Tag: City Hall

Dec 29

2014

Local government websites earn ‘F’ grade

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Have a complaint about uncollected trash or a noisy neighbor? New York City has an app for that. Want to know if the streets you’re about to travel to work have been plowed? Chicago has an app for that. Curious about crime in your neighborhood? Louisville provides an online map where you can check for types of crime by day, week or month. It’s another story in Buffalo and Western New York, where local governments’ use of technology to inform citizens and taxpayers is behind the times in two critical ways. First, local government websites are failing to provide even[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Nov 11

2014

Buffalo is ‘ground zero’ for lead poisoning

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Young children in Erie County, mostly from Buffalo’s inner city, are testing positive for lead poisoning at more than triple the state average. As a result, hundreds of children enter Buffalo schools every year dealing with the impacts of lead poisoning, which can include lowered IQ and behavioral problems. The chief source of the problem is lead-based paint chips and dust in Buffalo’s old housing stock. “Buffalo is ground zero in the entire country for lead poisoning,” said David Hahn-Baker, a local environmental activist who has studied the lead problem for three decades. Yet City Hall treats lead poisoning as[...]

Posted 10 years ago

Jul 14

2014

Huge price tag for fixing Buffalo’s buildings

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By Jim Heaney and Pamela Cyran The bill is about to become due for City Hall’s chronic failure to maintain and update many of the 240 buildings and 2,180 acres of parks it owns. Consultants two years ago gave Mayor Byron Brown’s administration a preliminary estimate of $607 million to bring those buildings and parks up to snuff over the coming decade, and said that $253 million of that work ought to get done right away. The bill for leaky roofs alone stretched into eight figures. Administration officials have kept the estimates under wraps, insisting they are too high. They[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jul 10

2014

Buffalo’s costly neglect of public buildings

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A draft report shows city owned buildings and parkland require up to $607 million in repairs and updates over the next decade, Jim Heaney and Pamela Cyran of Investigative Post report for WGRZ. City Hall alone would cost up to $180 million to bring up to snuff, the draft report said. Costly work is required for community centers, libraries, museums and other cultural centers, and park, police and fire facilities. City officials said they have not released the two-year-old report, obtained from sources by Investigative Post, because they believe the cost estimates are high. They are scheduled to meet Friday[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jun 18

2014

Buffalo recovery a Tale of Two Cities

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Jim Heaney makes his debut as a columnist for City & State this week with a piece that puts Buffalo’s improved economy in perspective. Heaney notes a great and growing divide between “the haves and have-nots.” Yes, there is the psychological boost thanks to the Buffalo Billion initiative, and construction cranes denote progress at Canalside and the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. But other aspects of the economy lag. “Any way you cut the numbers—poverty rate, unemployment rate, actual number of city residents working—they lag behind where things stood prior to the Great Recession of 2008–09,” Heaney writes. Meanwhile, the public[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jun 13

2014

EPA fines Buffalo for mishandling waste

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The City of Buffalo will pay a $21,094 fine and spend $79,000 on nine community recycling events as punishment for numerous violations of federal hazardous waste laws under an agreement announced Thursday with the Environmental Protection Agency. City officials also agreed to improve its management of hazardous waste and spent lamps- a commitment the city failed to honor three years ago. The EPA conducted two investigations in 2008 and 2011 that found various violations of hazardous waste laws that put city employees and neighborhood residents at risk of potential mercury poisoning and chemical explosions. The settlement comes two days after Investigative[...]

Posted 11 years ago

Jun 10

2014

Another ‘fine mess’ for Buffalo’s City Hall

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Buffalo is facing more than $100,000 in fines because of its mishandling of hazardous materials that put city employees and neighborhood residents at risk of everything from mercury poisoning to chemical explosions. Some of the problems go back decades and were first brought to light in 2008 when inspectors from the Environmental Protection Agency learned city employees and tenants of city-owned buildings had been throwing spent lamps, which can contain small amounts of mercury, into the trash rather than safely disposing of them. Exposure to mercury can damage the central nervous system and cause breathing problems and memory impairment, especially[...]

Posted 11 years ago

May 27

2014

Buffalo’s recycling program still struggles

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Buffalo is trying to burnish its green credentials with big public investments to clean up its waterways and attract clean energy companies. Recycling is an easier lift, but the city’s anemic program is plagued by fits and starts. City Hall took the major step of distributing green recycling totes to residents in late 2011. Last year, Mayor Byron Brown hired a full-time recycling coordinator. But City Hall is otherwise batting 0 for 4 when it comes to building a successful program. As a result, the city’s curbside recycling rate has leveled off and remains less than half the national average.[...]

Posted 11 years ago
Investigative Post