Morning News Brief
Written by Tom Tharp on February 28, 2022
Governor Hochul announced Sunday afternoon that the mask mandate for schools will end on Wednesday this week. Hochul says this decision comes from studying the data and consulting with medical experts, parents and teachers. She says the credit for the ability of schools to not need masks on kids and teachers comes from the hard work of New Yorkers in getting vaccinated and causing the number of cases to drop by 98 percent since the peak in December and January. Republicans such as Chris Jacobs and Steve Hawley had asserted that the decision to end mask mandates would have more to do with internal democrat polling and not science. And New York’s COVID rates mirror those in places where there were no mask mandates and vaccination rates are lower.
Erie County is lifting it’s own mask mandate for county buildings today. County Executive Mark Poloncarz says the county is following CDC guidelines which were released on Friday and advise that local governments can determine regulations based on hospitalizations instead of or in addition to raw case count. Last week, the county executive said the county’s rate of COVID-19 community transmission is the lowest it has been since August. According to the data about 30 percent of New York still counts as high transmission areas.
Governor Hochul has ordered all NYS agencies and authorities to divest from Russia. She said the unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine was unjustified and New York State could not continue to support Russia in any way. New York State is home to the largest Ukrainian population in the US.
Friday it was announced that Former Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary has reached a settlement with the City of Rochester. Singletary was suing over his firing related to the death of Daniel Prude, of which he was criticized by then Mayor Lovely Warren. The statement said that the parties signed a binding agreement on January 28, and the case was resolved. Singletary is currently running for Congress in the 25th district as a Republican, a seat currently held by Democrat Joe Morelle.
For the past month, residents of Perry have seen a sleek Tesla Model Y patrolling the streets. The new addition to the fleet is an electric vehicle that Chief Michael Grover would like to see more of. Chief Grover says “We’re trying to do our part to reduce the carbon footprint. Eventually, I’d like to have an all-electric fleet.” On Saturday morning, Sgt. Blake Russell, who has been driving the Tesla for the last several weeks, displayed the new patrol car at the ‘Finger Lakes Meetup’ in Avon.
The Buffalo Sabres lost their 6th straight game Sunday afternoon against the Dallas Stars. Tage Thompson scored the first goal for Buffalo and Cody Eakin got the only other goal. The Stars were able to find the back of the net 4 times to the Sabres 2. The Sabres will be back on the road Wednesday when they play Toronto at 7:30 p.m.
