Morning News Briefing

With just about a week until the opening of The Great New York State Fair, people are guessing what the 800 pounds of butter will become, as construction of one of the most beloved attractions gets underway – the 53rd Annual American Dairy Association North East Butter Sculpture. Sculptors Jim Victor and Marie Pelton unpacked the butter and their tools and began work on the sculpture over the weekend. The butter, produced from over two-thousand gallons of milk, came from Batavia, N.Y.-based producer O-AT-KA Milk Products. Even after the Fair, the butter doesn’t go to waste, instead, it gets recycled into renewable energy. The butter will be sent to Noblehurst Farms in Pavilion, where it goes into a digester along with other food waste from Wegmans stores and local Universities. The digester then breaks down the material and creates about 450 kilowatts of electricity, which is enough to power about 350 homes for a year. On a weekly basis, Noblehurst is responsible for diverting 100 tons of food waste from local landfills.

New York’s Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul is expected to succeed Governor Andrew Cuomo after he resigned earlier this week. She delivered remarks on Wednesday, with a promise to New Yorkers. Governor Cuomo will officially end his term on August 24th, as he faces damning sex allegations brought forth by several women who worked for him, as well as for being involved in other scandals involving his administration’s COVID response – making Kathy Hochul the 57th Governor of New York, and the first female governor of the state.

The head of the Republicans in the New York State Senate says state leaders with direct ties to disgraced Gov. Andrew Cuomo should step down. Republican Sen. Rob Ortt says Dr. Howard Zucker, the state health department commissioner, and Linda Lacewell, superintendent of the state’s financial services department, “directly aided Andrew Cuomo’s misdeeds” and therefore don’t deserve to keep their jobs. If Lacewell and Dr. Zucker don’t resign, Ortt said they should be removed by incoming governor Kathy Hochul.

Batavia PD received an anonymous tip that led to the recovery of some of the decorated stones and shells that were stolen from the Batavia Peace Garden a couple of weeks ago. The officers who recovered the stones and shells returned them to the Peace Garden. Peace Garden founder and director Paula Savage confirmed that the stones and shells returned were from the Peace Garden.

Randy Fancher, president of Fancher Properties of Akron, is returning to the Genesee County Planning Board tonight for a third time to propose a revised site plan for a mixed-use project on Main Road between Brickhouse Corners Drive and Tim Hortons in the Town of Pembroke. The latest version has Fancher Properties of Akron constructing a two-story building with 7,000 square feet of retail space on the first floor and six market rate apartments on the second floor, along with driveways, parking lots and a six-bay tenant parking garage to the south. A review of his site plan is on the agenda for tonight’s meeting starting at 7 o’clock at County Building 2 on West Main Street Road.

Another day, another heat advisory. The National Weather Service says today’s advisory will run from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. Heat index values in the mid-90s to as high as 100 can be expected.