AV’s City Hall correspondent Ellen Przepasniak sends this report on yesterday’s Common Council meeting:

Lawmakers are taking another step to revitalize Buffalo’s economy this week as the Office of Strategic Planning organizes a grant application through Restore NY, a state program that provides money for revitalization of commercial and residential properties. This grant money is one more part of a decades-long housing revitalization effort. Brian Reilly, commissioner for the Department of Economic Development, Permit and Inspection Services, admits this money isn’t enough to fix the city’s housing problems, but it’ll make a dent.

A discussion was held at Tuesday’s Common Council meeting as part of a public forum time required by the grant application, prompted by a resolution from Niagara Councilmember David Rivera. The city will be requesting $20 million, split evenly for commercial and residential development, and Reilly anticipates receiving at least $1 million. “No project is getting everything they’re asking for,” Reilly says.

The grant cannot be used toward any new construction, just for demolition and rehabilitation. However, many city residents are concerned that it focuses too much on the former instead of the latter.

Terrence Robinson, a resident of East Buffalo is anxious about the demolition of historic homes. He saw Monday’s Dyngus Day celebration in the Broadway-Fillmore district as “an infusion of life into that community” that was a positive step toward attracting residents into the neighborhood. “I’m concerned about the historical, cultural, and social fabric,” he says. “Once it’s demolished, there is no chance to recall it.”

Aaron Bartley, executive director of PUSH Buffalo, a West Side housing development organization, encourages other community development organizations and neighborhood leaders to get behind the proposal. Bartley has seen real changes in his community because of past years’ Restore NY grant money and he believes this funding is a chance to tackle “a monumental problem that few cities have faced.”

The key to receiving more money from the state is all in the marketing, according to Reilly. He says the city hasn’t obtained a bigger slice of the pie in past years because the grant application has been unfocused. Buffalo is competing with the rest of the state for funding and needs to fight for its allotment. The state is looking for feasibility and readiness—essentially projects that are packaged and ready to go.

Sam Magavern, a University at Buffalo law professor and co-director of the Partnership for Public Good (PPG), is concerned the city isn’t including enough in its grant application. He is pushing for lawmakers to consider adding block-by-block and green initiatives. The city does not currently have green criteria for demolition or rehabilitation, but Magavern says it should push for salvaging or recycling materials. Chicago requires 50 percent of all construction and demolition debris to be recycled. As a trial, Magavern suggests lawmakers could write recycling materials into the contract for 50 houses they demolish.

He also believes that including block-by-block planning—like how PUSH focuses on a five-block radius—would make the application stronger. Planners must step back and look at the whole process from demolition to the green space that will be left afterward. “Each block is so different, that’s why you need it,” says Magavern. “You can’t just look at the structure, you have to look at the spaces too.”

The old Kentucky Fried Chicken at 448 Elmwood Avenue is among those commercial properties on the grant list. The money would be used to aid in the demolition of the building after which construction for the planned multi-use building can begin. Abandoned libraries like Fairfield and North Park have also made the list and qualify under the grant because the buildings  are currently vacant.

Reilly reminds residents that demolition plans for any building is not absolute; if someone wants to purchase and rehabilitate property, they’re always open to compromise. For this grant, the Office of Strategic Planning is working under the umbrella of the Queen City Hub comprehensive plan, which was adopted in 2004 and lays out a sustainable development strategy for the city. “We want to learn from our experience of failure in Buffalo,” he says.

We couldn’t stop by the grand opening of Price-Rite on Sunday, but John Duke of the First Amendment Club sent us this account:

Shopping for groceries became a lot less expensive on Sunday. As a matter of fact, for the first time in a long while, food was being sold at the Rite Price in the Stuyvesant Plaza, 250 Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo.

After reviewing how the city was able to bring Price Rite into what is unquestionably the Rite Location, Mayor Brown cut the ribbon to ceremoniously open the supermarket to throngs of eager shoppers, who were assisted by 130 of their friends and neighbors who are now employed by the store.

125 of the employees live within four sides of a city block. “Price Rite is environmentally friendly,” according to State Senator Antoine Thompson, “and their employees do not need automobiles to travel back and forth to work.” Price Rite also encourages the use of reusable totes. There is a charge of 10 cents per plastic bag for non-tote users.

I put two items in my tote, 17 pounds of meat, and took it to the check out line.  There I handed the cashier a $10 bill and received change back. I purchased a 12.77 lb. kosher turkey (I was surprised to find out that turkeys are religious, but then again they probably do a lot of praying around the Holidays) and a 3.48 lb. corned beef (I always wake up praying after Saint Patrick’s Day). Some how I felt I had done my Sabbath Duty.

The corned beef at $1.79 per lb. came to $6.23 and the turkey at $0.29 cents per lb. came to $3.70. On the way out I was handed a complimentary 8oz bottle of Tropical Energia and 2 cans of Pepsi.  Once home, after a tiring morning, I drank the energy drink and quickly wrote this column while doing my Spring cleaning and cooking the turkey…

I’m not big on energy drinks; I think I’ll stick to not being able to handle coffee. I’d write more, but I gotta run, I think I’m about to take up jogging. I sure hope the turkey doesn’t burn before I get back.

Today Buffalo’s Common Council reached a deal that will end a three-month old fight over 2009 capial spending between the Council’s five-member majority and Mayor Byron Brown.

The crux of the fight had been that the mayor wanted money for infrastructure improvement projects—curbs, sidewalks, road repairs—in a single, citywide pot that he ouwld control. The five members of the Council majority argued that in the past two years the mayor had divided that pot of money inequitably, punishing political foes and rewarding friends. So the Council earmarked that money, making pots specific to each district.

The mayor, furious, vetoed the pots of money for four of the five majority members, while leaving pots of money for the four coucnilmembers who support him. (He also left a pot of money for the Niagara District, hoping to peel Niagara’s David Rivera away from the majority. That didn’t work.)

Unable to overturn the mayor’s veto, the Council instead delayed the sale of bonds to finance the mayor’s capital budget. Today, after weeks of bullheadedness on both sides, the ongoing negotiations (and they were ongoing, no matter what mayoral employees Peter Cutler and Peter Savage kept telling the Buffalo News) yielded a compromise: The five individual pots of infrastructure improvement money the mayor had left in the budget for Niagara, Ellicott, Masten, North, and University districts would be returned to a citywide pot totaling $3.4 million.

Which the mayor will control.

It’s not an absolute return to the mayor’s original proposal—the Council’s amended budget had made some other, minor changes that mayor did not or could not veto—but it’s close.

Lovejoy’s Rich Fontana told the Buffalo News that councilmember were assured that the $3.4 million would be spent equitably across the city’s nine districts.

The compromise will be ratified tomorrow afternoon, when the Council votes to aprove the bond sales.

As anyone who’d bother to read this post knows, South District Councilmember Mickey Kearns and Delaware District Councilmember Mike LoCurto submitted a resolution asking the city’s law department to draft a statute banning some city employees from engaging in politicking. The resolution, they say, is a response to complaints that workers in City Hall are made to carry petitions, donate to campaigns, and canvass for candidates whom the mayor instructs them to support. (I’m having trouble downloading the text, so no link, sorry.) This mini Hatch Act—so called because it is a local version of the federal law—is intended, say Kearns and LoCurto, to protect city employees from being pressured by their superiors to do political work.

Niagara District Councilmember David Rivera and Council President Dave Franczyk signed onto the resolution, and the fifth man in the majority coalition, Lovejoy’s Rich Fontana, voted yea to send the resolution to the legislative committee.

That’s where it ran into attorney Peter Reese, who excoriated the measure for 10 or 15 excruciatingly funny minutes. (I don’t watch City Hall TV myself, or whatever it’s called, because I don’t have cable; if you do, and if such things interest you, try to catch Reese’s performance.)

Reese said the proposed legislation did not represent reform at all, that in fact it was “politics as usual.” He called the proposed legislation anti-union, because as written it could make union activity grounds for dismissal.

Edit: Mike LoCurto tells me I have misunderstood the section of the proposed legislation that led me to write what is now in brackets and italics below: “The exemption would only be for employees who are currently committeemembers,” LoCurto write. “They could remain committeemenmbers for their current two-year term. They would not be permitted to donate to campaigns during that time.”

[He said it was racist, for several reasons, not least of which is this: Current employees would be grandfathered, so they could still politick. Only new employees would be excluded from political activity. If you sort city employees by councilmanic district and race, you'll find a preponderance of white South Buffalonians. New Latino hires from the Lower West Side? You can't campaign for a candidate from your community. New African-American hires from Cold Springs? You don't get to pass petitions for you next door neighbor whose running for Common Council.

White guy from South Buffalo who has had a job since the Griffin administration and never fails to drop $50 into the hat at a Goin' South beer bash? Keep writing those checks.]

(Later in the hearing, North District Councilmember Joe Golombek pointed out that a ban on City Hall employees politicking would deprive the mayor of some of his ground troops in his re-election bid next year; meantime, county and local state employees, who tend to align with the county chairman, would remain free to campaign for the mayor’s opponent.)

Reese said the legislation had been misnamed: Instead of the “City of Buffalo Employee Protection Act,” it ought to be called the “Minority Exclusion Act of 2008.”

Worst of all, he said, it created a “political superclass.” Only folks like plow drivers, clerks, cashiers, sanitation workers, etc. would be prohibited from politicking. Appointees who serve at the pleasure of the mayor, the comptroller, or the council—immediate staff of the three branches of city government, in other words, the people who are closest to politicians and most overtly political to begin with—would not be covered by this mini Hatch Act.

It compromises First Amendment rights, Reese said. And state courts have already ruled that passing designating petitions for a political candidate is an absolute right of every citizen.

“And these are the things I like about this bill,” Reese said.

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