Morning News Brief

Rochester Police are looking for the driver who was behind the wheel of a vehicle that crashed into two patrol cars Thursday night.  Around 8:30 p.m., officers were investigating a report of shots fired in the area of Norton Street and Joseph Avenue when they spotted a “suspicious” vehicle on Bremen Street.  As officers approached, the vehicle fled in a “reckless manner,” striking two police vehicles in the process, and nearly running over an officer who was nearby. Nobody was injured at the scene of the crash.  Police said the vehicle involved in the incident was recovered a short time later on Moulson Street, but the driver remains at-large.

Rochester Police are warning city residents to keep their doors locked after circulating a video of a man going door to door and checking to see if they are open.  They are calling the man seen on the RochesterNYPD X account a serial burglar.  He has been accused of burglarizing several homes that he found unlocked.  Police don’t have an id on the suspect.

Just over 130 people in the village of Arcade will be out of a job in the spring as API Airtech has decided to shut down it’s location there.  The heat transfer company made the announcement late last week.  The company has a larger facility in Cheektowaga and operations in Wisconsin, Germany, and China.  In a news release, the company says it will be providing financial and other transitional assistance for the employees affected.

Governor Kathy Hochul’s recent announcement of a $479 million investment in water infrastructure projects across New York brings significant benefits to Genesee County, including a substantial $30 million allocation for the third phase of the County’s critical water supply project.  This funding is part of New York State’s $4.2 billion Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act of 2022.  Part of the money is going to help villages like Bethany to expand public water to people who’s wells have dried up in this Fall’s drought conditions. 

For the second consecutive week, the Seneca Park Zoo is celebrating the birth of a new giraffe.  Iggy, one of the zoo’s female Masai giraffes, gave birth to a calf late Wednesday night.  The birth came one week after the zoo’s other female Masai giraffe, Kipenzi, gave birth to a calf.  Both calves were fathered by Parker, who died earlier this year. The calf born last week is a male and will be named Parker Junior. The new calf does not have a name yet.  The zoo’s stable of giraffes now includes six members, with the two new calves joining Iggy, Kipenzi, Olmsted and JD — the latter of whom recently transferred from a zoo in Ohio.

The community voted to approve the Batavia City School District’s 45 million dollar capital improvement project Thursday.  The vote means that the capital project will proceed in 2024 to install two synthetic turf fields for the high school, a baseball and softball field each, and upgrades for every school building within the city school district.  Also included in the work will be Robert Morris school which will be converted into a “modern early childhood education center” according to Superintendent Jason Smith.