August 1, 2002
Spectator's notes....
Spectator's notes....
Common Council Reductions
When Jim Pitts trounced Dave Franczyk for Council President a few years back, he did so with a lot of votes in "white" districts; race apparently wasn't an issue in that election or by God we would have had Pitts yelling about honkies taking food out of the mouths of his children. So why do we hear it now? Does anyone honestly believe we need a council president at $80K and a luxury car? Hell, six years ago, the mayor didn't make $80K and the mayor is responsible for 3500 employees. The entire council has one hundredth that many and yet we need a czar to manage it?
Only in Buffalo
Assemblyman Brian Higgins represents an area of the city that once proudly boasted of three pretty healthy financial strips: South Park Ave., Abbott Road, and Seneca St. Today, only Abbott Road maintains any semblance of vitality while the other two remind one of Beirut or Kabul. So Assemblyman Higgins has pulled together about $2.5 million in extra state aid for his district. To be spent on revitalizing South Park and Cazenovia St.? Hell no! Who needs commerce when there is beach to be had? Higgins has spent his $2.5 million on a beach at the foot of Tifft Street which caters almost exclusively to suburban wind surfers and jet skiers. To add insult to outrage, Higgins persists in calling his creation "Gallagher Beach" after the only Chairman in the history of the NFTA to be chased from office for ethical violations of his authority. It makes one feel so proud.
Mayor Conehead, Media Menace to Media Darling
The spectacle of Jimmy Griffin leading the media around by the nose as he exercises his political Alzheimers (he forgets everything but his grudges) is a sight to behold. First it was Phil Fairbanks following Griffin door to door in the Bailey -Walden area as the Conehead collected signatures to recall Tony Masiello. Then it was Justin Kramer from Channel 7, doing the adoring puppy routine at the old L.B. Smith Plaza. One might have thought that the News, at least, would have had enough institutional memory to recall the days when Griffin kicked reporters out of City Hall, when he refused interviews, when he let his pal and now convict Dick Maussner and the Metro Community News scoop the hotshot daily. If nothing else, you might have thought that the keepers of the 1st Amendment would have remembered Griffin questioning the sexual orientation and mocking the ethnicity of political reporter George Borrelli. But Fairbanks tagged along adoringly anyway, as though Griffin meant anything in this town. As for the Kramer lad, he might be forgiven for not knowing that Griffin dumped all over the media for 16 years. After all, he probably could not drink legally until after Griffin had left City Hall in shambles. But how could the station forget Griffin making fun of Tony Farina's bad eye in the famous news conference in City Hall? The sight of Griffin greeting African-Americans as they entered a supermarket was laughable to anyone who endured the days when Griffin told reporters that he plowed snow from the East Side last because the other people had jobs they had to get to. It's difficult to know who the biggest joke in town is—Mayor Conehead or the media?
By the way...
...it's pretty funny to hear Griffin criticizing his successor since Masiello has just about the same cast of characters that wrecked the city under Griffin: Don Allen, Joe Giambra, Dave Sengbush, Mike Risman, Ray McGurn and many others. What was it that F. Scott Fitzgerald said about insanity: doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result.
Do as the business community says, not as it does
We all remember the fearless leader of Key Bank, Marsha Henderson, right? Upon being pressed into service, Ms. Henderson made a startling discovery. The city's problem wasn't that state aid Buffalo counted on to balance the budget would not be forthcoming, but rather that the city received too much state in the first place. A stunning revelation considering Buffalo was recently ranked the 6th poorest city in the nation. In a grand display of helping out, Ms. Henderson wrote a sharply worded letter to Governor George Pataki demanding he NOT give the cash-strapped city any money "until they learned to live within their means." Getting that much cover from the vaunted private sector, Pataki gladly obliged, forcing the city to layoff cops, close fire houses, and cut back on services. With friends like that, Masiello sure as hell doesn't need enemies. Now comes word that what was good for the goose in City Hall sure as hell ain't good for the gander on the Key Bank perch. On July 20 the Buffalo News reported that the Amherst IDA had granted about $45,000 in concessions to a project to build a new Key Bank building in Amherst. Public assistance might be the bane of existence for a poor city, but it is the mother's milk of our financial institutions. Oh! the hypocrisy ... But stay tuned: Ms. Marsha is chairing the Mayor's downtown housing group. This ought to be good.
—Spectator