Four items of interest:

—Byron Brown wins the endorsement of Goin’ South, the South Buffalo political organization stacked with city employees. No surprise there; there was no chance that Ray McGurn and Goin’ South would buck the mayor and his allies Brian Higgins, Mark Schroeder, and Tim Kennedy. Still, it’s a show of force for Brown.

—Mickey Kearns wins the endorsement of the Police Benevolent Association. No surprise there, either: What was Bob Meegan to do, spin around and embrace a mayor who keeps dragging the PBA to court and losing? (It’d be informative to get a breakdown of the City of Buffalo’s legal expenses fighting the PBA over the past three years, including time spent by the Corporation Counsel.) The PBA is Kearns’s first union endorsement, but how much good will it do him? There are 700-odd cops in the BPD, plus support staff, but lot of cops live and vote in the suburbs. Nonetheless, Kearns needed an endoresement like this and now he has it.

—Jim Heaney reported in Sunday’s Buffalo News that the FBI, US Attorney, Erie County DA, and New York State Police are all in some manner or another investigating Buffalo’s City Hall. Some are looking at Brian Davis’s finances, some at BERC and One Sunset, some at the city’s use of HUD money. Heaney did well to confirm these investigations are occurring; it’s hard to get beyond a no comment on these matters. His article also offers a review of the cavalcade of scandals rolling out of City Hall over the past few months.

—Most interesting to me, however, is this story by Susan Schulman, about a Cleveland developer whose East Side housing project was nixed after the Jeremiah Project, a group run by the influential Reverend Richard Stenhouse, failed to win a contract to oversee minority hiring on the project. (For the sake of argument, I’m leaving alone the merits of NRP’s project. In any case, Stenhouse’s objections seem thin, since the Jeremiah Project has been lead agency in similar low/mod rental housing development themselves.) Schulman is admirably careful about what she implies in her story, but it reads to me like a classic Buffalo shakedown: Stenhouse, in a position to stall a project, seeks a part of it. When he doesn’t get the contract, he helps to kill the project.

Why is this much more to me interesting than Heaney’s article? Because, whereas a local developer might take this setback stoically in hopes of working another day, a developer from Cleveland may not fear the consequences of speaking out. This is the sort of thing that raises eyebrows at the FBI.

It turns out that the PBA’s anti-spam filters didn’t let Artvoice email through last week—something neither Ron Rienas nor I could have supposed—so Rienas never received my requests for comment on this article about the PBA’s intention to demolish several homes it owns on Busti Avenue.

After some back-and-forth on that matter, Rienas identified the problem, instructed his IT department to open up the servers to Artvoice email, and provided me with this response to the article:

The City asked us to comply with a violation notice and that we be in substantial compliance by May 1, 2009. They did not say that the buildings had to be repaired. In fact, the structural engineer’s report, approved and agreed to by the City, called for the demolition of three of the six vacant structures (a seventh house is occupied by a federal entity involved in border enforcement). We advised the City that it was our intention to demolish the identified 3 in accordance with the engineer’s report and to also demolish the remaining three as there is absolutely no intent to restore and reoccupy houses immediately adjacent to a congested, poorly functioning plaza and it is irrelevant if the capacity expansion proceeds or not. The City agreed with that approach.

The City also recognized that there was a 2004 legal agreement entered into by the previous Mayor and Common Council whereby the City was to demolish these houses. This was part of a much larger agreement related to reconfiguration of the US plaza wherein the PBA contributed $2.5 million dollars in improvements Front Park and vicinity. I don’t know about you Geoff, but legal agreements do still matter to some people. In the interests of addressing the concerns from neighbors who wanted to see the houses demolished and reacting to the City which was dealing with neighbor complaints related to the condition of the houses, the PBA offered to proceed with demolition at its expense. Feel free to walk around the neighborhood within the proposed Peace Bridge project area and come to your own conclusions as to the position of the residents.

The delay in not meeting the May 1 deadline related to the City determining what, if any, approval process the Peace Bridge was subject to. The Peace Bridge is not a private property owner. While there may still be a legal question as to whether the PBA is a state agency or a federally constituted bi-national compact entity, under either scenario it is established law that the PBA, just like any other federal or state entity, is not subject to municipal jurisdiction. Not surprisingly, the City has confirmed that. Notwithstanding this exemption, The PBA does it’s very best to work with the City and neighborhood groups on both sides of the river to address concerns and to be sensitive to issues as they arise – just like we are trying to do in this case.

We have not yet issued the RFP for demolition. We need to do the asbestos survey and abatement before we proceed with any demolition.

About eight months ago, I linked to a post on a Crystal Beach, Ontario online news and opinion site called the Strand that alleged shady dealings between the Public Bridge Authority and Town of Fort Erie officials in regard to the disposition of Fort Erie’s Mentholatum Building, which the PBA owned and had planned to lease to the town. I knew nothing of the matter, and still don’t—I don’t even know where the Mentholatum Building is. I figured I’d post what the Strand had written and see what folks thought. One guy responded, saying basically that the Strand was wrong and using unreliable sources.

Yesterday, eight months later, PBA manager Ron Rienas responded, too, by email:

Earlier this month the PBA sold the Mentholatum Building to the Boys and Girls Club of Niagara. The sale price was the same that the Peace Bridge Authority (PBA) paid for the building approx. 4 1/2 years ago.

The building was initially acquired by the PBA and used for Peace Bridge purposes to facilitate the reconstruction of the Canadian Customs Plaza. The PBA is required by Canadian law to provide facilities for the immigration/refugee function including facilities for an NGO that provides refugee services. As the reconstruction of the plaza involved demolition of buildings housing those functions we were obligated to provide alternative space. The Canadian plaza construction was completed in 2007 allowing these uses to return to the plaza enabling the PBA to dispose of the building.

As a public entity and in keeping with Town of Fort Erie plans to utilize the building for community purpose, the Board did originally offer the use of the building to Town for a $1.00/year lease but the Town would be required to pay all utilities, taxes, maintenance, etc. When there was opposition to that arrangement because it was incorrectly perceived as free rent competing with the private sector, the Board determined that it was simply not worth fighting to do something beneficial for the community. Accordingly the decision was made to sell the building but in keeping with the desire to maintain the building for a community benefit the PBA first offered it to charitable organizations before putting it on the open market. The Boys and Girls Club of Niagara acquired the property and will be using the building for its own purposes as well as leasing space to the Town and other community groups. The difference being that the capital cost of the building is now built into the rent structure costing community groups more money.

As for the other allegations in the article there was a full environmental assessment done on the building and no remedial environmental work was required. The elevator was repaired and there was  a roof repair – total cost I understood to be less than $10,000. The reference to the PBA giving “gifts ” is also not accurate as we continue, in the spirit of good corporate citizen, to make grants to groups and associations  on both sides of the river that meet pre-determined criteria.

This isn’t my bailiwick, so I’m not fact-checking Ron’s account anymore than I fact-checked the Strand’s. But I’d love to hear more from folks who know more about the issue.

Crystal Beach’s The Strand reports on a setback for the Public Bridge Authority on the other side of the US-Canadian border:

Reliable sources report to The Strand that the proposed lease by the town of the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority-owned Mentholatum Building is off the table and the building will be put up for sale.

According to the same sources, a threatened lawsuit by a Jarvis Street business owner as well as the taint of possible conflict of interest has given the PBA pause; the offer of a five year lease at $1.00 per year is canceled.

The outcry from citizens when the lease proposal was announced was not anticipated by either PBA or town officials. The past practice in such interactions between the PBA and the town often went unnoticed. This deal however, brought forth the ire and concern of many citizens and a lawsuit was in the works. Since the mayor has recently proved he is adept at cost overruns (see NRP Headquaters SNAFU,) the refurbishment of the Mentholatum Building was expected to cost close to $2 million. The charity groups that were slated to use the building will have to stay put as the building will now go up for sale.

Many will take comfort in knowing that the public exposure of the lease/sweetheart deal may well have caused its demise, but the PBA stranglehold on the town through its puppet mayor is a long way from being eliminated. The reason the Mentholatum Building was bought in the first place by the PBA was to thwart the plans of the Ambassador Niagara bridge project. Those plans were to build an international bridge on the International Railroad property. The abandoned Mentholatum building backs on to the IRR land. Once the building was bought, the PBA had no real use for it; it was just a strategic acquisition, so why not seal the deal with the town and make it an offer it can’t refuse? Far be it for Doug Martin to refuse a “gift” from his number one supporters, so the town went ahead and took the bait, despite the obvious signs of conflict and pandering – not to mention that the PBA exceeded its mandate by purchasing property that was not to be used for Peace Bridge purposes. (The PBA’s past practice of “donating” to various causes and charities has also come under scrutiny to the point that it has been banned from certain “gifts” to groups.)

Well, this particular sweetheart deal was thwarted, perhaps by the threatened lawsuit; perhaps by the state of the building; perhaps because it will cost hundred of thousands of dollars to make it environmentally sound; perhaps because the deal would open a whole can of worms regarding the inappropriate relationship between the PBA and certain town officials and perhaps it was just that the good people of Fort Erie finally caught a break. While the various charities will have to “pay” rent where they are now located, the taxpayers of Fort Erie were just saved a world of trouble and higher taxes. Schadenfreude. It’s a beautiful word.