Nicole Sidhu

Guest essayist

I recently celebrated my two-year anniversary as a Rochester resident. I adore my new home but one thing that has amazed me, as someone who arrived here after 15 years in North Carolina, is the extent to which Rochesterians feel their home must compare unfavorably to the South.

After two years of listening to person after person express surprise when I tell them I am much happier here than in North Carolina, I feel compelled to share my perspective on the two key points that inform the Rochester inferiority complex: namely, the weather and taxes.

First, the weather: Yes, winters in North Carolina are easier but these come at the price of an intense summer heat that runs from June through September. If you have school age children, this is a major problem because the Southern summer inferno comes at precisely the time when the kids out of school and in need of activities.

In Western New York, my kids hike, camp and bike during glorious temperate days. In North Carolina, I stocked up on board games for when they got so sick of swimming (the only endurable outdoor sport) they begged not to go.

As for the taxes, living in North Carolina made me keenly aware that the downside to low taxes is poor public facilities. Although our NC taxes looked good on paper, in practice, we paid more and got less. Most public schools in our town were substandard, leading us to enroll our kids in a private school at a price more than double what we now pay in local tax. Nor did we get much for those fees: in a situation that is typical of all but the most elite private institutions, our NC school had few highly-qualified teachers, no tutoring, few extracurricular activities, no school psychologist and no other support services (not even a bus to take kids to school).

In the broader community, there were few parks and trails, no lovely recreation centers, and no gorgeous libraries staffed by professionals.

To me, Rochester’s primary challenge lies not in the way it differs from the South, but in the way it is similar –in the marked racial disparities in education, income, and well being.

I hope my perspective can encourage Rochesterians to be proud of their excellent home, and I am committed to work on expanding the benefits of this lovely place beyond the white-majority suburbs to the whole of the community.

Nicole Sidhu holds a doctorate in medieval literature. She lives and writes in Perinton.