Categories for DailyPost

Mar 26

2024

Buffalo hostel pushes back against vacate order

Published by

Representatives of Hostel Buffalo-Niagara say they’re planning to fight the city’s order for them to vacate their Main Street building. The hostel has no plans to shut down April 15 — the date it’s been ordered to close shop for construction at an adjacent building. As of now, its long-range plan is to remain open, and to eventually buy the hostel building from the city, Hostel Buffalo-Niagara president Alexander Burgos said Tuesday. “We have an engineer that doesn’t feel that closing our business is necessary and that we can continue to operate while they perform construction,” Burgos told Investigative Post.[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 25

2024

Terry Pegula’s assault on Bills fan base

Published by

Terry Pegula wasn’t satisfied just picking the pockets of state and county taxpayers in demanding they pick up most of the cost of building the Bills a new stadium. He’s now playing “stick ‘em up” with his season ticket holders. We knew the Bills intended to charge fans for personal seat licenses, which gave them the “right” to buy season tickets (for an additional charge, of course). The team was hush-hush about what it intended to charge, but last week it began to inform fans holding the most expensive seats what it would cost to keep them: Up to $50,000.[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 22

2024

Downtown hostel gets a reprieve

Published by

The Hostel Buffalo-Niagara downtown Buffalo. The city has backed off its insistence that Hostel Buffalo-Niagara vacate its downtown location on Monday, allowing it to host visitors for the April 8 solar eclipse.  Work to stabilize an adjacent structure to the rear is scheduled to start soon and the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, owner of the two buildings, said it would be unsafe for the hostel to remain open during the work. Hostel managers lobbied for an extension to accommodate the visitors who have booked for the eclipse. “So as to not inconvenience the out-of-town visitors for this historic event, BURA[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 22

2024

Bad politics, bad roads in Cheektowaga

Published by

This column was adopted from Investigative Post’s weekly “PoliticalPost” newsletter. Subscribe here and get “Political Post” in your inbox every Wednesday morning. Partisan dysfunction continues on the Cheektowaga Town Board. Last week the board’s Republicans blocked two resolutions authorizing the town to borrow money to pay for annual road and sewer work. The first bond resolution was for up to $2.25 million to repave and repair town roads; the second was for up to $5.5 million to improve drainage on those roadways. Such resolutions used to be routine. They still are in most towns and cities. But Cheektowaga is special this[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 20

2024

Is Tesla using a rival’s solar panels?

Published by

Solar panels on the Tesla factory roof. Video via WGRZ. What’s the big secret? Tesla has installed solar panels on about one-third of the roof of its plant in South Buffalo, with plans to cover the rest by the end of the year. This is not surprising. The plant, after all, was built to manufacture parts for solar panels. But one thing doesn’t add up: The solar panels on the factory roof don’t look like the solar products Tesla sells.  Most notably, Tesla advertises its products as lacking the white grid lines seen on most solar panels.  The panels on[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 18

2024

Pepper spray and f-bombs got a Buffalo cop fired

Published by

Warning: This video contains graphic content. On March 25, 2020, Buffalo police officer Kevin Murphy pepper sprayed and arrested Lakisha Neal. Viewer discretion is advised. The Buffalo police union is asking a judge to overturn an arbitrator’s decision upholding termination of an officer who doused a woman with pepper spray and repeatedly swore at her. It’s rare litigation. Erie County Supreme Court documents dating to 2013 show no other cases of either the city or the police union asking a judge to reverse an arbitrator’s decision on whether an officer should be fired. Lakisha Neal, 42, filed an internal affairs[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 15

2024

Solutions to Buffalo’s lagging mortgage lending to Black residents

Published by

Second in a series on the impact of lending practices on homeownership by Black residents in Erie and Niagara counties. The first story is here. Analysts and community leaders suggest a series of banking reforms aimed at increasing Black homeownership in Erie and Niagara counties. Ideas include expanding outreach efforts to underserved communities and retooling mortgage lending options by lowering interest rates for low-to-moderate income buyers and considering rent and bill payment history in lieu of credit history. “Potentially having those rates lowered and providing more ability for families that may not have higher income streams to have some subsidies[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 14

2024

Mortgage lending lags to Black applicants in Buffalo

Published by

This is the first of two stories on the impact of lending practices on homeownership by Black residents in Erie and Niagara counties. The second story, outlining possible solutions, is here. Black applicants are twice as likely to be denied a home mortgage as the overall population in Erie and Niagara counties, an Investigative Post analysis has found. What’s more, the region’s 18 percent rejection rate for Black applicants in 2022 was higher than in all but a handful of other major metro areas nationally.  The gap between the denial rate for Black applicants and the overall mortgage denial rate[...]

Posted 1 year ago
Investigative Post