Weekend News Brief

Governor Cuomo has responded to the allegations against him and State Health department Director Howard Zucker that they deliberately underreported the deaths of people in nursing homes after the controversial March 25^th order for nursing homes to take COVID positive patients in from hospitals to avoid hospitals getting overwhelmed.  Zucker said that the reason the death counts were lower than the actual number is that they were being cautious in order not to put out inaccurate information.  Cuomo said that he understands peoples pain but it didn’t matter where people died or why.

The Robert Morris School building may have kids in the halls once again is a proposal by Superintendent Anibal Solare gets picked up by the board.  Solare pointed out that the district is losing money and value by having the school sit unused except for a few programs because without students the state would not fund any repairs or maintenance or upgrades to the building.  A report from SEI Design Group found several areas that need to be addressed in the building and across the district to the tune of roughly 40 million dollars though they stressed that Batavia had been doing a very good job maintaining the schools compared to other districts.  Solare said that the reopening of Morris would take longer than just a few months and that more community input is needed.

High School seniors who are graduating can apply for the New York Farm Bureau’s Agricultural Youth Scholarship for up to 1500 toward furthering their education.  Applicants must live or work on a farm, they or their family must be members of the farm bureau, and they must live in New York state.  For more info and to apply, go to the NY Farm Bureau’s Website.  Applications are due by March 1^st.

The Holland Land Office Museum will be returning to normal operating hours on Tuesday February 2^nd.  The hours will once again be 10 to 4 Tuesdays through Saturdays.