Tag: City Hall

Mar 3

2015

Pridgen prompts City Hall on recycling

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Buffalo Common Council President Darius Pridgen knows the city’s recycling rate is well below the national average of 34 percent. In an effort to boost the recycling program, he has gained approval from his colleagues for a resolution that proscribes steps he wants the city to take to promote recycling. They include: The Corporation Counsel should review recycling provisions in the City Charter and recommend changes to bring them in line with state’s recycling mandate. The Public Works Department must remind businesses that recycling is mandated. Many don’t recycle. Summer seasonal hires should visit households that are not recycling and[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Feb 26

2015

Buffalo refuses to release recycling stats

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Byron Brown’s administration is refusing to release the city’s recycling stats, even though the mayor recently touted the program’s supposed success during his State of the City speech last week. Susan Attridge, the city’s recycling coordinator, originally told me she’d supply the statistics in early February when she finished adding in details from commercial recycling. When that timeframe passed, I asked again. Attridge said she was still working on the data and would send it to me as soon as she finished. That same week, Brown cited the city’s recycling stats during his Feb. 20 State of the City speech.[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Feb 8

2015

Rochester’s success at solving murders

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Unlike in Buffalo, police down the Thruway in Rochester are solving most murders committed in their city, Steve Brown of WGRZ reports. His story concludes a three-part series, the first two of which were done in collaboration with Investigative Post. The first two installments can be found here and here.

Posted 9 years ago

Feb 5

2015

Getting away with murder in Buffalo

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A lot of people are dying in the streets of Buffalo. The body count last year was 62. To put that number in perspective, consider that only five murders were committed in the balance of Erie County last year. Buffalo’s murder rate is high, not just in comparison with the suburbs, but with comparably sized cities with a population between 250,000 and 500,000. Buffalo recorded an average of 18.7 murders per 100,000 residents vs. 11.3 for all mid-sized cities for the five years ending in 2013. That’s the bad news. And it gets worse. Most killers get away with murder[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Dec 29

2014

Local government websites earn ‘F’ grade

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Have a complaint about uncollected trash or a noisy neighbor? New York City has an app for that. Want to know if the streets you’re about to travel to work have been plowed? Chicago has an app for that. Curious about crime in your neighborhood? Louisville provides an online map where you can check for types of crime by day, week or month. It’s another story in Buffalo and Western New York, where local governments’ use of technology to inform citizens and taxpayers is behind the times in two critical ways. First, local government websites are failing to provide even[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Nov 11

2014

Buffalo is ‘ground zero’ for lead poisoning

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Young children in Erie County, mostly from Buffalo’s inner city, are testing positive for lead poisoning at more than triple the state average. As a result, hundreds of children enter Buffalo schools every year dealing with the impacts of lead poisoning, which can include lowered IQ and behavioral problems. The chief source of the problem is lead-based paint chips and dust in Buffalo’s old housing stock. “Buffalo is ground zero in the entire country for lead poisoning,” said David Hahn-Baker, a local environmental activist who has studied the lead problem for three decades. Yet City Hall treats lead poisoning as[...]

Posted 9 years ago

Jul 14

2014

Huge price tag for fixing Buffalo’s buildings

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By Jim Heaney and Pamela Cyran The bill is about to become due for City Hall’s chronic failure to maintain and update many of the 240 buildings and 2,180 acres of parks it owns. Consultants two years ago gave Mayor Byron Brown’s administration a preliminary estimate of $607 million to bring those buildings and parks up to snuff over the coming decade, and said that $253 million of that work ought to get done right away. The bill for leaky roofs alone stretched into eight figures. Administration officials have kept the estimates under wraps, insisting they are too high. They[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jul 10

2014

Buffalo’s costly neglect of public buildings

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A draft report shows city owned buildings and parkland require up to $607 million in repairs and updates over the next decade, Jim Heaney and Pamela Cyran of Investigative Post report for WGRZ. City Hall alone would cost up to $180 million to bring up to snuff, the draft report said. Costly work is required for community centers, libraries, museums and other cultural centers, and park, police and fire facilities. City officials said they have not released the two-year-old report, obtained from sources by Investigative Post, because they believe the cost estimates are high. They are scheduled to meet Friday[...]

Posted 10 years ago
Investigative Post

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