Tag: City Hall

Mar 19

2020

COVID-19 expected to worsen Buffalo finances

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The coronavirus, and the attendant slowdown of the local economy, could not arrive at a worse time for the City of Buffalo’s finances. The likely decline in county sales tax — Buffalo’s share of which is a critical portion of the city’s budget — could contribute to a deficit when the fiscal year ends June 30. Early spring is the worst period of the year for the City of Buffalo’s cash flow, as Investigative Post reported last year.  The city comptroller’s office projected the city would run a positive cash flow balance of $3.5 million for February, and that number is[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 19

2020

Lead poisoning plan missing key elements

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In January, the City of Buffalo launched its long-awaited pilot program to combat lead poisoning. The pilot program is small — much smaller than the problem in Buffalo, which has one of the highest rates of children afflicted with lead poisoning in the nation.  And, as it stands now, the program lacks funding mechanisms to make it bigger.  Furthermore, a key element is still missing: a new local law that will allow city inspectors access to the interiors of the city’s abundant rental singles and doubles in poor neighborhoods. Those dwellings comprise 80 percent of the city’s highest-risk properties. Still,[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 18

2020

More Buffalo cop cars on the way

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The Buffalo Common Council today approved two measures that will bring 51 new patrol cars to the city’s decrepit fleet. The Council, without comment or debate, approved a contract to lease 31 new police cars from Enterprise Fleet Management for roughly the cost of purchasing 13 cars outright. The Council also approved borrowing $1 million to purchase 20 new police cars. The cost to the city in the first year of the three-year lease period is $675,000 — about what the city appropriated for the purchase of police cars in the current budget.  In the second and third years, the cost[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 4

2020

Police shooting costs Buffalo $4.5 million

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 On Tuesday, Buffalo’s Common Council authorized one of the largest lawsuit settlements in the city’s history: $4.5 million to Wilson Morales, who was shot by Buffalo police officers in the early morning of June 24, 2012, after a car chase on the city’s East Side. The bullet that struck Morales, then a 17-year-old student at WNY Maritime Charter School, instantly paralyzed him from the chest down. “It’s been hard,” Morales told Investigative Post in the offices of Dolce Panepinto, the law firm that handled the lawsuit, after the Council approved the settlement. “Mostly depression, loss of friends, and pain,”[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Feb 1

2020

Police brass overstate availability of patrol cars

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 Buffalo police officers have a lot fewer cars at their disposal to respond to 911 calls than their commissioner would have the public believe, union officials say. Buffalo Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood told the Common Council’s Police Oversight Committee on Jan. 14 that the department’s dilapidated fleet had 134 working patrol cars available to answer calls. The actual number is less than 50, said Mark Goodspeed, vice president of the Police Benevolent Association. Goodspeed performs a regular survey of working patrol cars assigned to the city’s five police districts. On the evening of Jan. 14, the same day Lockwood[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jan 14

2020

Buffalo cops still waiting on patrol cars

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Investigative Post reported in August that the Buffalo Police Department was woefully short of working patrol cars. The city’s failure to purchase new cars regularly, deferred maintenance and inadequate staffing at the department’s garage had led to a situation the Police Benevolent Association president John Evans described as “dire.” Among the resulting problems: officers without access to vehicles to respond to 911 calls in a timely fashion. Almost six months later, Buffalo’s patrol officers are still waiting for relief. On Tuesday, members of the Common Council’s Police Oversight Committee learned the arrival of new cars is still many months away.[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jan 14

2020

Council ignores police ignoring Council

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The Common Council committee charged with overseeing Buffalo police failed Tuesday to take up the department ignoring conditions lawmakers set for the purchase of 125 high-powered rifles two years ago. Investigative Post reported in October that police officials unilaterally changed training requirements and that most officers had not completed the training required by the Council to use the rifles. Police estimated it will be another two years before all officers are trained. As a result, more than half of the guns remain under lock at police headquarters. David Rivera, the Niagara District Council member who heads the Police Oversight Committee, did[...]

Posted 5 years ago

Jan 10

2020

Our local politicians are getting worse

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The November local elections are behind us and the national chaos of 2020 is right around the corner. (Like winter, it can’t end soon enough.) This seems like a good time to take stock of our elected officials in Western New York. But first, allow me to hold my nose. I’ve been reporting in this town for more than 30 years, and the quality of our elected officials has never been worse. I’m not talking politicians at the town and village level, as I don’t travel much in those circles. However, it’s safe to say that with sixty-two towns and[...]

Posted 5 years ago
Investigative Post