City of Rochester
News Release
(Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021) – Mayor James Patrick Smith today announced that Neighborhood and Business Development Commissioner Gary Kirkmire, a 36-year City employee who was instrumental in putting Rochester at the national forefront of safe housing for children and families, will retire at end of the year.
“Gary Kirkmire is the ideal representation of the principled dependability and quiet dedication of the public servant,” said Mayor Smith. “Through his work to implement the objectives of the City’s lead-paint safety ordinance and other safe-housing codes, Gary has literally saved countless lives and improved outcomes for an entire generation of city children. Statues in the village square don’t reflect this kind of work in our society, but they should.”
“It has been an honor to serve the people of Rochester each day and work alongside people both in and out of City government who always inspired me to do better,” said Commissioner Kirkmire. “To spend my days helping others improve their lives has never felt like a job. I will always be grateful for the opportunities I’ve been presented and the people I have met while working for the City of Rochester.”
After working as a part-time youth worker in 1979 and 1980, Commissioner Kirkmire started working full-time for the City in 1985 as an Environmental Services Operator Trainee. He was steadily promoted over the course of his career and in the early 1990s found a niche in the City’s code-enforcement operations – working to ensure that the safety guidelines and protections outlined in the City’s housing, property and building codes were fully realized.
In the early 2000s, Commissioner Kirkmire represented the City on an interagency task force convened by the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning to help develop policy prescriptions to eliminate lead-paint health hazards in city homes. Serving alongside the Director of the Monroe County Health Department and doctors from the University of Rochester Medical Center, Commissioner Kirkmire’s role was to ensure the policy requirements and costs were realistically compatible with the City’s existing housing-inspection structure. He helped craft the new lead-mitigation functions into the job descriptions of City housing inspectors; drafted the training curriculum and charted out the phases of implementation.
In 2005, with the passage of the monumental Lead Paint Safety Prevention Ordinance, Rochester became the first city in the nation to include tests for lead contamination within the inspection process to renew Certificates of Occupancy every three to six years. Since the law’s adoptions, the number of city children with high lead blood-levels has declined more than 85 percent; and the number is down more than 98 percent from the peak of the lead-poisoning epidemic in 1994. In 2018, the National League of Cities cited Rochester as the “gold standard” and national “exemplar” for healthy housing policies and outcomes.
In 2018, Commissioner Kirkmire was named an “Environmental Champion” by the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection; and in 2020 he was appointed to the Governor’s Advisory Council on Lead Poisoning Prevention
Under his leadership as Commissioner and his previous role as Director of Buildings and Zoning, NBD cleared the entire inventory of City-owned vacant properties through demolition or re-sale. This eliminated significant levels of blight from city neighborhoods; and in 2020 – for the first time in at least 20 years – every city neighborhood saw increased property values in the four year re-assessment, including those with the highest rates of poverty. He also helped develop the format that would form the basis for the new Housing Part in Rochester City Court, which will lead to improved housing standards and tenants’ rights.
Commissioner Kirkmire was appointed to the role of NBD Commissioner in 2019 and directed the Department through the critical first stages of Coronavirus Pandemic. During that period, NBD developed a contactless permit-application process so builders and developers could continue working through the economic slowdown. The Department also developed a series of innovative grants to move more than $89 million in stimulus money into the local economy as quickly as possible, including the Business Emergency Retention Grants; the Senior Meal Restaurant Grants; and Emergency Rental Assistance Grants.
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News Media: For more information, contact Communications
Director Justin Roj at Justin.Roj@cityofrochester.gov.