Botched land deal, flawed Rice trial helped to seal his fate; we wish him well

Blaine Cox ... outgoing city manager; today is his last day (Rochester Voice file photo)

The Rochester Voice's coverage of the City of Rochester's shoddy and deceitful handling in a trial to remove a sitting city councilor in May 2022 and the city manager's flawed purchase and sale agreement for an East Rochester parcel for a third fire station in July 2022 likely led to the daily digital's eventual blacklisting by city leadership.
Consider that since July of last year, City Manager Blaine Cox - who is retiring today - never answered a question posed by The Voice either by email or phone.
So there is no lack in irony that The Rochester Voice's dogged effort to shine a light on Cox' ineptitude ended up winning it the prestigious, highly coveted Community Service Award at last month's New Hampshire Press Association award banquet held in Manchester.
The Community Service Award entry, titled "Flawed city land purchase turned into a 5-alarm fire," comprised a series of five stories including a Rochester Voice editorial titled, "Keystone Cops? Devious skulduggery? Or a typical city at work on a Tuesday night?" and another article produced the day after the land purchase was OK'd under mysterious circumstances titled, "If at first you don't succeed ... have a secret meeting till you do succeed."
Cox first came under fire from The Voice in the run-up to the Chris Rice removal from office trial when Cox refused to release details of the trial process to us and even to sitting city councilors. Many in the community agree the Rice trial was poorly executed and became an embarrassment for the city.
During this time The Voice cornered Cox at City Hall and challenged him for refusing to answer questions from The Voice about the trial process.
He led me a few steps away and said, "Is this off the record?"
Thinking he was going to explain some obscure reason why he couldn't answer the questions, I said of course.
"Because you're (not a legitimate news source)," he explained. "I don't have to answer your questions."
This is after five years of Cox answering all questions from The Rochester Voice. We were dumbstruck by his comment. It was the first time this writer had ever been taken off the record to be insulted!
After that day in May he rarely answered an email and stopped entirely in July 2022 following the controversial vote to buy the Highland Street land parcel for a planned third city fire station.
Cox, who seeks to exude a persona as cool, calm and collected, is actually petty, petulant and peevish.
When we saw him a couple of months later at a community group's event that I had been invited to attend, we walked up to him, said hi and outstretched our hand. We figured even if we were at odds professionally we could still be civil and cordial in person.
He dropped his hand.
"Are you lost?" he said contemptuously.
Immediately, the person who had invited me came over and explained they'd asked me to come to give the group some publicity.
After that we never spoke, or more succinctly, he never spoke to The Voice again even though we continued to reach out, for the good of our readers and Rochester.
But forget about his social skills. Let's talk about some of fiscal miscues that cost taxpayers their hard-earned money.
Not only did they likely shell out more than $100,000 due to the botched land sale for the fire station.
He also cost taxpayers another $50,000 when he failed to provide for the replacement of the city's Human Resources chief when she retired in 2021.
During a May 25, 2021, City Council meeting he said the HR chief, who had been working in HR for 30 years, was needed to come back on a part-time basis for another year, because no one else had the institutional knowledge of the department.
Cox added she would serve "as a resource" and "address some SOP (standard operating procedures) for the department "they hadn't had time" to address.
Cox also said the person who had been shadowing the HR chief for some time decided she didn't want the position.
However, as the ultimate overseer of the HR department, Cox should've known enough to build some redundancy into his replacement strategy.
In addition the minute the retiring HR chief said she was leaving he should've been telling her to begin finishing the SOPs and writing narratives on how to deal with the most sensitive issues today's HR departments have to deal with.
Instead, he wanted to bring her back - part time, for $50,528 - to serve as a "resource."
During the May 25 meeting we never even heard about any office hours. It was during the pandemic, so maybe this resource would be working remotely from home ... or maybe Key West, Fla., maybe Paris.
In Cox' retirement letter he stated, "It is time to let the city benefit from new leadership, new ideas and a fresh perspective."
On that, we would agree. We wish him well.

- HT