100 Search Results for sewer

Mar 22

2022

Lucrative no-bid deal for Brown donor

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For the last three years, Buffalo’s comptroller has been asking Mayor Byron Brown’s administration to justify a $1 million, no-bid contract awarded to developer William Huntress.  Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams’s office has twice audited the current lease for the city’s records storage facility, given to Huntress’s Acquest Development in 2018.  Both times, according to the comptroller, the Brown administration has failed to document its decision to forgo legally required competitive bidding procedures. “Documentation of the transaction should be sufficient to assure compliance with the applicable laws and policies, which require the best value is chosen,” the comptroller reported in its first[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jan 5

2022

Samsung turned down subsidies worth $1.9B

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Think the $950 million the state doled out to build and equip a factory for Tesla in South Buffalo was a lot of money? State and local officials offered Samsung twice as much to build a semiconductor plant in rural Genesee County. The $1.9 billion subsidy package would have been the second-largest deal in state history if the company had accepted it. It ranks high nationally, as well. “It would be right in the top dozen of all time in U.S. history,” according to Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a national subsidy watchdog group.  Still, New York’s[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Oct 25

2021

Buffalo’s beleaguered municipal finances

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 The story of Buffalo’s municipal finances under Mayor Byron Brown is divided into two chapters. Chapter One covers the five years before the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority — the city’s control board, formed in 2003 to keep the city from going bankrupt — relinquished its oversight power. In the beginning of Brown’s tenure, which began in 2006, the control board helped the city balance budgets and build up millions in reserves. Chapter Two covers the decade since the control board went “soft” in 2011. It’s a very different tale. Since 2011, Brown has proposed — and year after year[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 20

2021

A platform for mayor

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Editor’s note: A version of this column appears in the current issue of Buffalo Spree. Buffalo voters face a stark choice in November: Byron Brown or India Walton? A lot will be said between now and election day and some of it may actually involve proposals to improve the city. To prime the pump for an issues-focused campaign, allow me to offer an eight-point plan for revitalizing Buffalo. The candidates are free to borrow generously. Here goes: Poverty: Buffalo remains one of the poorest cities of its size in the nation. About one-third of residents, and close to half its[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 2

2021

Campaign Notes

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Welcome to Campaign Notes, an election blog we update daily with news and intelligence on upcoming elections, including the mayoral race. Geoff Kelly, our government and politics reporter, writes most of the entries, with contributions from other Investigative Post reporters. Email Geoff with tips. Thursday, Nov. 4, 11:50 a.m. Heaney assesses election with with Susan Arbetter How to explain Byron Brown’s landslide victory over India Walton? Susan Arbetter, host of Capital Tonight, put that question to Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney and here’s what he had to say: Investigative Post, in a previous story, identified four key strategies successful write-in candidates[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Aug 2

2021

Popular waterways contaminated by bacteria 

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E. coli is a nasty waterborne bacteria that can cause vomiting and diarrhea. Authorities close beaches when levels exceed safety limits. But they’re doing next to nothing about unsafe readings in other local waterways. There’s a particular problem with the Black Rock Canal, popular with fishermen, the occasional swimmer and, most notably, the West Side Rowing Club and high school and college crew teams. E. coli readings consistently exceed safe limits — by up to 14 times — established by the federal government. “There are people coming in contact with water with E. coli from human feces every single day,”[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jul 12

2021

Transparency, City Hall style

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Editor’s note: Phil Gambini is working on a story about sewage and stormwater runoff that flows into local creeks and rivers. Municipalities are required under state law to track the volume of these pollutants, but data reported by the Buffalo Sewer Authority does not identify discharge points or, in many cases, the amount of wastewater that flows into individual waterways. Gambini has been attempting to reach the Sewer Authority since the middle of May to make sense of the incomplete data. He documents his efforts below.  There’s many ways to reach Oluwole “O.J.” McFoy, general manager at the Buffalo Sewer[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Jun 25

2021

Rallying to save their patronage jobs

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Wondering whether Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown is giving serious consideration to mounting a write-in campaign to keep his job in November? The answer might have been in plain sight Thursday night at Sahlen Field, where Brown threw out the first pitch before the Toronto Blue Jays went on to drop the Baltimore Orioles, 9-0. Outside the park, a crowd of Byron Brown supporters gathered in front of the main entrance to make a pitch of their own. They wore T-shirts bearing Brown’s name and carried signs reading “Keep Byron Brown.” This was no extemporaneous, grassroots expression of support for the[...]

Posted 3 years ago