Morning News Brief

With Pfizer seeking FDA approval for their vaccine to be administered to children 5-12 any parents and educators are wondering if a new mandate is coming and Governor Hochul is indicating that yes, a vaccine mandate for schools is inbound.  Governor Hochul says that once the COVID vaccine is approved for young kids she is planning to wait a couple of months to see how many parents get their kids the shot voluntarily and then impose a mandate for every school age child to get vaccinated in order to attend school.  She points to other vaccines that are required for school attendance in order to say that vaccine mandates are not unusual.  Critics point out that nearly all vaccines required for students were studied for years or even decades before being mandated and that the diseases they prevent are much more deadly to children than COVID.

The mail at the post office is getting slower and more expensive and New York State is not happy.  NYS Attorney General Letitia James is joining in with 20 other attorney Generals across the US to bring a lawsuit against the USPS over the slowdown and increase in prices that have made first class mail take up to 5 days to arrive and package fees go up.  The lawsuit alleges that the Postmaster General made wide sweeping changes without going through the USPS regulatory process and seeks to stall the changes and increased time and cost till at last after christmas. 

Genesee County is trying to locate a dog and its owner over a dog bite incident. The bite occurred late Monday morning in Centennial Park. The dog is described as a grey Pitbull with white markings around its neck, front paws and left ear. The dog is believed to weigh between 55 and 60 pounds and was wearing a camo collar. The dog was not accompanied by its owner and was running loose in the park.  Health Department officials need to know if the dog is current with its rabies shot, otherwise the victim will need post exposure rabies shots. If you have any information, you are asked to call the Genesee County Health Department.

O-AT-KA milk is facing a tough situation after the City of Batavia discovered exceedingly high levels of contaminants in the waste water sent into the ponds from the Cedar Street industry.  The city is facing thousands of dollars in fines from the State Department of Environmental Conservation if it can’t fix the contamination problem.  O-At-Ka is having to ship the waste water by truck away to other dumping grounds and is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra expenses.  Something that Chairman John Gould says they can’t do much longer.  The company is investing 6 million dollars into upgrading its waste water pretreatment facility but it may not be enough.  Gould says that if the city still restricts its ability to dump its waste water into the city waste treatment ponds they may have to look at reducing operations at the Batavia location or relocating the plant altogether