Tag: City Hall

Jun 18

2014

Buffalo recovery a Tale of Two Cities

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Jim Heaney makes his debut as a columnist for City & State this week with a piece that puts Buffalo’s improved economy in perspective. Heaney notes a great and growing divide between “the haves and have-nots.” Yes, there is the psychological boost thanks to the Buffalo Billion initiative, and construction cranes denote progress at Canalside and the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. But other aspects of the economy lag. “Any way you cut the numbers—poverty rate, unemployment rate, actual number of city residents working—they lag behind where things stood prior to the Great Recession of 2008–09,” Heaney writes. Meanwhile, the public[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jun 13

2014

EPA fines Buffalo for mishandling waste

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The City of Buffalo will pay a $21,094 fine and spend $79,000 on nine community recycling events as punishment for numerous violations of federal hazardous waste laws under an agreement announced Thursday with the Environmental Protection Agency. City officials also agreed to improve its management of hazardous waste and spent lamps- a commitment the city failed to honor three years ago. The EPA conducted two investigations in 2008 and 2011 that found various violations of hazardous waste laws that put city employees and neighborhood residents at risk of potential mercury poisoning and chemical explosions. The settlement comes two days after Investigative[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jun 10

2014

Another ‘fine mess’ for Buffalo’s City Hall

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Buffalo is facing more than $100,000 in fines because of its mishandling of hazardous materials that put city employees and neighborhood residents at risk of everything from mercury poisoning to chemical explosions. Some of the problems go back decades and were first brought to light in 2008 when inspectors from the Environmental Protection Agency learned city employees and tenants of city-owned buildings had been throwing spent lamps, which can contain small amounts of mercury, into the trash rather than safely disposing of them. Exposure to mercury can damage the central nervous system and cause breathing problems and memory impairment, especially[...]

Posted 10 years ago

May 27

2014

Buffalo’s recycling program still struggles

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Buffalo is trying to burnish its green credentials with big public investments to clean up its waterways and attract clean energy companies. Recycling is an easier lift, but the city’s anemic program is plagued by fits and starts. City Hall took the major step of distributing green recycling totes to residents in late 2011. Last year, Mayor Byron Brown hired a full-time recycling coordinator. But City Hall is otherwise batting 0 for 4 when it comes to building a successful program. As a result, the city’s curbside recycling rate has leveled off and remains less than half the national average.[...]

Posted 10 years ago

May 1

2014

Common Council needs to step up

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Right about now, people ought to be missing Jim Pitts. Yeah, yeah, I know, obstructionist and all. I’ll concede, he could be frustrating at times. But Pitts was nobody’s pushover, and during his time in office the Common Council could be counted on to take the occasional lead on issues and function as some sort of check on executive power. That’s in sharp contrast to the “go along to get along” crew now occupying the Council’s nine seats. I did a package of stories last week for WGRZ that considered the effectiveness and independence of the Council and Erie County[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Apr 25

2014

Council lacks initiative, independence

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The good news: Buffalo’s Common Council doesn’t busy itself passing resolutions honoring people, be they dead or alive. But like the Erie County Legislature, the Council passes few laws and makes few changes to the executive branch’s spending plans, including the chronically troubled Community Development Block Grant program. The Council’s track record the past few years reflects a cozy relationship between lawmakers and Mayor Byron Brown. Few miss the bickering of the Griffin and, to a lesser degree, Masiello eras. But critics, who include former Council President David Franczyk, say lawmakers have surrendered their independence in the process. This report[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Apr 3

2014

Buffalo’s decade-long dust bowl

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The Weaver family and their neighbors on Peabody Street may be the only people in Buffalo who don’t look forward to warm weather. That’s when concrete crushing kicks into full gear at Battaglia Demolition, a construction and demolition processing facility that abuts their homes in the gritty Seneca Babcock neighborhood about a mile southeast of downtown. “I can’t open my windows because of all the dust from the rock crushing,” Jan Weaver wrote to the state Department of Environmental Conservation last fall. Between 80 to 200 diesel trucks a day rumble down Peabody Street loaded with concrete, scrap metal and[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Mar 27

2014

Chippewa Street is a red blight district

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Last week I wrote about the overflowing trash bins up and down Chippewa Street that greeted fans in town for the NCAA basketball tournament. That did not make it an unusual week for the downtown entertainment strip – actually, it was a typical one. The truth is, Chippewa is dirty, smelly and uninviting most of the time. I know because I walk the street five, sometimes six days a week. I park workdays at WGRZ on Delaware Avenue and walk up Chippewa to my office on Pearl Street. I retrace my steps on the way home in the evening. In[...]

Posted 10 years ago
Investigative Post

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