Categories for Analysis

Feb 28

2023

City keeping $3.6M of other people’s money

Published by

In 2019, the City of Buffalo sold 103 properties seized for nonpayment of taxes and fees.  The annual auction yielded $4.3 million that year, far more than the $700,000 the former owners of those properties owed the city. Those former owners were supposed to be able to apply for their share of the surplus $3.6 million — which represents their remaining equity in those properties — through a program developed by the city’s law department and published on the city’s website in late 2021.  Many former property owners filed claims. None received any money, as Investigative Post reported in October. [...]

Posted 1 year ago

Feb 23

2023

Most suburbs lag on reading instruction

Published by

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series. Our previous story focused on the challenges face by Buffalo schools and its adoption of a phonics-based approach. Unlike 30 other states, New York does not require a phonics-based approach to reading instruction. That leaves each of the state’s 731 school districts free to select its own reading curriculum. “New York, in general, is behind most other states when it comes to this, which I think is reflected in the reading scores,” said Jeff Smink, deputy director of The Education Trust – New York. “Every district is like the Wild West,”[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Feb 22

2023

Buffalo’s abysmal reading scores

Published by

 Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series. Our second installment: Poor reading skills are a problem nationwide, including in many of Buffalo’s suburbs.  Only two of the 48 tested fourth graders at Herman Badillo Bilingual Academy on the city’s West Side read at proficient levels in 2022. Likewise, just two fifth graders at School 53 on the East Side read at grade level. That’s out of 62 pupils tested. Not a single fifth grader at Martin Luther King Jr. School, in the shadow of the Fruit Belt neighborhood, tested at a proficient reading level in 2022.[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Feb 16

2023

Tesla a target of unionizing effort

Published by

The union behind the successful effort to organize Starbucks, both here and nationally, is trying to do likewise at Tesla’s plant in South Buffalo. But, much like with Starbucks, organizers are squaring off with an employer with a history of aggressively fending off unionizing efforts. To wit, just one day after Tesla Workers United announced its organizing drive, Tesla fired 30 employees at its Buffalo plant, including some members of the union organizing team. They were dismissed via email Wednesday evening. “I strongly feel this is in retaliation to the committee announcement and it’s shameful,” Arian Berek, a fired worker[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Feb 6

2023

Blizzard looting mostly in white neighborhoods

Published by

More than 100 businesses were looted during the “Blizzard of ’22.” While press and social media accounts focused on theft on the city’s East Side, an Investigative Post analysis found most of the looting took place elsewhere in the city and in the suburbs. Investigative Post identified 108 looted businesses, using posts on social media and reports we obtained  under the Freedom of Information Law from police departments in Buffalo and the first-ring suburbs of Amherst, Cheektowaga and the Town of Tonawanda. About 40 of the 108 businesses targeted were on the East Side. Stores on Broadway, Bailey Avenue and[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jan 26

2023

‘Weak’ relocation clause in Bills’ lease

Published by

The Buffalo Bills would have an easier time abandoning their new stadium in Orchard Park for another city than any of the other teams playing in subsidized stadiums built for NFL franchises in recent years, Investigative Post has found. Four NFL stadiums have been built with public assistance since 2014: Levi’s Stadium for the San Francisco 49ers, U.S. Bank Stadium for the Minnesota Vikings, Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the Atlanta Falcons, and Allegiant Stadium for the Las Vegas Raiders. Like the Bills draft lease, those agreements require teams in those stadiums to pay back the taxpayer’s investment in the event they[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jan 23

2023

Another subsidized tenant for STAMP

Published by

A remote industrial park in Genesee County will soon have its second tenant: Edwards Vacuum, a company that manufactures equipment used in the semiconductor industry. But luring Edwards Vacuum, a British company, to the Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park, or STAMP, has come at a cost: $39.2 million in taxpayer subsidies. That’s in exchange for 600 jobs over the next decade, with 343 being hired in the next three years. And that’s just the beginning. In addition to $22 million in subsidies from Empire State Development, New York’s economic development arm, and $17.2 million in property and sales tax[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Jan 19

2023

Tax breaks for fast food in Niagara Falls

Published by

A fast-food franchise developer is looking to bring an A&W and Moe’s Southwest Grill to downtown Niagara Falls — and is seeking $172,000 in tax breaks to do it. IDA subsidies are available only to projects that would not be economically feasible otherwise. But the developer told Investigative Post he doesn’t need the tax breaks from the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency to proceed. “This is a little help, but we are able to do it without it as well,” said Muhammad Shoaib, the franchisee and developer. The subsidies he’s seeking have also drawn criticism. “Business subsidies are bad, but[...]

Posted 1 year ago
Investigative Post

Get our newsletters delivered to your inbox * indicates required

Newsletters *