Stillwater (Not) Shut Down (After All)
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.
June 10, 2008
Letters From Demone, Part 2: On the Council Majority
Masten District Councilmember Demone Smith’s other letter this week is a bit of a whine. In it, he asks Council President Dave Franczyk why only the five members who comprise the council’s majority coalition are allowed to take part in the hiring of council staff. He asks why the other four are left out in the cold, and are not even afforded the opportunity to review the resumes of candidates:
The current candidate is proposed to be brought in at the Senior Legislative Assistant title. The experience in the resume (containing grammatical errors that I was handed in passing by a district Council Member) does not show the experience level for the title. Being a former Senior Legislative Assistant after working my way through the ranks from an intern up as well as other Sr. Legislative Assistants who have done the same, value the title and expectations of performance. Are we shortchanging the candidate by hiring at the top level?
Grammatical errors? An AV baseball cap to the first person who can identify all the grammatical errors in that single paragraph.
A cap and a mug to the first person who identifies all the grammatical errors in the entire letter.
Letters from Demone, Part 1: On Cariol Horne
Masten District Councilmember Demone Smith has filed two interesting letters with the Common Council this week. The first relates to Cariol Horne, the Buffalo police officer who recently was dismissed (and as a result lost her pension) after a lengthy and much-publicized discipline case. Smith thinks justice may have been a little too blind in Horne’s case, and he has a few questions for Police Commissioner McCarthy Gipson:
First, why was Officer Horne required to retain legal counsel to represent her during departmental proceedings? Second, why was Officer Horne relieved from her duties during the hearing process? Third, if Officer Horne was eligible for retirement from the Buffalo Police Department why was she not allowed to do so thereby providing her access to pension benefits that she earned? Fourth, why were witnesses who observed the confrontation between the two officers not allowed to testify regarding the events in question? Finally, what are the options available to Ms. Horne now that a decision has been made to terminate her employment with the City
May 15, 2008
Common Council Action Plan
As promised here, we’re posting the Common Council of Buffalo’s 2008-2009 Action Plan. (God knows why.) Seriously though, it’s worth a quick scan. My favorite part is at the beginning, in which we learn what the Romans had in common with Buffalonians.
Have you guessed it yet?
Both sacked their own cities:
…The assumption may reasonably be made that the fall of Rome, with the corresponding loss of its great buildings, was caused by invading barbarian armies bent on loot and destruction. From the time of the “Sack of Rome” by the Vandal Alaric in 410, to invading German mercenaries in the 16th century, it is presumed that the awe-inspiring structures of antiquity were pulled down, burned, ravaged and pulverized by conquering outsiders. The startling reality is that the destruction of Rome was not mainly carried out by rampaging armies during time of war, but most of the monuments and structures were destroyed by the Romans themselves! Over centuries the Roman people pulled down the marble statues, temples, basilica and baths. They tore these great buildings down and fed the marble into furnaces to produce lime. Other buildings were knocked down piecemeal by wealthy aristocrats to adorn their Renaissance palaces, to be seen only by a few. Save for the ancient Roman fascisti symbol of the bound ax and sticks adorning Buffalo’s ornate Council Chambers, what parallel does the destruction of Rome in centuries past have to do with the Queen City of the Lakes in the 21st century?
The answer is, just like the Romans, Buffalonians at times have been responsible for demolishing, tearing down or destroying the City’s architectural heritage. And this destruction still continues, although with greater difficulty due to the resistance of preservationists who grasp the importance of the City’s rich built environment to future generations.
This must be the writing of Council President Dave Franczyk.
May 13, 2008
The Raucous Caucus: Politics Vs. Substance
Two weeks ago, during the April 29 Common Council meeting, Masten District Councilmember Demone Smith threw a bit of a fit. The previous Friday, the Common Council had released its annual action plan, and Smith complained he’d been given inadequate time to review that plan and had not received a personal invitation to take part in its public release.
Don’t worry about what this “action plan” is. It’s pretty close to meaningless. What’s important is that Smith, who is one of four councilmembers who comprise a minority bloc, felt slighted by the five-member majority bloc. He accused them of freezing out him and his three fellow bloc members, though none of the other three joined him in his complaint.
Council President Dave Franczyk and Lovejoy District Councilmember Rich Fontana tried to head off Smith’s indignation, arguing that every member of council had received drafts of the plan and invitations to the unveiling by email, to which Smith replied, “Everybody knows my email doesn’t work.” (”Get it fixed,” Franczyk said.) Franczyk said they’d discussed the plan in legislative caucus—the closed [note: I stand corrected, the caucus is open] meeting of councilmembers in which all the voting in the public session is predetermined—but Smith had not attended. (”All I ask is that councilmembers take some responsibility,” Franczyk said.)
But Smith was tapping into his own deep vein of resentment: Ever since last November’s Common Council elections, he’s been in the minority, whereas when he took over the empty Masten seat from the departing Antoine Thompson, he was part of a solid majority aligned with Mayor Byron Brown. It’s no fun to go from starter to second string.
By the end of the exchange, Franczyk and Smith were talking over each other heatedly, and Smith said that if the new majority was going to trample over the other councilmembers, then maybe the minority bloc would have to create it’s own legislative caucus.
What that would accomplish is not clear, apart from creating another set of meetings closed to public scrutiny for councilmembers to miss. But last Thursday Smith filed this letter with the City Clerk offering a rough outline of a proposal for a new legislative caucus, which he calls the “Progressive Caucus of the Common Council of Buffalo,” which “will make the Common Council of the City of Buffalo more democratic by creating an additional center of legislative power that promotes cooperation.”
May 8, 2008
Taking the “Public” Out of Public Hearing
Tuesday I ran down to City Hall to catch the 5:30pm public hearing on Mayor Byron Brown’s proposed 2008-2009 budget. This is not a particularly popular pastime, I know; usually only a half dozen or so of the “public” attend and address the Common Council, department heads, etc. to make known their concerns about the city’s spending habits.
I arrived at 5:40 and found every door to City Hall locked. Seriously. This sucks, I thought. Then: But at least its’s fodder for a column.
So I hung around, peering in the door, ringing the bell that surely does not work, waiting for someone to leave. At about 5:45pm I was joined by a news crew from Channel 4. We tried calling people we knew inside, but everyone was gone for the day — or in Council Chambers, attending the “public” hearing that the public was unable to attend, because all the doors were locked.
At about 5:50pm, Inspections, Permits and Economic Development Commissioner Rich Tobe exited the building but let the door close behind him before I could shout out to hold it open. “Sorry, I can’t get back in now,” he said. I told him I was trying to attend a public hearing up in Council Chambers. He agreed that locking the doors on the evening of such a hearing was curious. But not, he thought, unusual.
Nor did Deputy Mayor Steve Casey seem to consider it strange that the doors were locked, as the Channel 4 team and I raced to the elevators at 6pm, when we finally slipped in the door behind an exiting bureaucrat. “Hurry up,” he said, “it’s just about over.”
Right he was: In the absence of any “public” in the public hearing, the Council had rolled two hearings into one and wrapped the whole thing up by 6:10pm. Exactly one person had signed up to speak. Everyone in Council Chambers was on the public payroll.
Afterward, Delaware District Councilmember Mike LoCurto summed up the hearing for me: a whole lot of nothing. He too was unsurprised to learn the doors had been locked. They had been locked during the previous day’s public hearing as well, he said.
May 6, 2008
City Budget Hearing Tonight
Today at 5:30pm, Buffalo’s Common Council holds a public hearing on Mayor Byron Brown’s proposed budget for 2008-2009. This may sound like a dull, wonkish enterprise, but it’s not: It’s a pleasant excuse to visit the Common Council’s beautiful chambers, and anyone can speak. I will be there no later than 6pm to listen to what folks have to say, and will hand out AV swag to the first six people (not counting councilmembers) who figure out who I am and ask me for it.
UPDATE: If you’d like some broad, sweeping questions to ask about the budget, check out this post by Buffalo News reporter James Heaney. I’m a devil-in-the-details guy myself, but Heaney’s got the big picture nailed.
April 15, 2008
Complete Streets Meeting TODAY!
This is just a quick reminder for everyone who supports Complete Streets go to the Common Council Room on the 13th Floor of City Hall today, Tuesday at 2pm. For more information on Complete Streets visit http://www.completestreets.org/ or call 851-4052.
March 26, 2008
Letters from Paladino
Developer Carl Paladino is a terrific (and prolific) letter writer. This week we have two from him. The first letter is a response to this article in the March 13 AV by George Sax. The article is not about Paladino at all—it’s about Empire Zone benefits being extended to a project by the Kissling Interests in a well-to-do section of Allentown. The article refers, however, to Paladino’s high-end housing project on the waterfront downtown, which also received Empire Zone benefits. Hence the letter.
The second letter is a salvo in Paladino’s ongoing war with developer James Sandoro, Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis and the Brown administration.
[Editor's note, 3/27: There's a little more on this in this week's print paper (p. 5) and here.]
