Tag: City Hall

Aug 8

2024

City pulls back on “amusements” fee

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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 2 months ago

Jul 31

2024

City Hall targets music clubs with costly tax

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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 3 months ago

Jul 25

2024

A questionable city contract

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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 3 months ago

Jul 18

2024

Mayor’s staff growing in numbers and cost

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When Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown prepared his first city budget, he allowed for eight employees in his office, including himself. He had a communications staff of one.  Those jobs were scheduled to cost taxpayers $571,806, not including healthcare and retirement benefits. The actual cost was less — just under $500,000 — because he didn’t fill all the positions. This budget year, which began July 1, the mayor’s budget allows for 19 staffers. The Office of Communications and Intergovernmental Affairs has grown to seven budgeted positions.  Combined, the salaries for those 26 jobs add up to $2,453,665. That’s nearly three times[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Jul 17

2024

Brown’s raising money as if he’s running for office

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Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has a fundraiser today at the Diamond Hawk golf course in Cheektowaga, with tickets starting at $100 and sponsorship packages ranging up to $5,000.  Brown also held a fundraiser earlier this month at a Bisons game and another in April at The Atrium @ Rich’s. His Brown for Buffalo campaign committee has raised $58,500 since January, according to campaign finance disclosures filed on Monday.  That’s $22,000 more than Brown raised in the first six months of 2020, as he prepared to run for a fifth term. The mayor’s committee had $192,545 in the bank as of[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Jul 11

2024

Buffalo sued over inner-city lead poisoning

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Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, head of the Partnership for the Public Good. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel.   This story was updated at 2:11 pm on July 11, 2024 to include comments from the City of Buffalo. Tenants and community organizations are taking the City of Buffalo to court, contending it is failing to enforce rental inspection laws aimed at reducing lead paint in the city’s aging housing stock. The inspection law, enacted in 2020, was in response to the large number of children testing with high levels of lead in their blood. City inspectors have conducted relatively few inspections since then,[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Jun 17

2024

Buffalo needs a hard control board

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Mayor Byron Brown made it clear last week he has no intention of resolving the city’s pending fiscal crisis. In an interview with Deidre Williams of The Buffalo News, the mayor said rather than cutting spending, he’s looking for increased revenue from the county, state and perhaps federal governments to close a projected deficit of at least $41 million for the budget year starting July 2025.  In fact, the feds have already been bailing him out. In the past three budgets, the city has used $100 million in federal pandemic aid to balance the books. It expects to use at[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jun 11

2024

Buffalo lawmakers’ side gigs

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Buffalo Common Council Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope, President Pro Tempore Bryan Bollman, and University District Council Member Rasheed Wyatt. Photo by Garrett Looker. The Buffalo Common Council’s majority leader, Leah Halton-Pope, was sworn into office — and onto the city’s payroll — on Jan. 1. But she was collecting more than a city paycheck during her first four months in office. Halton-Pope continued to work as a part-time policy consultant for Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes — the woman she has called her “forever boss” — until the end of April, making about $3,000 a month. And she continues to[...]

Posted 4 months ago
Investigative Post