Categories for Analysis

Jul 26

2023

Our library system is hurting

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Nakia Luper, a mother of three, has watched as the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood deteriorated around her. Stores closings. The Central Terminal crumbling.  And, in 2005, her neighborhood library shutting down.  “The kids used to go and have fun,” Luper said. There were “different activities going on at the library all the time. And then one day it was just gone.” The closest library is now three miles away. Luper said it’s not safe for children to walk that distance through blighted neighborhoods to take out a library book.  Nearly two decades after funding for the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library[...]

Posted 9 months ago

Jul 18

2023

Therapy gives family a second chance

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This story is being co-published with The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice. On a Tuesday evening in February, the parents of three children are seated with a therapist at their kitchen table in Cheektowaga. They’re sorting out ways to help their oldest, a 15-year-old girl. She loves TikTok and weightlifting and wants to be a counselor for young children when she grows up. But for years, the teen has exhibited harmful behaviors. She has attempted suicide, cut herself, lashed out violently and shrieked at members of her family when they tried to help. [...]

Posted 9 months ago

Jun 29

2023

Yet another subsidy for local meatball maker

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A West Seneca-based frozen food manufacturer — the rumored maker of Olive Garden’s meatballs — won yet another tax break from the Erie County Industrial Development Agency on Wednesday, its third since 2016. And that’s not counting six previous low-interest loans the IDA has granted to Rosina Food Products dating to 1981. The company manufactures frozen Italian food products, including meatballs, ravioli and pizza toppings. In a unanimous vote, the IDA board of directors approved $749,000 in property, sales and mortgage tax breaks for Rosina. Executives said the company will use the tax breaks to renovate and expand two buildings[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Jun 28

2023

Primary elections: Progressives strike out — again

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So much for the revolution.  Hopes ran high among Buffalo progressives after India Walton won the Democratic mayoral primary two years ago, shocking four-term incumbent Byron Brown. Walton lost to Brown’s well-funded and often vicious write-in campaign in the general election, but the coalition of progressives who supported her seemed poised to start winning smaller elections.  Our City Action Buffalo, or OCAB, played a key role in Walton’s mayoral run. The coalition of progressive activists didn’t run candidates for Democratic Party committee seats last year, opting to fight the party establishment from the outside. It endorsed incumbent Jen Mecozzi’s successful[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Jun 21

2023

Big money in Council races

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The five contested races for Buffalo Common Council seats have attracted an astonishing amount of money, and for good reasons.  For one, the winners will determine whether Mayor Byron Brown will have a friendly majority on the Council for the last two years of his fifth term, or whether he will continue to spar with a bloc of five (and sometimes six) legislators, as he has for the past four years. Second, they will choose the successor to Darius Pridgen as Council president in January. The Council president wields a great deal of power and would become acting mayor, should[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Jun 13

2023

A possible problem with City Hall pay raises

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Buffalo’s Common Council voted 5-to-3 Tuesday to give pay raises to themselves, the mayor, the city comptroller and the nine elected members of the city school board. A commission empaneled by the Council in April recommended the 12.63 percent raises for city elected officials and 87 percent pay raises for school board members. The increases will cost taxpayers $254,410 per year.  The new salaries are as follows: Mayor: $178,518.55 — a boost of $20,018.55. Comptroller: $134,592.85 — a boost of $15,092.85. Common Council member: $84,472.50 — a boost of $9,472.50. Board of Education member: $28,000 — a boost of $13,ooo.[...]

Posted 10 months ago

Jun 1

2023

The false promises of IDA subsidies

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In order for Western New York’s economy to remain stable, economic development officials argue that industrial development agencies need to grant tax breaks and other incentives. “People just aren’t going to build here unless they have incentives to help them to do that,” Mark Onesi, chair of the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency, told Investigative Post last year. “It’s expensive to do business here so we help as many people as we can.” Research, however, refutes those assertions. Economists have found between 75 and 90 percent of jobs created with tax breaks would have happened without the help.  “The system[...]

Posted 11 months ago

May 31

2023

IDA tax breaks cost schools millions

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 Editor’s note: This is the first of two stories on industrial development agencies. Tomorrow, we report on “perverse incentives” and other shortcomings in IDA programs. Any time Susan McGee’s children want to join an activity outside of the classroom — be it sports, music or other extracurriculars — it means one thing: a fundraiser. Raising money for extracurriculars may seem routine for a small, struggling Rust Belt city like Dunkirk, where McGee’s children attend school. But there’s another factor at play: The Dunkirk City School District loses out on an average of $5 million in revenue every year thanks[...]

Posted 11 months ago
Investigative Post

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