ACT Rochester Report Card: Improvement needed in key areas

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The City of Rochester and the nine-county Finger Lakes region continue to underperform in several key areas related to the economy, education, health and public safety, and one element that has beleaguered Rochester for some time has not improved: child poverty.

ACT Rochester on Thursday presented to a standing-room-only crowd its Eighth Annual Report Card, held at the Rochester Museum & Science Center. Community members, business leaders and elected officials learned that for the first time since the Report Card began, the region performed worse than New York State as a whole in half of the areas measured.

From 2012 through 2016, one-third of people in the City of Rochester lived in poverty, 7 percentage points higher than in 2000, and higher than the state rate of 15 percent. At 50 percent, Rochester had a higher child poverty rate than the state’s 22 percent rate, as well as other cities in the region. Both poverty and child poverty rates in Rochester had large disparities in terms of race and ethnicity, with people of color living in poverty at higher rates than whites, according to the Report Card.

Like the other cities in the region—Batavia, Geneva and Canandaigua—Rochester had a decline in median household income from 2000 to 2012-2017 at a greater rate than the state as a whole. Its level in 2012-2016 was $31,700, the lowest of the four cities. There were pronounced disparities in median household income between black or African American and white households.

The majority of data for ACT Rochester indicators is sourced from the U.S. Census. ACT Executive Director Ann Johnson reminded the audience that data informs action.

“Where we have work to do, and all of us do, is in the role of action. Not just any action, but action that we measure how we’re going forward and look for results and impact. That’s an important part of where we need to go next, and ACT is actively involved in trying to push that agenda,” said Ann Johnson.

Some 47 percent of Rochester households were in 2012 through 2016 paying more than 30 percent of their income in housing costs—a much higher share than at the state or regional levels, 33 and 35 percent, respectively.

In 2017, the Rochester City School District spent $23,300 per student, below the state rate of $24,700, according to the report. Rochester’s spending level has increased by 39 percent from the $16,750 it spent in 2000, the smallest increase of the four cities in the region.

Last year, Rochester’s 3rd grade English proficiency rate, an important measure of early reading skills, was 17 percent, below all of the cities in the region and the state’s 51 percent. The rate increased by 11 percentage points from 2013 to 2018, the lowest improvement of any of the four cities.

Rochester’s rate of serious crimes was 471 per 10,000 residents in 2017, the report shows, the highest among other cities in the region and above the state’s rate of 182. However, this reflected a 39 percent decrease in the rate from 2000. Rochester’s rate of violent crimes increased 22 percent in the same time period.

“Data on their own are not where the power lies. They don’t make change on their own. They don’t contribute to change on their own,” said Center for Governmental Research Inc. President and CEO Joseph Stefko, who moderated Thursday’s event. “Much like the tape measure, the hammer and the pliers that are in a toolbox, data are potential instruments of change. To be effective, to be applied in ways that shape or reshape or build, tools, like data, require engagement. They require us as individuals, as organizations, as community groups to open up the lid, understand the power of what’s in the box and apply it in smart ways.”

ACT is an acronym for Achieving Community Targets, Johnson noted, and she said she learned earlier this week that the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council has set a target to move 20,000 people out of poverty in the nine-county region by 2025.

“We’ve been blessed in our community to have an effort of collective impact going on in multiple different arenas. That means people who sit at the table and all move toward mutual purpose and they use their resources to be able to deliver outputs, outcomes and impact,” Johnson said. “I think as we go forward what we’re going to need to do is look at what is that overall result that we want to achieve?”

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