Articles for Geoff Kelly

Sep 12

2024

And the next mayor of Buffalo is …

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown hasn’t yet accepted his job offer from Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. He hasn’t submitted a letter of resignation from office. I asked the city clerk on Tuesday, just to be sure. But smart money says he’ll have vacated the second floor of City Hall before Halloween, leaving Common Council President Chris Scanlon as acting mayor. As acting mayor, Scanlon will be a quasi-incumbent when voters choose a new mayor next year. That may not be much of an advantage, given the city’s financial issues, and there will be many candidates vying for many different voting[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Sep 9

2024

Buffalo fails to collect $2.3 million in ambulance fees

The company that provides ambulance service to the City of Buffalo hasn’t paid an annual franchise fee to the city since its contract expired in 2020. That lapse has cost the cash-strapped city nearly $2.3 million in revenue, according to city budget documents and Fillmore District Council Member Mitch Nowakowski, chair of the Common Council’s Finance Committee. Nowakowski blames the company for not paying and Mayor Byron Brown’s administration for failing to collect the money and negotiate a new contract. “They are operating in our city without a contract and for free,” Nowakowski told Investigative Post. “This a failure within[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Sep 5

2024

Byron Brown is leaving City Hall. What happens now?

Mayor in waiting: Common Council President Chris Scanlon. Photo by Garrett Looker. Byron Brown soon will step down as mayor of Buffalo after 18 years and eight months in the office. The five-term mayor has been offered the job as president and CEO of Western Regional Off Track Betting Corp., a possibility Investigative Post first reported in February. He is expected to accept the position, pending completion of negotiations for an employment contract and obtaining a license from the state Gaming Commission. The precise date of his exit from City Hall is uncertain; later this month or October is most[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Sep 5

2024

Buffalo City Hall vandal explains himself

Today, we’re sharing a portion of political reporter Geoff Kelly’s weekly newsletter, PoliticalPost. To receive his free report in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up in the subscription box at the end of this article. The man arrested Sunday for breaking windows at City Hall and making threats against Mayor Byron Brown is the uncle of a woman who was killed when she fell out of a moving car on the Kensington Expressway in February. On Facebook Antonio Nunes, 40, posted links to stories about his arrest and described his actions as “a warning.” His family, he wrote, was “being disrespected by nobody being[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Aug 8

2024

City pulls back on “amusements” fee

The Town Ballroom on Main Street. Photo by Garrett Looker. The City of Buffalo has backed off from a plan to tax music and other entertainment venues for every event for which they charge admission. Investigative Post last week broke the story about the city’s effort to collect an “amusements fee” described in an obscure and unevenly applied section of the city code. Music club owners and managers two weeks ago began receiving letters from the city’s Department of Permit & Inspection Services “reminding” them of their obligation to pay the fee — which few of them had previously heard[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Aug 7

2024

GOP no-shows in Cheektowaga

All three of Cheektowaga’s Republican town board members skipped a special meeting Monday night, denying a quorum to the board’s other three members, all Democrats. The meeting was meant to be brief: The only agenda item was to set public hearings on a proposal to divide the town into six wards, each with its own representative on the board. Currently board members are elected in town-wide elections, but a formal complaint last year challenged that system, alleging it disenfranchised minority voters in violation of a state law enacted in 2022. More than one-fifth of the town’s 88,000 residents are minorities,[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jul 31

2024

City Hall targets music clubs with costly tax

The City of Buffalo, facing projected budget shortfalls and desperate for revenue, is turning to a little-known chapter of the city code to collect a fee from music clubs and other entertainment venues for every ticketed event they produce. The fee could add tens of thousands of dollars to the operating costs of bigger venues like Babeville, RiverWorks, Iron Works and Town Ballroom, as well as smaller clubs like Nietzsche’s and Mr. Goodbar. Nearly all the venue owners and managers Investigative Post spoke to said they were blindsided by the fee, which they learned about last week via letters sent[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jul 25

2024

A questionable city contract

The Broadway Market. Photo by Garrett Looker. Buffalo’s Department of Public Works this week asked city legislators to give a contract to a security company helmed by a former city cop whose brief career was rife with complaints of misbehavior, on and off duty. Elite Protection & Investigation, with offices in Williamsville, won the contract to provide security at the Broadway Market with a bid of $267,150. Two other bidders bid about $20,000 higher. It’s a one-year contract with the option to extend the deal annually up to four times. Elite’s CEO, Mitchell R. Thomas, began his career with the[...]

Posted 5 months ago