Monroe County has a new top official. Former County Clerk Cheryl Dinolfo was sworn in as County Executive on Saturday at the Eastman Theatre.
With her husband, Judge Vincent Dinolfo administering the oath of office, and other family members looking on, Cheryl Dinolfo officially became Monroe County's 6th County Executive.
She replaces Maggie Brooks, who was term-limited after 12 years in office. During her remarks, Dinolfo spent some time talking about the need to improve economic opportunity for everyone in the county
"To ensure that every family, every child, every individual and every business believes that greater opportunity exists and that they have the ability to seize it."
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren is a Democrat, who worked well with Dinolfo's predecessor, a Republican, and the mayor looks forward to the same kind of cooperation in the future.
"This is about the people of our city, the people of our county, and we need to work together in order to uplift our entire community, if we're going to ensure that people have safe neighborhoods, we're going to ensure that we have economic opportunity for all of our citizens."
Among the goals Dinolfo has for the coming year, eliminating the controversial Local Development Corporations and creating a leadership forum aimed at connecting people with job vacancies. Dinolfo says speaking with her finance staff, she believes the LDC’s can be eliminated in a way that will save taxpayers money while restructuring the debt those LDC’s carry.
She also wants to establish an Office of Public Integrity, something Democrats on the county legislature proposed in 2011. Asked about that by WXXI News, Dinolfo said, "I think that we cannot afford to exclude anyone from expressing those ideas, that's how we do better as a county government and how we do better as a community so I'm very much looking forward to hearing the ideas of everyone in our community including our county legislators from both sides of the aisle."
Mayor Lovely Warren, a Democrat who got along well with another Republican, Maggie Brooks, looks forward to a similar cooperative relationship with Dinolfo.
"I’m looking forward to working with the new county executive. I think that she delivered a powerful message today. We're really focused on jobs and economic development in our community, safe neighborhoods and lifting up the entire city and county together, and I am excited about working with her," Warren told WXXI News.
Dinolfo didn’t reveal any major appointments on Saturday but did say that she and her team will be doing a top to bottom review of county government.
(videography by Martin Kaufman, WXXI News)
