(Editor's note:  This article appeared in the Rochester, New York newspaper - "Rochester Democrat and Chronicle")

David Andreatta • Staff writer      
December 16, 2009                 

                        Rochester Ferry Co. is about to walk the plank.

                        Board members of the company created by the city of Rochester to operate the failed high-speed ferry to Toronto are slated to meet Thursday to dissolve the company and end its $250,000-a-year lease with the Toronto Port Authority.

                        The pending action was announced Tuesday in a brief meeting notice released by the city, although officials refused to answer specific questions about the gathering.

                        What practical implications the developments will have for city taxpayers are unclear.

                        While it is the company that holds the 14-year, $3.5 million lease of the Toronto terminal building where the vessel once docked, tax dollars have been paying the rent. Whether taxpayers will be responsible for any costs that may be associated with ending the lease remains to be seen.

                        Mayoral spokesman Gary Walker, a member of the ferry company board, said in an e-mailed response to questions, "The city is not responsible for the remainder of the lease."

                        "The (company) is responsible for the lease and has worked since selling the ferry to find a fair and equitable settlement of this issue," he said.

                        "The mayor is on the board of the (company) and has said the company would act honorably in settling this lease, and so we will on Thursday."

                        The dissolution of the Rochester Ferry Co. would put to rest a long and embarrassing chapter in city history that began in 2005 when the administration of Mayor William A. Johnson Jr. engineered the takeover of a fledgling ferry operation by creating the ferry company and guaranteeing a $40 million loan to buy the ship and run the service.

                        As of last year, about $20 million of that loan remained as long-term city debt. Rochester-to-Toronto ferry service under the company ran from June to December 2005.

                        City officials may have had some leverage in their negotiations with the port authority to terminate the lease, after the Democrat and Chronicle reported last spring that the port authority had been renting the terminal building for the filming of a Canadian television show.

After paying three years’ worth of rent ($750,000) that it didn’t have to, Rochester’s politicians accept the reality that this was a bust.

Brian Iler, the Chair of CommunityAIR, adds this final note

The Toronto Port Authority’s investment of at least $10 million in its Rochester ferry terminal (in the Toronto Portlands) is now a total writeoff.

How do we ensure that the TPA doesn’t embark upon another cockamamie scheme with our money? Particularly now that the City’s handing over $11.6 million to it that the City cannot afford?