Latest / The Wilmac Wire / Adam Bello | Leading Monroe County, Public Safety, & Economic Growth

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Adam Bello | Leading Monroe County, Public Safety, & Economic Growth · The Wilmac Wire

• speaker-0: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Thank you for tuning in and joining us for another episode of The Will MacWire. I'm gonna get right into who our guest is today, and that is Monroe County Executive, Adam Bellow. If you didn't know, Adam Bellow stepped into the county executive role in 2020, which is a year. If you're like myself, you block out of it, you block it out of your memory. So Adam, in 2020, he... stepped into the role of Monroe County executive and a global pandemic. COVID testing, mass vaccination sites, keeping schools open and supporting local businesses that were hanging on by a thread were some of his core focuses, his core priorities when he stepped into the role in 2020. Now in 2026, he's laser focused on a few core areas that we discuss, four core pillars as you like to call them. And one of them was public safety. which as many of you know, as many of our listeners know, public safety is a core component of WillMac. We work with a ton of 911 centers across North America. And we've been having some really healthy, great conversations with the Monroe County 911 Center team, which made this conversation very timely. In today's episode, you can expect to hear more about that conversation on public safety in terms of... what Monroe County's priorities are when it comes to public safety, along with how technology and AI is playing a role in that field. We also discussed the workforce challenges that many telecommunicators face within 911 centers. Beyond that though, you can expect to hear Adam talk about his career journey and what drew him into public service, along with the economic development potential within Rochester. How easy it is now for people to start a business with AI and how we're trying to encourage that more in our region. And last but certainly not least, Adam touches on some of the biggest opportunities that he sees in the future for Monroe County. As a business, WillMac is very grateful to operate within Monroe County and to be able to speak to leadership like Adam Bellow very openly and honestly, be able to air it so you can also hear it. So I want to thank the Monroe County team for being very responsive in the coordination of this episode. They've been great to work with along with a big thank you to Adam Bellow for taking time out of his very busy schedule to join us in person in studio for this recording. I'm really excited for you, our listener, to listen to this episode. So thanks for tuning in and hope you enjoy. Welcome to the Will MacWire. I'm Emily Miller, joined by my co-host, Steve McDonald. On this show, we talk the drivers, the leaders, innovators, and decision makers pushing customer interaction technology and AI forward. And because we're proud to call Western New York home, we also spotlight the drivers in our own community, the people and organizations shaping growth and innovation right here. Let's get into it. All right, welcome to the WillMac Wire. I'm excited to introduce our guest today. Joining us from right here in Monroe County, a lifelong Rochester area resident from Irondequoit. Husband, dad of two and long time public servant, he entered the public office at just 32 years old as Irondequoit town supervisor, later served as Monroe County clerk known for being hands on and community focused. He was elected Monroe County executive in 2019 and stepped into leadership at one of the most Hivital moments in recent history. He's led the county through major challenges while focusing on public safety, public health, economic development and infrastructure. Welcome to the Willamette Wire County Executive, Adam Bellow. Thank you. Yeah, we're glad to have you here in studio, Rockbox Studios in Pittsburgh. All reliable of having our guests in person. So thanks for joining us. speaker-1: here is with you today. speaker-2: Great to be here. speaker-1: excited to talk to you today. Yeah, this will be a lot of fun. speaker-0: All well, we'll get things started and keep it lighthearted by doing a little icebreaker that we like to call this or that. So I have three questions for you. I'm gonna pose two different things to you and you can tell us which one you choose and why. All right? So we'll start things off with Rochester in the fall or Rochester in the summer. speaker-1: summer versus fall. ⁓ You know what? I'm going to go with fall. It's my favorite season. Yeah, it is. I'll tell you why though, because the fall, just like the summer, the summer always gives you what it promises, right? It's hot. But in the fall, can still do almost everything you can do in the summer. You can still, on a warm day, can probably still hit the pool if it's still September. ⁓ But you can also add in apple picking, pumpkin picking, and all like the Halloween stuff. So I think that's the best. speaker-0: ball has been a popular pick. It is a good season up in Rochester. because I put spring in there a few times and I've always like spring last two weeks here, so it just doesn't hit as hard. speaker-1: Is that right? Yeah. ⁓ Spring is always the worst because you never know what you're gonna get. It could be freezing cold or it could be warm and then it gives you that little taste of summer and kind of wets your beak a little bit and then it disappoints you with some. speaker-0: Well, mean, even this past, what, weekend, I could finally see my grass and then woke up this morning. It was good. All right, beautiful. Okay, next one, a little bit more work-related, but door-to-door or a town hall. speaker-1: ⁓ It's all gone. ⁓ I love going door to door. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. It's one. I'm probably one of the few politicians that actually loves going out there and knocking on doors. I love it. There's something about those conversations one on one where you can basically ask somebody what do they care about? You get a much more honest and frank conversation than you would in a crowd. And you can spend as little or as much time with somebody as they want. Because when you're when you're in a big crowd, you might only get maybe 30 seconds with somebody to talk to them. When you're at someone's front door, you speaker-2: it. speaker-1: walk away from them if you don't like the conversation. speaker-2: You're there, so you know. speaker-1: And so you get that full conversation, you get that honesty, because you're not being recorded usually or anything like that. Unless you're on a Ring doorbell, I've had that happen. Someone's taking shots of me on their front step and put it on Facebook or something from their Ring doorbell. ⁓ But I love it. speaker-2: for sure. speaker-0: ⁓ awesome. How many, so if you're gonna do it door to door afternoon, how many hours do you go? Because it's gotta be tiresome too. It is. Not only physically, but you're having pretty intimate conversations. speaker-1: Oh, absolutely. It can be exhausting and also exhilarating a little bit, You could, you know, if you're in this business, you feed off of that, right? Those conversations too, but it's exhausting, but usually a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon, if you're really in the zone, you could go for three or four hours doing it. But I also have to balance that with my home life and my family. You know, can you stop at the store on the way home? That kind of thing when you're done knocking doors. speaker-2: know, there's always flowers. speaker-0: All right, last one. ⁓ Wegman's sub or garbage plate. speaker-1: ⁓ absolutely a garbage plate. Yeah, yeah, no garbage plate all day. speaker-2: Yeah speaker-0: plate. Any particular garbage plate recommendation? speaker-1: ⁓ No, I mean, there's obviously like, you know, Nick Tahoe's is obviously the classic, so I can't get away without saying that. But you know what? We go down to Bill Grace up at Seabreeze. And we're there a lot. We live in Aaroniquade, we hang out there a lot in the summer and the fall. speaker-0: Yeah, and the fall. It's about in the fall. All right. Well, thanks, Adam, though. That's where the icebreaker. That is right across from the 911 Center. I know. It is. It is. right. Okay, Adam, we're going to just start with talking a little bit about your career journey. So can you kick it off by telling us a little bit more about how you ended up in public service and maybe why you didn't choose that private sector path? speaker-1: Sure. Yeah, you know, when I was growing up, my parents were always little bit involved in politics. ⁓ My dad was the leader of the Democratic Party in the town of Arondiquaite for a long time and always, so I was always just surrounded by it. And I really liked politics and it changed to government in a little bit and I'll tell you why. But ⁓ it was always that, you know, even in high school, they could be watching CNN, you can watch Crossfire, remember that old show and watching elections come in and stuff. So I got my first sort of taste of working in it when I was in college, when I was a senior. ⁓ I had a chance to intern for Louise Slaughter, who was our Congress member from Rochester. I interned for her down in Washington in the fall of 2001. It was an interesting internship because I went there because I love politics, so I wanted to see all these politicians who I thought were celebrities and things like that. ⁓ But I had a different type of internship because when I was down there, that's when 9-11 happened. We were evacuated from the Capitol and all of that, so I had much different experience than most interns would have. But the day, I think it was the day after 9-11, I went back into work and everyone's like, why are you here? know, because it was all a little bit chaotic. And Louise ⁓ was asked if they could loan me out to go spend a couple hours answering phones in a guy named Jerry Nadler's office. He was a congressman who covered the World Trade Centers in New York. And so for a few hours that day, my job was to answer calls in his office. where people were literally calling because their family member didn't come home the day before or a couple days before. And ⁓ so I would connect people to the reunification center or wherever they were set up down there. And so I was talking to people who I knew, you know, just as they probably did, right, that their loved one might not be coming home. And it gave me a completely different view of what this all was about. Politics is a vehicle to get elected, right? It's what you have to do to become an elected official and these jobs But what these jobs are once you get them are very very different. It's all about serving people It's helping people it's helping people in crisis. It's and and I really liked that and it really did change the way I think my career trajectory went because I thought I would just be doing Campaigns getting involved in politics, which I did do for a little bit even after that but I was much more drawn to the government experience and what it really is to to run a government and to really help people, which is what it's about. speaker-0: Did you jump right in? You didn't really get elected. You weren't elected official until 32. speaker-1: What were you doing between So when I left after my internship and I graduated college, I went to work for Joe Morelli, who was our state assembly member at the time. And he was my assemblyman in Aaronicoid. So I did constituent services for him, which was basically the same thing, answering the phone, talking to people at issues with departments. After that, I did go into politics for a little bit to run some campaigns with Democratic Party. Again, all loved that. All local. It was good. I liked it, but didn't love it as a career path. I really wanted to get back into government. speaker-2: local. speaker-1: I actually had a chance to work on a district attorney campaign, Sandra Dorley, helping to run her first campaign. And then I worked for her when she won in the district attorney's office, did that for a couple of years. And then this opportunity to ⁓ run for town supervisor opened up in Aaronacoit. The Democratic Party was looking for a candidate. I thought I had some things to bring to the table. I was just starting my family in Aronicoy. My wife is from Aronicoy. And so I just wanted my kids to have the same opportunity ⁓ that other kids had in other towns. Because all these towns were building, in my view, back then was, you kept seeing ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings on new baseball fields, town libraries, community centers, all these things. I just felt like my town was stuck. Why can't we have these nice things too? And I thought I had something to bring to the table. We had Aronicoy Mall that was causing a lot of trouble for the town as well. Nothing was really happening there. ⁓ So I ran and I won a race that I think a lot of people counted me out a little bit. That was a tougher town for us to be running in. I was brand new. I was only 32 years old, 33 years old maybe. ⁓ so yeah, we were successful and that's where I got my start being an elected official and just sort of went along the path. speaker-0: intensive process of not only winning, but you gotta convince the Democratic Party that you're the candidate. speaker-1: You do. And there was another Democrat who was interested in running. The year I ran to, I came in after I said I wanted to run. It's a lot. When you run for local office, when you asked earlier about door-to-door or town hall meetings, it's all door-to-door. Even in a town that size, 50,000 people. Still. It's still. You can cover most of the town. You can't get to everybody, but you can cover more than half of it if you really put your mind to it. But I was doing probably three to four days a week, two to three hours at a time. just knocking on doors, raising, you have to raise monies, you have to call people, you send out mailings, you do all that. It's all it takes over your life though, it really does. But I have a really funny story because my son got really into it. ⁓ He was ⁓ four at the time, I think my kids were two and four. So my son was four years old and he used to call it the town supervisor game. So I'd come home with a clipboard, because you you clipboard, the list of voters, and you have your little key card that you hand out. And so we were trying to... engage him in like what you're doing. And so he created a game out of it where I'd give him my clipboard. I'd sit on the couch and he'd come in and he'd say, hi, what's your name? And I'd say, my name's Adam. And he'd say, I'm running for town supervisor. Will you vote for me? And I'd say, sure, I'll vote for you. And he'd say, thank you. And he handed me his card and he'd like walk away. He was hysterical. So he made like a little game out of it. speaker-0: Yeah, ⁓ that's sweet. Was there ever a point when you were at around a Quaytown supervisor that you were like, okay, I could go to the next level here? speaker-1: yeah, and actually speaker-2: Well, you know what's funny? I never actually... speaker-1: looked for what the next level would be. ⁓ that, so maybe that's way to answer that is that, so I guess no, because I always take the approach that you just do the best that you can in the job you're in. And then if an opportunities will present themselves, right? And so I never actually looked beyond being a town supervisor. What happened was ⁓ the county clerk at the time was Sheryl D'Onofrio and she had run for county executive. She won the county executives race. and that created a vacancy in the county clerk. And it wasn't until that vacancy was created. And then of course the Democratic Party was looking for who could be the next county clerk. it was only at that point that I really started thinking about that. Like, could I do something more? Could I be a county clerk? And then I also had to look at it from another aspect so that it's not purely about ambition to see yourself go from a town-wide to a county-wide position, but ⁓ could I make the position Is it interesting and could it still have an impact on the community, right? Because as a town supervisor, you could build baseball fields, which we did, soccer fields. You could do a community center. We built a library while we didn't do the community center. We did the library when I was there. So you could do things that are tangible like that. County clerk primarily is the clerk of the court and runs the DMV. So can you have that same impact? But at the time we were dealing with a lot of zombie properties that were popping up in Aaronicoy across the county. There was issues like that that I thought, wait a minute, I think I can make an impact if you utilize the data and the tools that you have in the clerk's office, you can make that same impact. I started getting excited about that and I decided to pursue that. speaker-0: Cool, very cool. And so you talked about your internship and all that was during 9-11. Another very pivotal moment in history was when you took office as the county executive with COVID. So what was it like stepping into county leadership during that time? speaker-2: Yeah, that was pretty tough. But you know what, was tough for every- speaker-1: Everybody, the way I look at it is that everyone says, well, you were new to the job. How did you do that? But you know what? Everybody was new to it because nobody's done the current job they were in during a pandemic. So everyone had to learn at the same time. It was difficult though. there's a few leadership lessons that came from this as well though, because I'll never forget the last time I traveled to Albany that year, because I do go to Albany every so often to advocate for resources, things like that. But anyways, I was in Albany. was like the very end of February. And we were driving home and it suddenly occurred to me because we had made a few jokes around what would a lockdown look like, what would it look like if something happened in the United States? And I was like, okay, that's not really funny. We need a plan and I don't know what to do. I like, I've never done a pandemic before. I don't know anything about this. So I called a friend of mine and she said, I was talking to her with her and I said, what do you think I should do? And she gave me some really good advice. She goes, well, you should call the heads of the two hospital systems and you should start just bringing people together. That's your job. And it was funny because I said, do you think they take my call? speaker-2: Yeah, the county executive like it was all of course are going to take your speaker-1: I figured out how to get their number. anyways, I called the chief medical or ⁓ the head of URMC and the head of ⁓ Rochester Regional. And I call of course, my health commissioner. got everybody on a call and I called them from the throughway and said, look, at the end of the day, this is coming here. We know it's coming here. ⁓ We should have a common strategy. We should be saying, we should all get on the same page about what we want to do in terms of reacting, responding, communicating so that we're not. we're not confusing the public, but we speak with one voice. They all agreed immediately. We ended up with a cadence of meetings that we had. There were every day at one point at the same time where everybody shared what was each hospital system doing, what was the county doing to respond. ⁓ And ⁓ we ended up building a really good relationship that comes into today. ⁓ But the other thing, I want to tell you a quick story if that's all right. ⁓ at the beginning of the pandemic, where we're still trying to figure out what is our role? Like, what do we try to do? The one thing I wanted to avoid was trying to play doctor on TV. I saw a little bit of that, I think, in Washington, and I didn't want to ⁓ emulate that, certainly. So I wanted the doctors to be able to answer medical questions. In the county, my job was to answer, okay, what are we doing about it, right? So if another level of government, like the state government, started requiring masks for things, it's like, okay, I'm not requiring masks for things, but ⁓ the state requires masks. why don't we help people get access to mass then? So what are we going to do about that? So I wanted to be the response piece to it, the emergency response. But anyways, early on in the pandemic, when there was still a lot of fear, I'll never forget walking in Wegmans on the way home from the emergency op center. I was getting groceries for my mom because I wouldn't let my mom and dad leave the house. ⁓ speaker-2: Anyway, I'm in one of the. speaker-1: the aisles and everybody, if you remember back then, kept a pretty big distance. Nobody was talking to each other, but you can hear the music playing all the time. So anyways, a woman says to me, she goes, she's like, Mr. Bello, she said, thank you. It's nice to see you here or whatever. And I said, thank you. And she said, I saw you on TV. I said, okay. And she goes, look around. And so it was like a pin drop. So I'm looking around and she goes, what are we going to do? And she started crying. And so she asked, she could hug me and I said, sure. I, You know, I let her give me a little hug and then she just walked away. And I was like, wow, we're not doing okay. Like people really, like people need to hear from us. People need to know what are we going to do? Her question literally was, what are we going to do? So I went back the next day and said to my team, we need to start, we need to do more. We have to communicate. We have to tell people what's going on. We have to tell people what we're doing about it. And it set us off on a series of town hall meetings we were doing live on TV. We were doing a lot more communication where I was bringing in the heads of the hospital systems. Mike Mendoza was our health commissioner. I just started bringing people in, asking TV stations, can we go on and just talk and just answer questions? And we ended up doing a lot of that early on. So we ended up a lot of exposure on TV, but also pushed you to just keep doing more and more and more and hearing from people by doing like town hall style communications. speaker-0: wild that you walked into it too. speaker-1: Why? speaker-2: Cause no, I mean, I always ask everybody, where's like the rule book, like the break glass here, know, open the case. speaker-1: Like there really isn't one for something like that. And it changed every day. You remember those days where it's just like the guidance that was coming out of, it just seemed like it was different every day. you had to figure out how do you, I always do my role is you gotta be the calm through the chaos, I guess a little bit. you never wanna be, you can't be a public official who says, I don't know what to do here. You just, gotta find out what the facts are, bring around the professionals, because you have to know you don't know everything about everything. then you just help put together a roadmap. speaker-0: Yeah, that's great. That's great story. Something that kind of was interesting that you just spoke about before that was that when you were the town supervisor, you could get tangible things done that the counties let. The town's like, this is great, Adam. Thanks for bringing this. And you know, it's good for your kids. It's good for the family. And then as you start to kind of get hired, they're a little less tangible and you have to figure out how to do it. What are the main, would you say? for our audience. You just kind of told us town supervisor, county clerk, and now county executive. What technically, obviously, take away COVID where you really had to be the head of the county basically and guide us through that. But now that that's kind of over with, what is the day-to-day responsibilities for Adam Bellow and the speaker-1: Exactly speaker-2: So what we do is, it's sort of funny you said it, because coming out of COVID, we had to figure that out too, right? speaker-1: was COVID. So, what I do is I look at my job as say, what are the, I look at things, well, I look at things in general as like buckets, right? Like I put things in buckets. And ⁓ I look at my job as basically four main priority areas. So it's public health, it's safety, it's economic and workforce ⁓ issues, and then it's infrastructure and quality of life. So I put things into those four, four priorities, priority areas, work they call my pillars. But that's what they are. ⁓ And so everything we do, we try to tie back to, does this impact the health of the community? Does impact the safety or our ability to work here or help people get to work? ⁓ And so those are my priorities every day. And everything we do is tied to one of those. We've went so far as not last year, but the year before, instead of doing a single state of the county address where you basically talk for an hour about everything you're doing, we broke it up into four speeches. And once a week or once every other week, maybe, I gave a different speech at a different place. on one of those pillars and just told everybody this is what we're doing for your health and safety. speaker-0: It's easier as a resident to digest it. You split it out like that for us. speaker-1: Yeah, because the county does a lot of stuff. I mean, this is something that also gets underappreciated sometimes. And that's why you do have to figure it out. And that's why I put things in those buckets, because there was a saying we used to talk about, like, county does everything from A to Z, airports to zoos, right? It's everything in between. So while most of our budget, 50 % of our budget or so is human services. So we do a lot of programs on behalf of the state, like the Medicaid program, SNAP program, food assistance, temporary assistance, emergency housing. We do all of that. ⁓ But then we also have our transportation department, our parks department, our airport. We do the public health department, certainly, economic development. So it really has its hands in a lot of different functions because at the end of the day, what a county does is counties are generally set up to be passed through organizations. So when you see the state and federal government, and actually a lot of county executives used to complain about this. I don't complain about it as much. but they would always talk about state mandates, right? 90 % of our budget is mandated. Yeah, that's true, because that's what we are. That's what counties were set up for to do. So when you see the state government come up with a program where it says, we're gonna spend $100 million on road infrastructure this year, what they're really saying is they're going to push down X millions of dollars to counties largely. They'll also do it to towns and cities, but largely to counties and push that down. or you have a new food program that they're gonna roll out, or a healthcare program like Medicaid that comes down to the counties. Federal government, the same way, they put money aside for something, they're also doing money, a lot of that then flows to the county, and then the county has to figure out how are we gonna invest those dollars. speaker-0: So you guys are executing the dollars. speaker-1: That's exactly right. It's a big organization. spend, know, like I we invest $1.5 billion is our budget this year. So it's a lot of dollars that come through. Half of it though, like I said, is in human services. There's a lot of people in need and a lot of those dollars come from the state and federal government that we pay. speaker-0: And then how do the towns and guess the city of Rochester, how do they interact and work with each other? mean, there's a lot of towns in Monroe. speaker-1: There is, we have 19 towns and villages. ⁓ So it's a good question, actually. It's funny you just asked that because two weeks ago, ⁓ I just had ⁓ lunch with the Town Supervisor Association. They get together once a month. So I was their guest a couple of weeks ago for February. We talked about the different initiatives that we're doing. We talked about roads ⁓ and ⁓ pedestrian safety. talked about, ⁓ actually, talked about the 250th birthday of America this year and some of the things we're going to do for that. ⁓ But we talked about a range of issues. We talked about changes that are coming to the SNAP program, what they need to talk to their residents about. The city of Rochester and I, we've actually, one of things I'm proud about is we really changed the ⁓ relationship between the county and the city. It used to be under previous administrations, both in the city and the county, a pretty, like, at times adversarial relationship. ⁓ And then in the best of times, it was more just like a, You kind of work side by side, but never really together. And that was really unfortunate. The mayor and I are fortunate that we have a great relationship right now. Mayor Evans and I, I mean, we talk every day. ⁓ We're on the phone or in meetings at least once a day with each other. And we have real collaboration. So whether it's coming like homeless support services, opioid supports, we had these grant dollars that came from the federal government that we had meetings on to talk about making sure that we were spending them in a complimentary way. And we even went so far as when we go to Albany to lobby for dollars for us, we actually joined our portfolios together so that he wasn't going to lobby for dollars that might come out of dollars I'm lobbying for and that we're all doing different things. We're actually there doing the same. And sometimes that means more county projects get funded than city one year, but the next year the city might get more than the county gets the next year. But it all is really to the same thing. Our residents, don't care. If the convention center, for instance, which got some dollars last year to renovate the convention center, modernize it, our residents really don't care if the city runs the convention center or the county runs They just need a convention center, right? in my view, it works and it has actually been working really well. speaker-0: Yeah, that's interesting. obviously our audience knows I moved back from Manhattan four years ago, but grew up here, getting used to how it works around here and I'm on the chamber board. And the mayors came in and spoke to us, one of my first board meetings there. And pretty much when, after you left, everyone on the board who's been doing this for a lot longer than I have 20, 30 years, all said it's the first time they can remember that the county exec and the mayor are rolling in the same direction, which is pretty great. you know, says, you know, we had to make changes and it sounds like we're in a great spot to move forward. speaker-1: I gotta tell you, in no other communities, there's towns across the state, I'm not gonna name them, or the county executive, or with each other, right? speaker-2: the stairs. because you really are you're you really speaker-1: really can be competing for resources or you're also competing for responsibility on things where you You want to be the. Yeah, right? Like you might want something that the other one has or you might not want to do something and you don't think the other one's doing a good enough job. So you can be at war with each other. You could just ignore each other or you can try to collaborate. We're going with the collaboration route and so far it's been really well. Yeah. So no, I enjoy that. And it really is the first time I'd say since probably. Lou Moran and Tom Ryan were running the show here that this has really existed like this because largely there's some politics at play with that too, right? mean at the end of the day for the last I don't know 30 or 40 probably for 30 years 40 or 40 years maybe Democrats have been winning the the mayor's race in the city of Rochester Republicans have largely been Running the county government through the county executive's office until I got elected. So So largely, think too, you had a political dynamic where, you had a Democratic mayor and a Democratic majority city. So we'll just let them run the city, the Republican county executive from a largely Republican suburban area. They'll just take care of the suburbs and we'll just leave each other alone. That doesn't really work, especially when half of what you're doing in county government is probably focused in the city of Rochester. You can't just ignore it. so that doesn't make sense. So I think that... we completely changed the way this works. I think it's for the better. speaker-0: Great. Yeah. All right. We're going to switch gears a little bit and go into kind of our second theme. One of the pillars that you talked about was public safety and public safety is near and dear to Will Max Hart. We work with a lot of 911 centers, especially in the Northeastern United States and Southeastern Canada, and we're hoping to expand that footprint. But can you speak a little bit more to why you named public safety as a core focus area? speaker-1: Yeah. You can't get safety and health right. You can't really do much of anything else, right? If people don't feel, if they're not safe and also they don't feel safe, which is, you know, important, ⁓ then you can build whatever you want. You can invest whatever you want in your baseball stadiums and your arenas, but no one's going to go to them, right? You're never going to build your economy. No one's going to feel comfortable opening a business here if they're not safe, don't feel safe doing so. So you have to start with safety. And we did a number of initiatives speaker-2: because at the end of the day, if you speaker-1: ⁓ Especially coming out of COVID related to that, saw, if you remember a few years ago, the number of car thefts, break-ins. ⁓ We even had smashing grabs at one point where young people would take a car and smash into a store. ⁓ And we really had to figure out something to do with that. And so we did a couple things. ⁓ One, as we started, we really wanted to focus on young people and what can we do to get young people out of the cycle. of criminal behavior. what I did was, well, one of the things that the county runs is the Children's Detention Center, is analogous to like jail, but for teenagers. That's one of the things that we run. So what I did was I ended up interviewing in my office a few moms, it turned out to moms, of boys who were in our Children's Detention Center. And I asked them essentially what happened, like if they would share with me what was going on in their family. dynamic in their life and their kids life that led their son to do whatever their son did that got into the Children's Sense Center. And was there something, the system, I was always looking at, is there something that the system or somebody outside here could have done that would have prevented that from happening? And over and over I kept hearing the same thing, which was, and it was a couple of things. One is that families really are trying their best, ⁓ but you know, when their kids were busy, They'd stay out of trouble like the one mom was about her son was in football. He'd go to football after school He'd come home really hungry really tired eat do his homework and he went to sleep stay out of trouble soon as football season was ended though things started going different stuff like that and so The other piece that I heard a lot was their their their child would get arrested for something would be in a stolen car Stole a car something like that The police would bring them back to their home and just drop them off and then there was like nothing and you know, okay, I couldn't stop them from stealing a car before. And so there was no intervention. And so we thought we'd to stop the two things. So what we did is we created this thing called the JEDS program, which has been recognized on a national level. The US Department of Justice recognized it. That basically what we do now is we utilize our probation department where a young person is arrested in the county instead of the police having to figure all of that out, what comes next thing called probation. speaker-2: to stop a personal card yet. speaker-1: probation, then we'll take the young person and do a couple of things. We do an assessment, they go to the Children's Detention Center if that's what becomes, if that's what's necessary, or they can go into a diversion program. We take them home, we put them in a diversion program where they have a daily check-in for the first four weeks, where a probation officer checks in with them, we interview the family, we figure out what they need, like what services can they be connected to or programs they can be connected to to keep that young person from reoffending. Throughout that program, we have brought the recidivism rate down from kids who in that program to almost nonexistent. It's like one, two, three percent. ⁓ The successful completion for the diversion program is miles above where the statewide rate is for other diversion programs. It's having a lot of success. And we've seen a remarkable decrease in the number of car thefts and things like that in the county. we think we did that. And the other reason why that made sense is because The county also has a youth bureau and we fund a lot of programs. We fund a lot of programs that these young people could be benefiting from, but we weren't connecting them. So we found also a way to connect them and that's why it made sense for the county to do speaker-0: That's great. So there's a lot of good stuff. speaker-1: A lot of good stuff. also hired a whole bunch of sheriff deputies, so some accountability into the system. ⁓ I ⁓ think there were almost 40 or 50 sheriff deputies a few years ago we added to the road patrol. And we also just cut the ribbon ⁓ a few months ago on a new center called the REOC, the Regional Investigation Operations Center, with the sheriff, which basically ⁓ is an operations center that combines technology ⁓ with the field work that's going on that allows the sheriff to be able to track crimes as they are committed and ⁓ multi-jurisdictional crimes that cross county borders. ⁓ can monitor drone activity. It can do body camera ⁓ activity and really puts technology all in one center to help them be able to respond to a lot of crimes in real time. speaker-0: Well, that's great, a great segue. So we've been working with 911 centers for 20 to 30 years, but now the past two years, really we launched it four months ago, we built our own AI solution, basically to help 911 centers staff better. It basically automates their schedule and workforce. So what we have found out, it actually came from Toronto Police, one of our customers, they don't have any automation and they have people, supervisors, actually spending hours upon hours on Excel sheets ⁓ when there is enough, plenty of data to easily automate this. ⁓ And the other interesting thing is this solution, I would say, without AI, we've built AI into it, but it exists in every single call-taking industry in the world other than what I would say is the most important call-taking So that's what we've been bringing to the table ⁓ and we're excited. And one of the things speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: I've really seen is most of the time I've sold on the other side of the business, which is into financial firms. So I've been jumping into public safety and PSAPs for the past four to five months. And I just can't believe the difficult work these people have to do without a lot of technology helping them. At this point, it's starting to come and we want to be a part of that. But it is such a difficult job. and there's a wellness to it. And that's why you see it's probably not staffed where it should be. Hiring is tough. Training a 911 agent is really, I didn't realize that sometimes they'll hire four and only one gets. speaker-1: Yeah, it's incredibly difficult. speaker-0: a year to get them. ⁓ So we're trying to help optimize that. And we've been working with Mike Serato to get a pilot in Monroe. ⁓ good. That's been great. ⁓ speaker-2: He's a great leader by the way. Yeah, he's a great leader speaker-1: You're absolutely correct in your assessment of it too. I've been over there a few times, toured it, talked to the staff, saying hello. ⁓ And the last time I was over there, I overheard a call, they gave me the earphone and I watched a call. That was a very, very difficult call. mean, when you're taking a call from somebody whose husband had just taken their life and she comes home from grocery shopping to see it. That's tough. ⁓ so you're watching an incredible amount of professionalism on the phone, ⁓ you know, because you're talking to callers who are having sometimes the worst moment of their life. But it also takes an incredible emotional toll on you as a call taker, right? And so when that operator finally hung up the phone, she went and took a break and everybody told her, go take a break because that was an awful call. And even I was left just sort of like stunned. by what I was overhearing. That's just tough work. And so, you know, when pay is what it is and ⁓ you're a competitive work environment to begin with, and then you're asking people to do these calls like this over and over, it's a tough business. It can also be rewarding though, because you're also on a position, yes, you're taking these really terrible calls, but you're also in a position to help a lot of people to save a life. And we've given out ⁓ commendations for that, ⁓ where you get to hear some really incredible stories about people who've saved a life, these operators. So it could be a very rewarding field as well. you're right, the training is difficult. ⁓ We have an interesting training program that does utilize an AI tool that mimics calls. you can mimic ⁓ a voice. that calls and can go through different emotions, that can go through different scenarios and really put somebody through a training, which is interesting. speaker-0: Yeah, and Munro has a great reputation too for their PSAP across. We work with a ton of the counties across New York and Munro influences a lot of what type of vendors they work with, how they set up their systems, best practices. So it's great that Munro is like that ⁓ and it has a great center over there. speaker-1: That's good to say. And they work incredibly hard. think they're some of the greatest people over there. And like I said, they go from one call to another. They're just so professional with it. it's amazing what they know too. I'm always fascinated by that business. just say that because maybe I just drive around more than other people do. on the road. I don't know why. But going from meetings or whatever. But I come across car accidents a lot. speaker-2: I just don't know what it is. So we always pull over. speaker-1: and I've called 911 a number of times and it's wild how they know exactly where you are when you're calling. They'll ask where you are, but they know where you are and if they're pinging off a tower or something and they're very good and they're very fast. speaker-2: fair to my several years. speaker-0: I think the technology is just getting better and better. Oh, 100%. Which is great. Moving to the last topic, I know we're getting on time, but it's starting to become a topic near and dear to my heart, and it's kind of the economic development in Rochester, which we've been meeting all sorts of great people that are trying to do great things with it, including Mr. Duffy, Bob's been kind of He's a great leader. a leader with that. know Micron, it's Syracuse, but it's part of the whole core. Yep. Kind of what do you, how deep do you dive into helping out though, the GRE, the One Rock Joe and Matt and Bob, I guess they all form a triangle there. How deep do you dive into that? And do you try to influence a vision of what the Rochester economy could look speaker-1: that a Absolutely, yep. And we participate in all three organizations that you just mentioned, Run Rock and the Chamber and GRE. I talk to Matt Hurlbut a lot at GRE. His job really, mean, he's a repository, right? He knows of where all the land is, the condition, right? What assets are there and infrastructure. And businesses will typically reach out to him, right? That they're looking to, site selectors reach out. And then we get involved. Like we have our tax incentive packages through Comida. We have other things that we have access to. We have workforce training programs we have access to, so we do all that. But we get involved in a lot of different ways. I remember when Fairlife was looking to come to Rochester, and that was one of the, that's going be one of the largest dairy processing plants in all of North America is here in Webster. A lot of people don't know that. But the CEO from Fairlife was in town. We had dinner, and we talked about Rochester, and I just talked about workforce. I talked about our colleges and universities. you know, quality of life issues here matter to them. And so I was involved in the pitch that was being made to get them here. ⁓ And then we involve ourselves on the tax ⁓ incentive side, if that's what's necessary, and also on the labor side, right? In terms of you got to build these things. ⁓ And so I actually do spend a lot of time when the Amazon project was getting built, Fair Life, talking to the construction trades about, you know, availability ⁓ of tradesmen to be able to build these industries. ⁓ The other thing that we do is through our Comita board is we invest a lot in workforce development ⁓ programs to help link people. Because in my view, ⁓ you have to have the workforce in place too in order to support these industries if you're going to recruit them here. So we do through Comita board a number of investments ⁓ in helping, again, build up the building trades and try to recruit ⁓ new people into the apprenticeship programs. Health care is a big space. that we invest in for CNA, LPN, our own training, things of that nature as well. But I'm very bullish on where we are in our economics. We've been, ⁓ just a couple weeks ago, just announced that Riju is coming to Rochester at Eastman Business Park. So we've been landing some pretty good projects here because we have a couple good things going for us. We do have a very highly educated workforce here. The University of Rochester, RIT, St. John Fisher, NASA, we have some of the best colleges and universities anywhere. ⁓ here. When it comes to the field of optics and photonics, MCC ⁓ has one of the ⁓ only, if not the only ⁓ degree program in optics. We have one of the highest per capita optics degree ⁓ earners in the country, ⁓ per capita, per capita number of patents that come out of here. This also speaks to our history with Kodak. My dad worked at Kodak, my grandpa was at Kodak. We're Kodak family. ⁓ that's just who we are. And so we are very attractive place to come and do business. speaker-0: Yeah, I agree. There's a ton of potential. speaker-1: There's also challenges, It's like anyplace else, a of potential. speaker-0: Workforce is interesting because we don't have any issue getting workers with what we do. We see how do we stop the outflow of U of R and RIT people going to Silicon Valley and Boston and New York. And how do we develop more companies like us who are more on the application layer end of AI. I look at Micron as, you know, they're the actual people. building the hardware to put in a semiconductor. There's like four layers. Tens of billions of dollars in investment to get like a micron, where a company like ours could be, is more startup, like a kid out of RIT could try to build something with that. So trying to figure out how to get that kind of going in Rochester, and it's a lot of it's education that there's different levels of AI. I don't think the world quite understands all of it now and where it's gonna be in the next few years. But to your point between speaker-1: We have to be. speaker-0: The ease of living here, the lifestyle here, the work, even outside of the college, there's grownups like myself who moved out that come back that are working remote for an Amazon, working remote for a, that could be part of a company growing here. speaker-1: course. Well, you make a really good point. And this is something that I don't have the numbers on right now, but I know from what these organizations are reporting to me is happening, is you do actually get a lot of remote workers here ⁓ that choose to live in Rochester. Because Rochester is a great place to live, right? You're right in the Finger Lakes. You got the Finger Lakes right here. You got Lake Ontario. No trap. No trap. You got great public schools if you have kids. ⁓ Home prices have been going up, but are still relatively... speaker-2: Westchester. speaker-1: You live out of San Francisco, right? ⁓ And so it really is a good place to live. So you are seeing a lot more remote workers that choose to live here. And you're seeing a lot of people choosing to live downtown too, which is interesting. Instead of purchasing a home, are living in the towers downtown. I think over 10,000 people call just downtown a lone home. And I think that number is expected to grow by quite a bit. So I think that's an interesting phenomenon. And hopefully what that does is it drives more ⁓ growth of restaurants, other activities and stuff like that downtown as well. speaker-0: We're Clinton crossing now, right? Yeah. ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah, that's great. So yeah, and where else can you got me yet? Like the Rochester, you got the Red Wings here, the Amherst here, you got a great zoo that we're building a new project at the zoo. That's one of our quality of life infrastructure projects. Doing a new exhibit there. You know, so we have a lot going on here. Yeah, that makes it a great place to live. speaker-0: I'd say the podcasts that we recorded in this new year since January, a common theme is often like, oh yeah, Rochester's a very, it's a great thing. We want to keep talking about it and we're talking about it in the middle of winter. speaker-2: something to say, know? ⁓ speaker-1: My grandparents, like I said, my grandfather worked for Kodak. Well, for, I think it was about 20 years, starting like the mid to late 80s, they had to go out to California. So he got relocated to San Diego. So they live in San Diego. I visited there a few times. But they ended up moving back to Rochester after they retired. They wanted to be closer to their family. But ⁓ I said to my grandma once, I'm like, do really miss San Diego? Cause you know, it's 70 degrees. It's 72 and a low of 78 every day and it's partly cloudy. ⁓ And she said, ⁓ no. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-2: see you right speaker-1: She loved Rochester and because Rochester has seasons, every season basically gives you what it promises and you have traditions here for every season, right? Winter, you can go sledding, you can go skiing, you can do whatever. In the summertime, you've got the Finger Lakes, you've got the lakes, you've got all that. In the fall, you've got apple picking, you've got pumpkins, like I said, the hay rides. It's like everything, every season has something here. ⁓ Whereas... you know, some places not so much. so they loved it. yeah, I met a doctor a few years ago who relocated up here to URMC from North Carolina. And I said, ⁓ that's interesting. I said a lot of people. this direction he said your seasons he actually loved winter because it was like skiing and stuff and I thought well that's interesting so I don't know I think you just have sometimes we're down on ourselves a little bit but if you think about it they're really you really shouldn't be bored in Rochester you got the wineries down in the Finger Lakes too even beer if you love craft beer we have one of the highest per capita number of craft beer breweries in the country it's all right here yeah speaker-0: When we spoke to, I forgot her name, hopefully you will know, the Dean of the Saunders Business School. Jackie Mazeroll. She talked about how they recruit from all over, obviously. And she's like, a lot of people don't end up leaving when they're contract. Or they retire and they stay here because they like Rochester so much. And they don't have any issue recruiting people into Rochester. speaker-1: Yeah. That's great. That's great to hear. Even if you like to travel a little bit, not a bad place to be from because even New York City speaker-0: And so close. It's all the airport. speaker-2: airport. speaker-1: Or if you even if you want to drive to New York with six hours, ⁓ Toronto few hours the other way so you're really Situated in a place. It's not bad Buffalo Bills are an hour and a half down the road Honestly, I never really went there until a couple years ago for my son's soccer trip, but yeah Cleveland's only another hour and a half further It's really not far Pittsburgh Philly New York Washington DC drive down to it's really not that bad speaker-0: think we get a bad rap from some people, like we're out in the middle of nowhere in New York when that's not the reality. speaker-1: And also like you said the traffic too. If you can't get there in 15 minutes, it's like we complain. speaker-2: It's funny around speaker-1: But ⁓ everything is 45 minutes to an hour away, right? speaker-0: My wife's from Long Island and she'll sit in a car with my mom and my mom will like complain about maybe a minute back up on exit. She's like, what are you talking about? You don't know what. speaker-2: You don't know what's happening, all right? speaker-0: Yeah, no, it is pretty incredible. We love Rochester and we like talking about it. So, all right, Adam, before we wrap, I did have just kind of a high level question to wrap things up with, but speaking to the future, reflecting on kind of your stint in leadership as that continues to grow and evolve, like what's one thing that you want people to remember about that sort of experience? speaker-1: that's deep question. ⁓ It's about like. So listen, I will say this, there's advice that I give everybody. When they're thinking about a leadership position, a career change, and they're thinking about a couple of things. Number one is that you really should just focus on doing the best that you can at the job that you're in. And opportunities will present themselves to you. But the other thing is that you have to take risks sometimes. And that's how you advance. ⁓ And I've done a lot of that. running for when I went from being a town supervisor to a county clerk I could have been out of this game in this field a long time ago that was a big risk running for County Executive was a risk but it worked out and I just worked the best that I can and it's also okay to not know everything about everything you know I always look at my role as a County Executive where you have to run everything from A to Z I know anything about running a zoo, but I know how to find someone who does, right? I know how to ask questions. I know how to talk to them. It's never my decision of how you're going to take care of this animal, but I find the expert who does and I make the decisions based on that. So it's just, the takeaway should always be it's okay to take a risk and you should always, what I find is that people who are most successful in their field always step back to figure out how to know what they don't know. Does that make sense? You have to know what you don't know and be able to ask for help and you'll find success. speaker-0: Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry. I asked you to take a step back and go deep on me for a second. yeah, so do your best. Take risks. And it's okay to not know everything. Great. Great life. Definitely. Steve, anything else to No, thanks, Adam. Appreciate this. Thank you guys. we went over. Yeah. Awesome. Great conversation. And Adam, before we close, are there any initiatives or programs at Monroe County that you want to share about with our listeners? speaker-1: That's I tell my kids all the time. You don't know unless you try. speaker-2: We have so many programs. It'll be hard to narrow it down. Stay tuned in the next... speaker-1: A couple months, we're going to do our State of the County in a couple months. I'll have a number of new initiatives, but one of them that I'm really looking forward to is that I've been talking about, this is more on the fun side of things, Not on the health and safety side, but we are building a new first class exhibit at the Seneca Park Zoo that I'm really excited to announce in a couple months. Bring the orangutans back, some aquarium features, Komodo dragons, things like that. So you just got a little early look at what those animals look like. ⁓ Stay tuned, we have some really fun things coming in the next few months. speaker-0: girls will be excited where we have the membership or the annual whatever card is so we can keep going. speaker-1: Well, just wait, because my kids are your kids age once too. We spent a lot of time at the zoo and this will be a good experience because this new exhibit has an indoor sort of rainforest feel. So instead of feeling like maybe I don't want to go to in the winter, it's freezing. speaker-0: Very nice. nice. All right. Well, thanks Adam for joining us on the Will MacWire. For our listeners, if you want to stay informed about Monroe County initiatives and follow Adam's work, you can head to the Monroe County website at MonroeCounty.gov or check in with Adam on Facebook and Twitter or ask Monroe County Executive Adam J. Bello on Facebook and at County Exec Bello on Twitter. Adam, thanks for joining us on the Will MacWire. was a pleasure. Thanks Adam. speaker-1: Thank you, had a lot of fun. Thanks guys. speaker-0: Thank you for listening to the WillMac Wire. If you liked today's conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch full episodes on our YouTube channel. You can also learn more about WillMac technologies and our work in customer interaction technology at willmactech.com. We'll be back soon with more conversations with the drivers, those shaping our industry and those building right here in Western New York. See you next time.