Tag: City Hall

Sep 3

2019

Turning a blind eye to environmental risks

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You’d think that the construction of a million square feet of manufacturing space on a brownfield along the Buffalo River would warrant a thorough environmental investigation before shovels bit into the soil. And you’d be wrong. The Tesla plant in South Buffalo was built on a former Superfund site — once home to Republic Steel, Donner Hanna Coke and Feine Steel, among other historic industrial polluters. The site borders the environmental debacle that was (and is) the Hickory Woods residential development, which was poisoned by the use as fill of toxic materials created by those plants. Prior to its purchase[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Aug 28

2019

Kelly discusses cop cars on WBFO

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Geoff Kelly has recently reported on a shortage of working police cars in Buffalo (here and here). He discussed his findings this week on WBFO’s Press Pass.  

Posted 5 years ago

Aug 22

2019

Cop car shortage sidelines new officers

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Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and the Common Council have shortchanged the Buffalo Police Department’s police fleet in recent years. They’ve replaced cars at less than half the rate the police department has lobbied for, and which is considered best practice by experts in fleet maintenance. Last week, Investigative Post reported on the sorry state of affairs. The police department has too few patrol cars, we found, and many of the cars that are in service are in poor repair. The situation, said John Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, is “dire.” “There aren’t enough cars for the patrol[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Aug 15

2019

Buffalo police handcuffed by ramshackle fleet

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On any given shift, Buffalo police have just half the patrol cars they need to do the job. “I would describe [the situation] as dire,” John Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, told Investigative Post. “There aren’t enough cars for the patrol officers to patrol the streets and get to the calls.” The cause: The Brown administration has not replaced police vehicles as frequently as the police department would like and national standards advise. As a result, the police fleet is aging and in disrepair. The cars that do work are driven into the ground, while those in[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Aug 11

2019

A problematic downtown development project

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The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason. —T. S. Eliot When one Western New York developer sues another, the motive — no matter the arguments presented in court, however they may be presented in the media as a pursuit of the public good — is of course money. It has to be: To have standing to sue, a petitioner must demonstrate a financial or quality-of-life interest to the court. So, when Rocco Termini sued Ciminelli Development in mid-June to stop Ciminelli’s latest plan for 201 Ellicott Street, naturally Termini had a financial motive:[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Aug 5

2019

Comptrollers behaving badly, Part 1

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On the website of the Buffalo city comptroller, the top tab on the left — the place of pride — is occupied by the word “Transparency.” I guess that’s meant to be ironic. Click on that tab, and follow the prompts to the page titled “Financial Reports,” and you’ll soon discover what I mean. In the last week or so, Barbara Miller-Williams, the interim comptroller who is running unopposed for a full term in November, wiped that page clean of critical reports created and published by the staff of her predecessor, Mark Schroeder. Buy tickets now to iPost benefit featuring[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jul 15

2019

Brown denies Buffalo’s fiscal woes

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 Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown refused to talk with Investigative Post about the city’s fiscal plight for a story published last week, but he couldn’t dodge WGRZ’s Dave McKinley. The mayor’s response, included in a story that aired Monday, was a mix of arguing semantics and making misleading statements about city reserves. And, as if to underscore her lack of independence from the mayor, City Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams issued a press release intended to assure the public that all is well with city finances. This wasn’t the first time she attempted to cover for Brown during her brief tenure in office.[...]

Posted 5 years ago
Investigative Post

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