basically says and I hope we'll talk to them next week as well.

I mean, they're certainly going to be invited.

they essentially say they care very much about accountability and that they will police their own officers, that, yes, they advocate for the officers in their union, but they serve the public.

They're going to be accountable.

They're not going to try to cover up misconduct and that you don't need a PAB for that.

You don't need an outside entity for that.

Do you disagree with that?

I do.

When you're judging something, you cannot have internal judges.

you need independent person to take a look at the facts and decide what's what happened.

So this idea of we're going to take care of this ourselves doesn't work.

It's like grading our own papers.

you wouldn't let your students grade their own papers.

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

Okay.

so I'll answer simply.

If PB is not working, there has to be something else.

And and it needs to be a collaborative process.

Because the goal here is to keep people safe and keep police accountable.

okay.

Now I think we've covered that pretty well.

Let me ask you one more question about public safety.

And then we're going to talk about taxes and economics.

Sure.

On the subject of public safety, do you feel safe living in Rochester?

For the most part, I used to feel safe.

I'll give you an example.

it was probably about three years ago.

my daughter wanted to kind of walk outside in the neighborhoods, and two weeks later, we heard about the news of gun shooting just a couple feet from us.

And we thought, no, we can't have our daughter go out and walk by herself.

So now and the more I talk to people I know, people don't feel safe.

And and crime is high.

You know, it's not a made up thing.

I mean, people talk about, oh, this is just a perception of it.

Part of that might be.

But if you look at the data, it is it is not normal.

Like these young kids getting into crime.

And it's mind boggling.

It's not normal.

We have normalized it.

I yeah, I understand the point.

And certainly so there's a lot of different reasons for why that would happen.

a struggling economy, lack of jobs, lack of access.

That's there's there's that there's, there's other things perhaps, but also when you look at surveys in individual neighborhoods, neighborhood to neighborhood, I've seen different organizations that work on these issues in criminal justice and a lot of neighborhoods are coming back and saying, we actually want more police.

You know, I mean, we don't want less.

We want good police, we want more police.

So should the city hire more officers if they can?

Would you support expanding the Rochester police force?

If you're the mayor?

During the petition period, I knocked about 1500 doors.

it was exhausting.

Number one thing I heard was we want safety.

Crime was number one thing that I heard.

Followed by schools.

So we do need to make police visible where the crime is happening.

That means reallocation of resources.

What we have right now.

We have about 100 openings that we are unable to fill.

Right.

it is needed.

So and I also have talked to first my thought was that some community may not want police there, but the more I talked of it, people I keep hearing know we want police in our neighborhood, you know, ten, 1500 doors.

I have knocked in 1500.

How many people told you I want less police?

Anybody?

Yes, you've heard that?

I have heard that.

Is it is a common?

No.

Two people two times?

Yeah.

Two times.

How often did you hear?

I want more police or so.

Some form of that.

Majority of them.

Okay.

Yeah.

I would not say we want more police.

We want crime controlled.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's not the same thing.

So.

So you do think, though, those 100 open officer positions, some way or another, there has to be a way to try to fill those.

We need to figure out that.

How do we use the resources we have and if we have more need or not after doing that.

But based on the situation, we do need to fill those positions.

Okay.

Last couple years has been a lot of talk about auto thefts.

I haven't seen the numbers this year, so I don't know where the trend line is, but we know how wild it was with Kia and Hyundai thefts in the last couple of years.

What do you think was driving that?

Well, let me ask you a different question.

If you were the mayor, would you have done anything different than what has been done in the city?

So deterrence is a piece of policing.

The way to do that is making sure that where the crime is happening, those become difficult for those people to do their, that involves police being visible.

It is proven that if you put a cop in the corner, chances crime happening there goes down.

If you put a blue light camera somewhere, chances of crime happening there goes down.

Be the fake one.

I don't know.

so having those deterrence mechanism in place would help for sure.

Including, these car break ins.

If we just advertise that some of these cars have police camera in them, could that help?

Maybe.

so trying to keep crime out by saying that we are actively pursuing this.

Would help.

so, yes, I would do those things.

Now, if you're open to hiring more officers, but you want to cut taxes by a 40% property tax reduction over four years.

40%.

40%.

How are you going to do that.

I have big plans and everybody does it until I really go into the detail of how this going to work.

So percentage is one thing.

And we know that is a defined budget for property tax.

That city is looking for.

there are three components of property taxes city school and county.

school being the biggest one.

And I don't exactly remember the numbers, but I think if I add that up, that is somewhere between 252 to $80 million in property taxes that we collect.

Now, think about that.

What does that mean?

So I want to do this over four years.

Okay.

5%.

The first eight, 12 and 18.

In a phased approach.

5% tax means.

we are talking about and I noted it down about maybe 12, $13 million overall.

It's a lot of money.

It's a lot of money.

And there are two categories of property taxes.

Residential.

That is homestead and non homestead.

And I'm talking about people who are living in their own houses.

So that's going to bring down the number of property taxes that needs to go down.

I don't have that number.

but let's say 70% of people on their houses and live in them.

So we are talking about 8 or $9 million.

Can we do that?

Yes.

How?

I talked about 4000 housing unit.

We build them, sell them with just a little bit of profit.

Let's say $10,000 profit.

Over.

Let me look at my data.

What I came up with.

On average, we are talking about $10 million alone.

That takes care of a school, city, county on top of that.

Those houses bring a new tax base.

They're going to pay tax themselves.

That is anywhere from 1.5 to $2 million.

On top of that.

I do want to look into city government.

Any wasteful spending?

Not resource cuts, no.

but programs that are not working.

What's an example of one that you say?

Yeah, we shouldn't be spending this, like by the black program?

By the black?

Yeah.

Okay.

But that's the kind of doesn't make sense.

another one was that came up this flower city.

An artwork for, what, $500,000 or so.

And I'm thinking, why are we spending this much for for a for artwork.

Why not?

And that artwork project went to somebody in Boston, and this.

So those are the things that I would be looking.

Small things that add up that you think they can add up?

Yes.

And you think you can achieve a 40% property tax reduction over four years.

So this is what we talk about is 5% reduction.

The first year.

Now comes the growth story.

Because I'm not running to maintain the city.

We need to grow.

We have to get over past the Kodak and Xerox era and really move forward.

We need to bring growth.

And tourism is something that has huge potential for Rochester.

People keep talking about it, but we haven't done much.

We have a lot of potential.

just by tourism, I think.

I don't want we can bring a lot of money.

It can become an economic driver.

Oh, yes.

Okay.

And and are there other economic engines that you think are.

I know I'm not asking you to guess what the next big three is.

I don't know that we're ever going to be a city that has a big three again.

But what is the economic heart of the city look like in the future?

You think we do need to bring, new economy into the city and and part of that is happening.

not to the extent that I once it's mostly small businesses and universities and hospital.

but we do need to entice and bring bigger businesses as well.

As well as and and you can do that by showing that we have the workforce here.

I mean, think about how many inner cities we have.

What happens?

They graduate, they leave.

If you make it easier for businesses to operate and start, we can do that.

We just gotta put our mind to it and make it a priority.

so that's that's one of the example that I think about that we can do better on.

We've covered a lot of your your base here.

So I've got about one minute left.

So I want to ask you.

What's the best place to go out to eat in Rochester?

I have one.

Can I say the name?

Yeah.

Rue, on Park Avenue.

That's.

That's my favorite.

Can you walk to it from home?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Magnolia is a great one.

What else?

I have been to a lot of restaurants and and on Park Avenue and Monroe.

Dogtown.

I love Dogtown.

Okay.

Very good.

and and you.

You know, you want to be mayor of a town that has a lot of water resources.

We we have a river.

We're not far from a lake.

We often don't think of ourselves as a water town.

So I want to close with this.

The state's been investing a lot in what's called rock the River way.

are you happy with what you're seeing there?

Would you want it to continue?

It's moving too slow.

Moving too slow?

Yes.

Should have been done a couple of years ago.

But in general, what you see, you, like, we need to invest more.

So when I'm talking about tourism, think about this waterfall right in downtown.

How cool is that?

If we make that a tourist attraction, not just a state park, but build more things around it.

And I have seen that in the project and proposals.

So we have to fast track all of those things.

that that could be our revenue generating mechanism.

That, that I'm thinking, hey, grab a coffee, get the reopened Ponte Durin bridge.

They're one of my favorite places in the city.

Finally reopen.

They're staring right at the waterfall, too.

There's a lot of untapped potential.

I hope you'll keep talking to us throughout this campaign.

And no matter what happens, during the campaign and beyond.

I do appreciate the time.

And thank you for making it.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Shashi Singha has running for Rochester.

Mary's on the ballot in the Democratic primary next month.

Three Democrats on the ballot for mayor.

Mayor Malik Evans running for reelection.

Council member Mary Lupine and Shashi Sinha.

They've all been invited.

We're going to have them all on this program, talking about their campaigns.

Shashi.

His website is Shashi sinha.com.

If you want to learn more from all of us at connections.

Thanks for watching.

Thanks for listening.

We're back with you tomorrow on member supported public Media.

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