Paul Szmal: Good morning, it's 8.38, it's FLX Morning, he is in fact here, Chris Lavin, Geneva City Councilor and Executive Director of the Boys and Girls Clubs, good morning and welcome back.
Chris Lavin: Good morning Ted, it's that time of year again.
Paul Szmal: So fundraising time, well it's always fundraising time. Before we talk about Boys and Girls Clubs, I just want to start with council first. We've talked about some of the issues that you see structurally in the way things are done and with some time under your belt now, what are your thoughts of being on the council? Is there some frustration that you don't, you're not able to communicate some of your ideas to the others as well as you'd like or what?
Chris Lavin: No, actually the communication is fine, there's a sort of, I don't know what the origins of it is because I guess technically I'm a Democrat but here I am arguing for restructuring collaboration with other governments, reducing in taxes overall and I'm voted down almost consistently by people who identify themselves as Republicans. It's just, so look, I don't think political labels make much sense. I think it's more the, in governmental bodies in general, there's you know, what's the momentum law, a body in motion tends to stay in motion, a body at rest tends to stay at rest. A lot of government agencies tend to stay at rest, it's hard to move them. And I'm told a lot, a lot of the council members will say, well I agree in principle with what Chris is saying but I can't vote with him. I'm saying, well what other than principle are you voting on?
And then they feel I'm a smart guy and trying to embarrass them and I don't mean to do that, they're hardworking, they're good people, they love Geneva too. But there's been a, I have been shocked at the slowness. An idea can die so quickly and be disappeared into the nine council members or the perception of the administration that there aren't five votes for that. There's never a vote, there's never even a discussion. We took us three months to even get an organizational meeting going. So we've had a nine month year and, but you know I'm told this is the way it's been.
Well I think we're at a time with the Finger Lakes on the upswing, the housing prices going up where we have some energy to do things but we have to rationalize the way it's spent. We have to use our assets to force discussions about collaboration and consolidation of services. And it's not just the city but schools as well, school districts. That Waterloo sits seven miles from Geneva and there's two administrative superintendents and another district to the west, all of which could be consolidated into a much more efficient operation that would save the taxpayers money but also improve services. But of course, I mean that's a world war, getting that to happen.
Paul Szmal: Well that's what people say. Everybody wants their own school.
Chris Lavin: Yes but... I mean I know it's been done other places.
Paul Szmal: Yes it is done other places and there are places in America where policemen are trained as fire drivers so you don't have somebody sitting 24-7 waiting for that fire call when you have guys already out on the road who can be at the firehouse in two minutes. The other thing is, I know you've been other places in the country as have I, it just seems like it's probably more difficult to govern in New York than just about anywhere else starting because the state, I think the state of New York is more heavy-handed and I've lived in Massachusetts, aka Taxachusetts, and I mean I think here is where the state is the most powerful and has its thumb on everything. I mean you can't build a bridge over the road to the lake without approval from the state and it never came.
Chris Lavin: Well you know I also think I try to get parking on South Main Street changed for safety reasons. Kids are at risk there and the process that they would normally go through to do something like that will take years and it's not on the agenda yet and sometimes I think if you went out there, changed the signs, and let the state tell you, oh no you can't do that, the state would probably look, it's good decisions, well done, you know, bless it and move on. That's what the federal government did when Andrew Cuomo put the signs up on the thruway, told them you can't do it.
The city of Geneva is going to do a two or three year process to figure out how much their plant, sewer plant, can handle before renegotiating with the town of Geneva for sewage and water contracts. Those agreements are out and they've summarily decided on a process that John Maynard Keynes the economist once said, in the long run we're all dead. And I think that's been the frustration for me is that there's not decisive leadership to set priorities on key things that need to be done.
And we just had some, we have some senior citizens complaining that they cut $19,000 from the budget that was giving a whole bunch of seniors exercise time at the Y. And they were told by the mayor, well we just didn't have the funds. On a $20 million budget we couldn't come up with $19,000 to keep seniors well cared for in their health, a little contribution, we're, it's just, it's disingenuous and inaccurate and not willing to take on some of the things that people say, that'll never happen.
Paul Szmal: Well, taxes are out of control and people can't afford their houses anymore and seniors are leaving Geneva because they're not going to spend $25,000 a year to own their own home that doesn't have a mortgage on it. Are we, in your opinion, heading for a point where there's going to be a kind of a crash or collapse and Geneva's going to suddenly lose 20% of its population because everybody says can't do it anymore, got to go?
Chris Lavin: Well I don't know that they'll lose that percentage of population, but they did turn a hundred units of housing over to short-term rentals. Those are not people who are going to count on the census anymore and they, the seniors in general, those with affluence and have a nice home with, you know, that's valued, can't afford to take their entire social security and pension and pay it to taxes. So they'll be looking somewhere else, we don't have senior housing here. So they go to Canada where they go to Rochester, they move out of town. We'll see a change in the mix of population.
I do think that you'll also see that when those expensive homes on South Main Street go on the market, they will be sold for Airbnb, not for residential places. I'm seeing that in Rushville, population 600, we've got a whole bunch of them. And that's the decisions we've made as communities and I think they're wrong and the whole city of Barcelona, Spain rescinded its licensing program for Airbnbs because they saw the effect it was having on the mix of the community, the access to housing, the labor force they needed to run the city.
Paul Szmal: I want to shift gears here because we're into the year time and I know you do want to talk about some Boys and Girls Clubs business and at the risk of being political, we can't avoid it here. We're concerned about the incoming administration and potential cuts to some of the programs that you rely on for funding.
Chris Lavin: Yeah, we have to be ready. The four years or eight years ago when Trump first came in, you want to get rid of the education department, that's the department that feeds federal money to states for programs like the 21st century program that does after school programs like this. If those are cut or discontinued, we have a couple years to adjust, but last time they tried to cut it right away with the new budget. If they do that, we'll lose $400,000 and then we'll have to rethink how we're doing what we do and the degrees to which we're doing them.
Paul Szmal: It seems to me the big difference in this Trump administration is last time around there were some of the professionals and the bureaucrats there to say, hey, if you cut this, it means X, Y, and Z. Now there's not going to be anybody, it's all ideologues, so nobody's going to be the person to say, hey, this is the impact of what you're doing.
Chris Lavin: I think it's simpler than that. He didn't have the house last time. He's got the house now and they're the ones who spend the money. And they can get a vote to end some of these programs that are helping kids.
So we're going to have to gird ourselves, so we're pushing on our annual campaign this year to see if we can build up some money to deal with the shocks that are going to come after the first of the year. So we'll see. America's a great place, Geneva's a great place. We've had, in many ways, the best year in the history of the club, both from the support for our food program, our toddler program is racing ahead, and our after-school program has never had better programming. Our finances are in great shape right now, but that changes with the drop of a hat if the federal funding for after-school care is severed.
Paul Szmal: Have you begun to see the impact of some of these programs, like the First Thousand Days and the things that you're doing with the school district to try to have kids who are better prepared to learn when they show up at school?
Chris Lavin: Yeah, the pieces are in place, now we just have to build them out. We're driving, this year, eight or ten kids to school because we identified families that were having trouble meeting that basic. So we're getting the kids there. We're giving them breakfast on the way. That's going to grow to many more students as we identify the families that are struggling. And then we're looking for, we have the resources right now to look at, well, what's the source of those problems? Is it a family overwhelmed by home conditions? Can we help with that?
We're doing groceries delivered to 120 different families, and we're doing drive-through groceries for 1,700 more. A lot of seniors in that mix, but also a lot of families with kids. And all of those things are pieces of the frame of what it takes to have a kid ready for school.
Paul Szmal: Right. You're getting down to real fundamental building blocks here when you're identifying specific families. Okay, this family, kid wasn't going to school because he can't get a ride. This family, they don't have good food to eat. He's hungry all day. Right. And, you know, that's, I mean, that's the way you solve these problems.
Chris Lavin: We went into the nurses' office. One brick at a time. We went into the nurses' offices and found that a lot of kids were reporting to the nurses' office sick with stomach aches, which usually became code for, I'm hungry, it wasn't fed well. Yeah. So we, and the nurses, wonderful women, incredibly gifted, hardworking women, were reaching into their own pocket to have supplies to give them. Yeah. Hygiene and things like that. We're taking that over. We're filling with our new grant, filling the role of not just give them kid food for that moment, but let's identify that family, somebody we need to visit and see if there's, we can help build a better foundation so the kid is fed before he comes to school.
Paul Szmal: So we got a little bit of time left. Your favorite part of the job, putting on your fundraising hat. Give us the elevator pitch.
Chris Lavin: We are doing better work for this community than ever. We're collaborating now with Catholic Charities, with Geneva General Hospital. We're bringing together a logical, efficient, collaborative understanding of what the problems are with kids that are suffering. And for all kids, because we do a lot of programs that just go across the community. So we can really use your help this year, and they can do it on the website if they haven't got a love note from me already. The website is bgcgeneva.org, Boys and Girls Clubs of Geneva.
Paul Szmal: Chris, thanks for the work you're doing, and thanks for sharing it with us and bringing up some of these issues, because you bring a perspective that we don't get a lot of on the program, and I appreciate it.
Chris Lavin: I appreciate it, Ted. Thank you.
Paul Szmal: All right, it is 8.51 now, AFL-X Morning.
