City Hall is making all kinds of technological leaps these days. Whether it’s solar powered parking meter kiosks that are expected to increase revenue raised by charging people more effectively to park on its streets, Citistat meetings posted on the city Web site that invariably fail to play correctly, or the awesome 311 Call and Resolution Center—where “One call does it all.”

I gave it a try this morning. I dialed 311 twice and got no ring at all. I then called 851-4890, the alternate, old-fashioned seven-digit number. A voice answered, thanking me for calling 311.

I was told the call “may be monitored and recorded for quality assurance purposes.”

Well, two can play at that game. Here’s a recording of the two minutes and forty-eight seconds I spent dialing 311 twice, 851-4890 once, pressing the number two to speak to an agent, then waiting another minute through some sort of spacey muzak until a busy signal ended the call. I never got to say a word.

I can’t believe I fell for the old reverse prank call trick. Maybe the Jerky Boys are working down at city hall?

But I’m still left to wonder how I’m going to request a new garbage tote. Or finally get that stump removed from in front of my house.

In this week’s AV, I wrote an account of Tuesday night’s public hearing in the Common Council on the City of Buffalo’s 2008 Restore New York grant application. During the proceedings, Assemblyman Sam Hoyt—who wrote the legislation that led to the $300 million Restore New York program—laid some pretty heavy treads on the Brown administration.

Here are Hoyt’s remarks:

I am here to tonight to talk about the original intent of the RestoreNY program, which developed out of legislation I drafted called Repair New York, and to talk specifically about how the City of Buffalo has fallen short for the last two years in producing a thorough, thoughtful application that would maximize the potential of this funding to revitalize our City. This year’s application represents the third and final round of available RestoreNY funding, worth a statewide total of 150 million dollars, and as such there is no more room for error. New York State’s fiscal condition may not permit another round of funding. If the City of Buffalo does not produce a more inclusive and creative application this year, then three years of opportunity to transform the landscape of our neighborhoods and three years of state-funded support will have been squandered.

RestoreNY funding is intended to attract individuals, families, industry, and commercial enterprises to the city. The funding is flexible enough to allow for creativity in putting together a plan that mixes rehabilitation, restoration, deconstruction, and demolition to strategically strengthen neighborhoods. To date, the City of Buffalo has used RestoreNY funding primarily for demolition of properties, and even that has not been done in a particularly strategic way.

Statewide, the first round of RestoreNY disbursed 50 million dollars in funding for various programs. The City of Buffalo received 3 million dollars from that application, used entirely for demolition projects. Round One allocated a total of 11.8 million dollars for demolition, and 29.2 million for rehabilitation. The second round of funding provided 100 million dollars in state funding for this program. The City of Buffalo received 5.7 million dollars for demolition and 4.5 million dollars for renovation of the Trico Building. While renovating one major industrial building shows a slight shift toward rehabilitation, the fact remains that The City of Buffalo’s application requested 30 million dollars in funding and received just over 10 million. To those who say demolition is a crucial component of eliminating blight and making our neighborhoods safer, I agree completely. Demolition HAS to be part of the solution. This is so important I need to repeat it. Demolition HAS to be part of the solution. However, it does not alter the fact that the RestoreNY program was never intended to be used overwhelmingly for demolition and one commercial rehabilitation. There are other funds available for demolition. I secured 5 million dollars for thousands of demolitions that were done in 2007 above and beyond the 3 million dollars awarded through RestoreNY.

It seems to me that the City of Buffalo’s lack of creativity and vision in putting together a RestoreNY application that could be a starting point in neighborhood revitalization is part of a bigger failure of leadership on housing issues. Much of the focus has been on big picture economic development, including a large effort to draw big business to Buffalo. What is the point of bringing big business to our City if we do not have affordable, thriving neighborhoods where people would choose to relocate to work and raise a family? That is the only way to create the holistic economic development that will truly restore Buffalo to what is should be.

As a state legislator, I have always tried to be inclusive in developing legislation that would address the full scope of our housing crisis, turning to the community members and organizations who best understand the breadth and depth of the crisis and who can provide information on their own unique solutions or direct me toward best practices from similar communities. This grassroots-focused development strategy led to the Affordable Housing Corporation’s Block-by-Block program, which is going to bring a few million dollars to Buffalo to do what the City of Buffalo has not yet allowed RestoreNY to do—to acquire and rehabilitate dilapidated but salvageable properties that can anchor neighborhood reinvestment.

This grassroots-focused development strategy led me to draft legislation that would enable creation of a “land bank” to promote the acquisition, rehabilitation, management, and strategic reuse of vacant properties countywide. The City of Buffalo, which owns over 8,000 properties in Buffalo and has proved to be a very poor landlord indeed, has refused to support this legislation in the interest of gaining more control over properties they cannot currently maintain or market. Even when presented with a significant resource like RestoreNY that would enable a more comprehensive strategy for addressing these serious concerns, the City of Buffalo chooses the path of least resistance.

The City of Buffalo seeks no community input, nor does it seek to craft an inclusive strategy that would: promote strategic demolition where necessary; provide resources for rehabilitation to strengthen neighborhoods and encourage additional investment; or develop a greenspace management program to turn the vacant lots created through so many thousands of demolitions into bountiful additions to the fabric of the City.

Demolition is not the only solution to urban blight, despite the City of Buffalo’s efforts to make us believe that that is so. Demolition is an important component for a number of reasons, but we must do so much more. RestoreNY will give us the resources to allow us to do so much more. Combined with powerful community-changing initiatives like my land bank legislation and the Block-by-Block program, we can stop destroying our neighborhoods house by house, stop creating vacant lots that end up as trash-strewn fields that contribute to neighborhood blight, and stop waving goodbye to our neighbors as they move away from home. Demolition is a small part of an immense crisis, and it is time to do more. We cannot wait any longer.

I understand that the Common Council must vote to approve or reject the final RestoreNY application presented by the City’s administration, and that no Council input into the application process save that one vote has been requested nor welcomed to date. I think it is commendable that you have come together now to demand that the community be given a greater say, and I thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight. Let me just say in closing that I believe the RestoreNY program’s squandered opportunities did not come about because one person thought too small. I suggest that the bigger issue is a broader administrative failure to plan ahead, build partnerships, and foster a sense of direction and leadership in the community. Without these things, we could claim we have attracted billions of dollars in investments and still have nothing to show for it because the fabric of our neighborhoods has been so degraded. In your role as Councilmembers, I ask that you do all that you can to ensure that this year’s application focuses more on raising Buffalo up, instead of razing it to the ground.

I urge the City of Buffalo to make this year’s RestoreNY application a more inclusive process to create a more inclusive application. Thank you for your time.

The House Judiciary Committe just voted 20-14 to hold Karl Rove in contempt!

WHAT THIS MEANS: The decision by the HJC to hold Karl Rove in contempt is a recommendation to the full House, who can now vote to adopt the recommendation with a contempt resolution by a simple majority vote. Should they pass a contempt resolution, the Sergeant-at-Arms for the chamber would be ordered to arrest Karl Rove and bring him to the floor of the House to answer to the charges and to be issued punishment. The case would then be referred to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who would in turn refer it to a grand jury. If convicted, Rove could face between one month and one year in jail.

Today at 2pm, the Common Council will vote on whether to issue a permit to the Stillwater for a patio. The proposed patio, which will face onto Virginia Place, has been adamantly opposed by immediate neighbors and activists throughout Allentown, many of whom have fought nightclub patios in their own backyards. The city’s Preservation Board and Planning Board opposed the patio permit, as did the Allentown Association.

But Ellicott District Councilmember has kept the issue alive and called for today’s special vote. Which is curious, since he doesn’t have the votes to win the patio permit for Stillwater.

It’s even more curious because yesterday the city’s inspections department issued this cease and desist letter, yanking Stillwater’s conditional certificate of occupancy and operating license, due to a failure to comply with the conditions upon which they were issued. The city gave Stillwater a day of grace to address the six unnamed conditions

UPDATE: The Common Council received and filed the permit application—which tranlsates as “This place may not be open when the recess is over, so let’s not do anything now and see what happens.” (In fact, the Council received and filed nearly everything on today’s agenda, even change orders on contracts for ongoing projects.)

The problems that Stillwater did not take care of seem to be: door identification (maybe an exit sign?); certifying glass on the fourth floor; a ceiling in the coat room; a third floor circuit box that needed a lock; a new fire door needed at the rear entrance. Inspectors have visited the restaurant six times since Apri and failed it each time.

In this post over at BuffaloPundit, Alan Bedenko and Chris Smith suggest that the Wendt Foundation’s trustees, Bruce Jackson, and his family present conflicts of interest that cast doubt on their motives in fighting the Seneca casino in downtown Buffalo.

Fist of all, Alan, thanks for reading and responding.

Rarely do I defend what AV columnists or what they write. I figure we have our own platform and it’s big enough; once we publish, it’s everyone else’s turn. But this time, happily, I have a few facts to add to the mix:

1. Rachel and Michael Jackson have never been paid a cent by the Wendt Foundation for their work on the casino lawsuit;

2. Bruce Jackson applied and got a grant from Wendt on behalf of the Market Arcade for a new digital projector for the cinema, not for himself; the Market Arcade is a public theater owned by the city of Buffalo and run by a volunteer board; the digital projector is used for screenings by a wide variety of Buffalo nonprofit community organizations;

3. AV has never failed to acknowledge Jackson’s former role as vice president of Citizens for a Better Buffalo in his casino articles, either in a tag at the end of the piece or in the body of the article; besides, no one has ever accused an AV writer of being unbiased;

4. Wendt’s trustees don’t track their stock portfolio any more than does the average person with money in a retirement account (quick, without looking—how much of your retirement account is invested in pharmaceuticals? what precisely does the bank where you keep deposits do with your cash?);

5. and even if they had, Wendt divested. Maybe the foundation’s investment manager divested in order to clear a possible forthcoming conflict of interest; maybe he or she sold because it was a good time to sell. I don’t have an answer to that, and neither do Alan and Chris.

What they do have is innuendo. They’ll reply that Jackson’s article traded in innuendo as well—a suggestion that someone, somewhere, whispered this line of attack against the Wendt Foundation, an attack that ignores the motives and the merits of the lawsuit that Wendt Foundation money is supporting and directs attention away from the implications of Judge Skretny’s ruling. Alan is stung by the innuendo that he was party to a conspiracy to discredit the foundation’s motives.

Fair enough. What Bruce asked is (so far) an open-ended question: Where did the line of attack on this institution, which has never before been accused of anything but generosity, originate? Who thought of it? Bruce and I both posed that question to Mike Beebe at the Buffalo News, who responded. Neither of us asked Alan how he’d been inspired to write about it. Maybe we should have, though I don’t think Bruce accused Alan of anything more than having written a post about it. Fact is, we were both more interested in how Beebe came to write his story.

I certainly believe Alan when he says he conspired with no one, that he heard this line of argument on the radio and TV, was interested, and so wrote a post about it. (I also assumed, being a regular reader and a fan, that he would swing back. I looked forward to seeing where his shot would land.)

But you don’t have to be one of the original whisperers of a damaging rumor to be a party to swiftboating; if you’re part of the echo chamber that amplifies and spreads the rumor, then you’re contributing to its apparent legitimacy. In the case of attacks on John Kerry that gave birth to the verb, no one would argue that a thousand bloggers and talk radio hosts met in a hotel room somewhere and devised a strategy. But someone met somewhere to discuss ways to use Kerry’s service record against him, devised a strategy, and unleashed it; and like-minded bloggers and talk radio hosts fell into the roles the plotters hoped they would take. The “objective,” “mainstream” media happily called the action from the press box, turning the blood sport into our national pastime for a good two months. The damage to Kerry’s reputation and campaign was immense.

Bruce believes (as do I) that some party is trying to damage the Wendt Foundation’s reputation in order to scare away the trustees from funding this lawsuit to its conclusion—and, for that matter, from taking stands in the future on potentially controversial issues that the trustees believe affect the welfare of this community. (That is their brief, essentially: to promote the community’s welfare.)

So Alan wrote about an argument that caught his attention; Jackson speculated about the argument’s originators and their motives; Alan and Chris swung back hard because they’re good sportsmen and are versed in the devilish art of opposition research; and I know, by responding, that I am sending a high, weak lob back to them, to do with what they’d like.

Your turn, fellas. While you decide, however, I am once again leaving the court.

The State Education Department has released its report on Academy School 44, and it faults—among other things—ResulTech, the Maryland firm that provides technical support for the failing school. Unfortunately, the project was turned in too late to receive any credit from the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority, who already approved ResulTech’s $1.7 million contract extension two weeks ago, on July 8. (more…)

Goo Goo Dolls bassist, songwriter, producer, Medaille College board member, philanthropist, and all-around hipster favorite son Robby Takac brings his electro/dance side project AMUNGUS to town for a short set tonight (7/24, 7pm) at Nietzsche’s. The show is part of the kickoff for the Buffalo Infringement Festival 2008, which features over 600 performances and 300 projects at over 50 venues and non-venues from tonight until August 3.

The band, described as an experiment in collaboration and technology, also features Brian Schulmeister, a co-founder of design company Slender Fungus. AMUNGUS will also play a full show at Stillwater on Tuesday, July 29 at 8pm.

In two previous posts, we began to look at some of the donors that helped Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown raise more than $192,000 in campaign funds since January. At least $42,000 of about $132,000 in individual donations came from City Hall employees.

$14,925 in individual donation came, apparently, not from people but from addresses. All these donations are logged as being received on the same day, which usually indicates a fundraiser. Strangely, however, these donations are logged as having been received August 15, 2008. (That was dumb misreading on my part: That’s an administrative date for the NYS Board of Elections. Those nameless contributions came in over the course of the six-month filing period. The addresses seem all to be business offices.)

$21,550 came from “other monetary sources.” These sources range from political action committees for a variety of interests ( a theater actors union, $500; HSBC Bank PAC, $500; an HMO called HIP, $1,500; New York State AFL-CIO, $1,000) to developers (Centerstone, which hopes to develop the site where the Glennie Drive project sit, $500; Jim Pitts Planning & Development, $500) to other politicians (DA Frank Clark, $550; County Legislator Tim Kennedy, $500; former Common Council candidate Jessica Magleitto’s campaign fund, $500; many more…)

$38,900 came from corporate sources. Here’s where one begins to draw lines between contributions and favors asked. La Nova Pizzeria, for example, gave $600 to Brown for Buffalo in the last six months. La Nova has been working hard to acquire 366 West Ferry for a new surface parking lot, despite neighborhood opposition. Rural Metro, which contracts with the city to provide ambulance service and is consistently criticized by activists for flouting the city’s living wage law, gave $1,000.

Brown for Buffalo spent very little this filing period: just $2,589.84, mostly for bills, no contributions to other campaigns or to charitable causes. The biggest outflow of money, in fact, came in the form of a returned contribution: $3,500 to Nussbaumer & Clarke, which the local engineering and surveying company had made in two installments.

Yesterday a letter went out to the displaced neighbors of the crumbling White Brothers Livery on Jersey Street from Empire Building Diagnostics, the company that’d doing the “therapeutic demolition”: Be prepared to spend another three weeks living with relatives or in hotel rooms.

Empire will soon begin removing the massive roof trusses. Meanwhile, developer Sam Savarino—who bought the building for $1 from Bob Freudenheim, who let the historic structure decay to the point of collapse—is working on a rehab plan.

John Duke of the First Amendment Club asked us to post this announcement:

NYS Senator Antoine M. Thompson announced a roundtable regarding strategies for improving the Western New York economy, scheduled for Friday, July 25th from 10am until 12 noon at the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, located at 25 Nottingham Ct. Buffalo, 14216.

The roundtable is an opportunity for all Western New Yorkers, from residents to those in the private and public sectors, to express their ideas and to identify solutions and alternatives to stimulate the regional economy.

Serving as keynote speaker and moderator will be Ms. Kathryn Wylde, President & CEO of the Partnership for New York City. The Partnership is a non-profit membership organization comprised of leaders from New York City’s top corporate, investment and entrepreneurial firms that are committed to working closely with government, labor and the nonprofit sector to enhance the economy by focusing on research, policy formulation and issue advocacy at the city, state and federal levels. Through its affiliate, the New York City Investment Fund, the Partnership directly invests in economic development projects in all five boroughs of the city.

According to Senator Thompson; “Kathryn Wylde’s 25 years of leadership have played an intricate role in New York City’s commercial and residential resurgence. I look forward to her sharing some of her invaluable experience with us to help jumpstart the Western New York economy.”

The event is open to the public. Go and give your two cents.