Governor Cuomo is announcing the creation of an Anti-Poverty Task Force in Rochester. Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul came to the city on Sunday to outline some of its goals.
Hochul was joined at the Hillside Family of Agencies by a host of local leaders from government, academia and area non-profit organizations to talk about the new task force. With recent studies showing that Rochester has among the highest poverty and child poverty rates in the country, Hochul says the task force will better coordinate services that are already available.
"A lot gets done but people are not measuring benchmarks, they're not utilizing the power of bringing resources together , who's tracking who's getting what, and is it actually working? These questions up until now have been unanswered,” Hochul told the gathering.
Mayor Lovely Warren says it's time to find a better way of helping people move off just a basic subsistence type of situation so they can help themselves.
"It is to look at the fact that what we have done well in our community is provide a system of basic needs but we want to help people move off of basic needs into upward mobility and into a successful life."
As part of the 2015 Opportunity Agenda Cuomo has been releasing in recent days, he is also calling for New York's current minimum wage of $8.75 an hour to be increased to $10.50 an hour by the end of 2016.
