After debuting last year, county now has 3 teams

Photos by Tom Rivers – Members of the First Lego League work on their Lego robot Monday. The 4-H youths include, from left: Maxim Rambach of Medina, Deegan Bragg of Medina, Zach Moore of Albion, Daniel Squire of Medina and Jayden Neal of Albion. Three Lego teams practice at Liberty Fresh Farms in Albion, the home of the former Remley Printing Company.

ALBION – Monday was a glorious day for a group of 4-H’ers. A new Lego robot kit arrived for a team of Lego builders.

Tiny plastic pieces were then carefully set in rows and piles. The 4-H’ers then began the task of turning the parts into a robot that could be programmed to move pieces and conquer obstacles.

The 4-H program last year launched a First Lego League team. There were 13 kids on the team last year. The Lego League has grown in popularity with 26 members, ages 8 to 14 this year. They are split into three teams.

Zach Moore, 12, of Albion is a returning member. He spent part of Monday’s Lego meeting putting tank treads on the Lego robot “so it can climb over things,” Zach said.

Zach is active in 4-H and shows animals at the 4-H Fair. He prefers working with the Legos.

“I’ve always liked building things,” he said.

One of the Lego teams opened a new robot kit on Monday, which caused great excitement. That team is led by coaches Jason Foote, left, and Michael Beach, who both have sons in the program.

The 4-H Lego Club draws members from throughout the county. Zach said he made many new friends last year in the Lego Club’s debut season. This year incudes 12 returning players, and 14 newcomers, which is fine with Zach.

“Hopefully I’ll make more friends this year,” he said.

The Lego Club was going to practice and have meetings at the fairgrounds in Knowlesville. But the growing program outgrew the space.

The Panek family, owners of an onion packing facility on Route 98 in Albion, offered the upstairs of the former Remley Printing Company building for the teams.

The Paneks’ offer is the latest example of generous support for the Lego teams, and also a robotics club that is in its third year, said Erik Seielstad, one of the program’s coaches and mentors.

Xerox in Rochester and Baxter International in Medina are the main sponsors for the teams in Orleans County, but several other businesses are supporting the program. Each Lego team requires about $1,000 for field kits, robots and entry fees. The robotic team, which features 17 high schoolers, needs about $15,000 a year to compete in events.

Albion friends and Lego team members James Michael Beach, left, and Jacob Foote, both 9, look over the pieces of a new Lego kit.

Seielstad provides hands-on supervision of the teams, while his wife Marlene has become an effective fund-raiser for the program.

“She has a vast network for funding,” her husband said.

Mr. Seielstad, a systems engineer in Rochester, is pleased to see the 4-H members so focused during their meetings.

“It’s a good program,” he said. “It gives kids an opportunity to do stuff. The kids drive it and they make it happen.”

The Lego teams meet three times a week in the fall, and then it drops down to once a month in the winter and spring after their main competition later in the fall. The robotics team starts in January.

The Lego teams through FLL are all working with a common theme – Nature’s Fury – this year. They need to research natural disasters and program their robots to respond to the aftermath. That could mean removing a dangling branch after a hurricane ripped through a neighborhood.

Teams are researching sandstorms, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes and other disasters, and they need to have a response plan in place, with the robot moving quickly to complete tasks. The robot may be outfitted with arms or claws to perform some of its missions.

Jason Foote and Mike Beach are co-mentors of one of the teams. Their sons, Jacob Foote and James Michael Beach, are both 9 and they are returning players.

“They’re using Legos to solve real-world problems,” said Mr. Foote, who works as a civil engineer.

James Michael enjoys Legos, and looks forward to the meetings through 4-H.

“It’s still Legos, but they’re taking it to the next step with technology,” said Mr. Beach, a team leader for quality control at CRFS. “You’re trying to get a robot to accomplish something.”

Project includes new transmission towers, 1,100 radios and rebuilt communication system

ALBION A project that has been years in the making and will give emergency responders a new communications system is now projected to cost $7.1 million.

The county increased the maximum cost from $5.3 million to $7.1 million during the Legislature’s meeting this morning. The $5.3 million figure was from about a year ago when the county voted to pursue a maximum of $4.5 million in financing for the project.

The county doesn’t intend to borrow more for the project. County officials expect Orleans may need to use about $4.2 million of the bond to cover its share of the project.

Since approving the $4.5 million bond for the project in April 2012, the county was awarded a $2 million state grant towards the project from the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. That lessens the local burden for paying for the project.

The original scope of the communications upgrade has changed from when the county voted to seek the $4.5 million bond. County officials were eyeing two new radio transmission towers, one on each end of the county that would be leased.

The county instead will pay to build three towers that are 180 feet high. One will be on land owned by the town of Clarendon near its highway garage off Route 31A, the other will be next to the county’s Civil Defense Center on Courthouse Road in Albion and the other will be next to the Medina water tank on Route 31A. Medina and Clarendon both agreed to lease the land to the county at no cost.

“Originally this was a lease versus buy situation, and we’re going to buy,” said Chuck Nesbitt, the county’s chief administrative officer.

If the towers were leased, the county’s ongoing annual costs would be higher, Nesbitt said. By owning the infrastructure, the county can also collect co-leasing fees if other companies want to put communications equipment on the towers.

The county also was considering piggybacking on Monroe County’s communication system, but that was going to cost more than having its won dedicated system, Nesbitt said.

Orleans County approved a $5 million deal last year with the Harris Corporation to rebuild the county’s emergency communications systems. Harris will reprogram 1,100 portable radios and make upgrades to the dispatch center.

The county’s radio system was last overhauled in 1992. The county has one transmission tower on Countyhouse Road. That’s about 10 miles from the eastern and western ends of the county. Firefighters, police officers, and other first responders for years have complained that the county’s current radio system is often unreliable, particularly on the edges of the county.

Harris is manufacturing the infrastructure for the Orleans project at its facility in Henrietta. The new system will meet the P25 industry standard for digital radio communications.

The new towers should be up in the spring and the new system should be operational next summer, Nesbitt said.

Photo by Tom Rivers – The former Chase site in Albion closed earlier this month after laying off about 400 people. County officials are optimistic the site will soon be utilized by another company.

New data from the state Department of Labor shows Orleans County has one of the highest unemployment rates in upstate, and the report is based on August numbers, before JPMorgan Chase shut down its Albion call center that employed about 400 people.

Orleans County’s 8.4 percent unemployment rate is only topped in upstate by St. Lawrence County, 9.1 percent; Oswego, 8.8; and Montgomery, 8.5. New York City has an 8.7 percent unemployment rate with Bronx County, at 12.0 percent, the highest in the state.

The job picture in Orleans is worse than similar-size nearby rural counties. Genesee has a 5.8 percent unemployment rate, while Wyoming is at 6.6 and Livingston, 6.7.

Orleans is in much better shape than a year ago when it had an 11.0 percent unemployment rate in August 2012. It’s also slightly better than July 2013 when the rate was 8.5 percent.

Orleans County officials are optimistic the Chase site will soon be reused. I noticed several contractors are working at the site this week. The county’s economic development officials said they can not offer any specifics about the site’s future due to confidentiality agreements.

The site is in good shape and accommodated 1,000 workers only a few years ago. There is also readily accessible parking for several hundreds cars.

State-wide the latest unemployment report shows the private sector job count increased by 126,800 from August 2012 to August 2013. The state’s unemployment rate was 7.6 percent in August 2013 and the economy added 22,700 private sector jobs, bringing the job count to a record high, according to the Department of Labor.