Tag: City Hall

Mar 13

2025

Buffalo moves to call in Braymiller Market loan

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Inside the now-closed Braymiller Market. Photo by Garrett Looker. Capping off the saga of downtown Buffalo’s failed grocery store, city officials on Thursday took a major step towards calling in the loan issued to  Braymiller Market two years ago. In a unanimous decision, the loan committee of the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency voted to issue a letter of default, the legal mechanism for demanding back the $561,000 the city is owed. BURA’s full board is expected to approve the recommendation when it meets March 27. It remains unclear whether the city will recoup the funds.  By issuing the default —[...]

Posted 5 days ago

Feb 26

2025

Scanlon campaign again violates ethics laws

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Buffalo Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon. For the second time since he took office in October, Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s campaign violated local, state and federal codes prohibiting the use of public resources to advance political campaigns. From early December until this morning, two of three social media links at the bottom of the City of Buffalo’s governmental website connected to Scanlon campaign accounts. A spokesperson for the mayor said the links had been “fixed” after Investigative Post sought comment on the matter. But for nearly three months, the Instagram and Twitter links at the bottom of the city’s homepage connected[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Feb 25

2025

Something else City Hall fails to do

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The light pole at Niagara and Garfield streets that fell in a windstorm in February 2019, injuring Donald Anderson. Donald Anderson in February 2019 was walking through a windstorm to his job at a Riverside tavern when a city streetlight — “badly corroded” and past its “usable life,” according to expert testimony — fell and hit him on his head. “Next thing I remember I woke up and I was covered in blood, people were all around me and I didn’t know what was going on,” Anderson testified in a deposition for a lawsuit he filed the following year. Buffalo’s[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Feb 21

2025

Good news, bad news for Buffalo finances

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One-shot revenues and belt-tightening efforts have erased the deficit Buffalo’s government faced in the fall, but expensive legal settlements and overtime costs threaten to derail that progress. The city’s finance commissioner in December reported the city was running an $18 million deficit just three months into the financial year, which began July 1. That’s because Byron Brown’s administration had all but emptied the city’s reserves to plug unanticipated shortfalls in the previous year’s spending plan. Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon and the Common Council had planned to use those reserves to balance the current budget. To address the resulting deficit, Scanlon[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Feb 13

2025

“Detective Hy was repeatedly discourteous and unprofessional”

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The state attorney general over the past four years has investigated 10 Buffalo police officers repeatedly accused of misconduct. The investigations found “no pattern” of misconduct by six of those officers, and in two other cases the inquiries were dropped because the officers left the force.  Twice, however, the attorney general’s investigators threw penalty flags. The latest cop to be scrutinized: Detective Richard Hy, who has been a notorious figure for much of his 13-year career. “Detective Hy was repeatedly discourteous and unprofessional during encounters with civilians and escalated the encounters, including by using physical force,” Tyler Nims, head of[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Feb 6

2025

Fate of Braymiller Market remains in limbo

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The now-shuttered Braymiller Market at 225 Ellicott Street. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker The future of the downtown building once home to Braymiller Market remains in limbo. For one, Evans Bank is moving to foreclosure on the property as a way to recoup the multi-million dollar mortgage it granted to owner Stuart Green. The bank has begun “pre-foreclosure” proceedings, according to Common Council Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope. At the same time, the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency is weighing whether to call in a $561,000 loan the city granted to Braymiller Market in 2023. The money, meant to be a lifeline[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Jan 29

2025

Does the GOP have a place in race for Buffalo mayor?

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Editor’s note: Scanlon on Friday clarified his position with Investigative Post, saying neither he nor his campaign staff have been in contact with Republican or Conservative party officials and stating that he would not accept their nomination for mayor. See related story. The race for Buffalo mayor this week was marked by a testy exchange between the frontrunners over Democratic Party values, a new candidate and rumors of another yet to come, and the resurfacing of a Byron Brown political operative. The clash between frontrunners happened at last weekend’s mayoral candidates forum hosted by the Erie County Democratic Committee. After[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Jan 21

2025

The money behind Buffalo’s mayoral candidates

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The top two contenders for Buffalo mayor are both starting this election cycle with about a half million dollars in their campaign accounts. But their donor bases and the pace of their fundraising are far different. Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon has been on a tear, raising more money since he took office in October than he raised in 12 years as a member of the Common Council, with much of his money coming from the real estate developers and city contractors who bankrolled his predecessor, Byron Brown. State Sen. Sean Ryan, meanwhile, has tapped longtime supporters — especially lawyers and[...]

Posted 2 months ago
Investigative Post