Local poet Aaron Lowinger sends us this poem:

Bills Fan
it’s third down
on mt everest
my dad at the bar says
mt everest is the highest
but not the most difficult

it’s third down and extremely long
there’s an overbearing wind
dressed in another teams uniform
that’s blowing and blowing
right in bills fan’s face

security is on alert
a balloon knocks the stadium’s power out
there are no lights on in the bathrooms
bills fan is pissing wherever
the sink
the mop bucket
the floor
his pants

it’s third down
on K2
the bills may never score again
the kicker has left the stadium
the kicker is a painter
he has left to go home
into his basement studio
and paint another triptych
in his ‘riders of the apocalypse’ series

the bills just got scored on
we’re not sure how
my dad recites the kol nidre prayer
“i renounce and deny any affiliation
with the buffalo bills . . .”
the bar goes quiet
the sky which had always been gray
gets heavier
and sucks the drunk red
out of bills fan’s face

it’s third down
and the bills decide to punt preemptively
the punter takes the field
to ‘wild thing’ and pumps his fist
bills fan loves a good punt

i piss myself at the bar
it doesn’t feel like pee
it feels like the longest tear
my body has ever created
outside a cop car goes off the road
and plows into a Tim Horton’s
i can’t stop watching the game

it’s still third down
and raining yellow snow
ralph wilson stays alive
bills fan renews itself every generation
in the waste areas off the buffalo river
where we all used to get beat up as kids
breaking windows and making teachers cry

the bills get the ball back
first string quarterback is injured
second-string quarterback has peach fuzz all over his face
we don’t have a third-string
only the punter comes back onto field
wild thing
you make my heart sing
bills fan gets pumped
the end is near

in the fourth quarter
they turn the scoreboard off
it’s third down and one
and the coach calls a flea-flicker
to be thrown by a running back
the ball’s in the air
it’s so high
it looks like a punt
the Jills go into their wild thing routine
the kicker painter at home
is going expressionist with black oil paints
the bar holds it’s breath
just as the ball is falling into a cornerback’s arms
a 5 foot 3 receiver runs under it
and splits the defense
this is better than a punt
he’s the fastest shortest guy ever
and no one will catch him

Click here if you want to check out salary info for the NFTA. Also Roswell Park, SUNY (nearly 3000 pages worth)—lots and lots of interesting information. Thanks to our compadres at the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

Now, what’s all this about raising fares to $2?

This week I wrote about the need for dedicated county funding for parks and cultural institutions.

The Erie County property tax rate is lowest of any county in the State of New York. The price today is about $5 per thousand of assessed value—$2/thousand lower than when Dennis Gorski left in 2000. Even if we had to ask Erie County legislators to “raise” the tax, the price tag for the average homeowner would be $8 per month in order to preserve libraries, parks, culturals, and tourism. That would still be $8 per month less than what most homeowners were paying in 2000.

Today, $200 million is the amount collected by the Erie County property tax levy.

Here’s what the quality-of-life services cost in Erie County:

Library costs $22m, parks $6m, culturals $6, miscellaneous (Cornell Coop Extension, Taste of Buffalo) $1m. Total $35 m. Add Cthe Convention and Visitors Bureau and you get $40m, or 20% of the property tax levy.

If your house is assessed at $300,000 that means County taxes are $1,500, which means that $300 a year of your current bill is what is currently spent on these services. If this were a surcharge on your County property tax, the monthly cost to you in your $300,000 house would be under $25.

But the median-value house in Erie County is $100k, so $100 a year keeps it all going. That’s the price tag today. For about $8 a month, you get to have a Philharmonic, art galleries, theaters, Olmsted parks, Chestnut Ridge, the Riverwalk, forest preserves, Bennett Beach, the Botanical Gardens and various festivals, to name just a few of the things that we now enjoy.

If you paid $10 a month, we’d be able to have a historic preservation fund and a capital-projects fund too, so that we could build more bike paths, nature preserves and public art.

What I proposed while deputy county executive was to create a regional asset fund, administered by a board that reports to the executive.

The County Legislature could pass a law to dedicate a percentum of the property tax levy to this function.

Yesterday the five councilmembers who comprise a majority coalition—Fillmore’s Dave Franczyk, Niagara’s David Rivera, South’s Mickey Kearns, Delaware’s Mike LoCurto, and Lovejoy’s Rich Fontana—held a press conference to respond to Mayor Byron Brown’s veto of several revisions the Common Council made to the mayor’s proposed 2009 capital budget.

The mayor had originally proposed that infrastructure improvement funds (about $5.6 million of the $21.5 million capital budget) be kept in one  pot, the distribution of which his adminsitration would control. The five argued that the amended version, in which the money was designated to specific districts, assured a more equitable distribution of infrastructure improvements across the city. The mayor, sounding thoroughly annoyed in a letter filed with the City Clerk, vetoed appropriations to each of the fice districts represented by members of the majority coalition.

At the press conference yesterday, Lovejoy’s Fontana used these charts to illustrate the distribution of spending as originally proposed by the mayor, as amended by the Common Council, and finally as a result of the mayor’s veto.

UPDATE: I forgot to add that the majority coalition will try to override the mayor’s veto on Tuesday, December 23. They’ll need to poach one of the mayor’s votes on the Council to succeed, which is unlikely.

Margaret Ann Hill, born December 17, 1904 in Niagara Falls, celebrated her 104th birthday yesterday at the Mary Agnes Senior Home at Porter Avenue and Prospect Street.

An what do you know: She’s an Artvoice reader.

Brown and Clinton at City Honors last June.

On Monday, political gossip-slinger Joe Illuzzi reported that Caroline Kennedy had called Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown that afternoon, apropos her interest in filling Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat. Illuzzi opines:

We believe it is presumptuous of Caroline Kennedy to have called the Mayor of Buffalo.

One could extrapolate it was an intimidation tactic. Caroline Kennedy using her name & $$$ in an attempt to get the Mayor to take his name out of consideration for Clinton’s Senate seat.

Number one: The good news is our Mayor doesn’t get intimidated.

Number two: Mayor Byron Brown is far more qualified as a local Councilman, NYS Senator & Mayor of a large City to represent the State of New York in the Senate of the United States.

In fact, a source tells AV, Kennedy called every Democratic mayor and county executive in the state to discuss her interest in the Senate seat, not just Brown—who is not, in any case, on any current short or even long list of candidates to fill Clinton’s seat. On the contrary, our source says that Governor David Paterson, who will choose Clinton’s successor, is annoyed at Brown and his political team for continuing to insert his name in the mix.

In addition to Kennedy, US Representatives Steve Israel of Long Island and Kirsten Gillibrand of Albany remain strong candidates.

Yesterday Mayor Byron Brown vetoed a number of additions the Common Council made to his proposed 2009 capital budget for the city.

The most important change the Council made was to split $5,638,354 allotted for infrastructure replacement and repair—roadwork, sidewalks, streetlamps, etc.—among the nine councilmanic districts. In his budget he mayor did not specify where that money would be spent, because he wants flexibility and control: flexibility to undertake projects he and his staff think important, and control over which districts receive improvements. 2009 is, after all, an election year for the mayor.

The Council also dropped $535,000 for an assessment of the condition of city-owned buildings and took $321,680 out of $463,667 the mayor had allotted for improvements to City Hall and moved it to a new budget item, a reworking of the intersection of North and Linwood. The Council also deleted a $365,000 appropriation for a new police and fire radio system. The Council—or, rather, the majority coalition of five councilmembers—said that item could be paid for out of a different pot of state money. The mayor, in his veto statement, disputed that claim.

The Council took the money from those deleted items and dropped it into the infrastructure improvement kitty.

The mayor can’t veto deletions from the capital budget, only additions. And the Council’s changes don’t really constitute additions; the amount of the capital budget remains the same. Instead, they moved money around and decentralized control of its expenditure, largely because they feared that districts represented by dissenters might not receive their fair share if the mayor controlled the purse strings.

But dividing the infrastructure improvement funds among the councilmanic districts required new budget lines—in other words, additions—and the mayor vetoed five of those lines: infrastructure money for the Delaware, Fillmore, Lovejoy, Niagara, and South districts. Those are, not coincidentally, the districts represented by the majority coalition of councilmembers, who are less inclined to vote with the mayor on controversial issues than the other four, whose appropriations were not vetoed.

The majority coalition will hold a press conference to respond to the mayor’s vetoes tomorrow afternoon in City Hall. They won’t likely find a sixth vote to overturn the vetoes, so they’ll have to take up the issue again when the administration seeks Council approval to sell bonds.

More on this tomorrow.

After learning that local musician “Mudbone” Johnny passed away, in addition to Buck Quigley’s post, we thought this posting by WBEN’s Tom Bauerle was worth adding on the Artvoice blog, along with one of Mudbone’s signature songs.

Rest in Peace, Mudbone Johnny

Tom Bauerle

by Tom Bauerle

Mudbone Johnny in 1979

Apparently, nice guys do finish last.

Buffalo’s nauseating retreat from a three-point lead with just more than two minutes to play Sunday in New Jersey all but assured that the Bills will conclude 2008 at the bottom of the AFC East, as well as serving as this month’s laughingstock of professional sports.

The game-turning fumble by the helpless J.P. Losman, the direct result of the most inexplicable single play call in the franchise’s 49 seasons, put Buffalo at 6-8, three full games behind their three foes in the AFC East, a division the Bills led barely two months ago, with two contests left on the schedule.

Back then, Dick Jauron’s team looked positioned to put Leo Durocher’s old taunt-turned-cliché to rest, to prove that a football team coached and populated by humble, decent men with some sense of perspective might actually triumph over the glaring, jaw-jutting, mustachioed mindset prevalent through most of the National Football League.

It was easy to pull for those Bills, whose efficient and entertaining string of early-season wins reflected the philosophy espoused by Jauron and the man who hired him, Marv Levy.

Buffalo’s strong start also seemed to validate Levy’s two-season return as general manager, further puncturing the notion that only spittle-spraying football traditionalists can build a winning team.

But while Levy and the only head coach he hired share Ivy League backgrounds and a more expansive world view than most football types, Jauron’s team showed none of the resilience that was at the franchise’s core during his mentor’s tenure on the sidelines.

Jauron’s team never recovered from the knockout blow absorbed by Trent Edwards in Week 5. Yes, the Bills and their starting quarterback recovered in time to put together a comprehensive win over San Diego, but that accomplishment has become significantly less impressive as the Chargers have also stumbled to a 6-8 mark.

Buffalo became increasingly lost as November dragged into December, managing only a pair of field goals in lifeless losses to San Francisco and Miami.

The offense came to life Sunday, due mainly to bravura efforts by running backs Marshawn Lynch and Fred Jackson.

So it was only fitting that the Bills chose to give the ball to neither back on Sunday’s pivotal play, but to instead entrust the game to Losman.

Losman is another guy you want to like, an amiable sort who is one of the few Bills in modern times who chose to make his home within Buffalo’s city limits, instead of barricading himself in a suburban mini-mansion.

Unfortunately, Losman’s level of civic commitment matters as much as Jauron’s degree from Yale when it comes to Sunday afternoons and Monday nights.

Jauron told reporters after the game that he, and not offensive coordinator Turk Schonert, decided it would be a good idea to eschew all rational thought and let Losman roll out on second-and-5.

Whether that’s true or not, the disastrous but thoroughly predictable result – sack, fumble, Jets touchdown, ballgame — would ensure Jauron’s dismissal in any other city. On Sunday, however, NFL.com reiterated its earlier report that Ralph Wilson had given his coach a three-year extension back when things were good, which would mean the Bills owner will be paying Jauron to do something for the next three years.

But after a season of collapses, both sudden and ongoing, bringing Jauron back as coach would rate as an up-yours of epic proportions to the fans who bought every ticket for every game in the stadium that bears Wilson’s name.

Wilson must know that. You don’t achieve his level of success without knowing what your customers want.

The only question now is if he cares.

Pick up Thursday’s Artvoice for further analysis of Sunday’s debacle.

Veteran area musician  John “Mudbone” Dieckman suffered a fatal heart attack on Friday, apparently while moving into a new apartment. His sudden death is being widely mourned by friends and fellow musicians who knew him as an extraordinary player with a keen intellect and a sharp sense of humor that was much broader than his large frame.

Dieckman played with many different bands over the decades, including several years as pedal steel guitarist with the Steam Donkeys. I speak for my band mates when I say we all gained substantially from both his deep musical knowledge and his lovable personality. We are all in a state of sadness and shock at the loss of such a truly great talent and wonderful friend.

Visitation hours are planned for this Wednesday, December 17, at Ullrich Funeral Home, 8630 Transit Road, East Amherst, from 2-4pm and from 7-9pm.