City of Buffalo — Common Council, Community Development Committee
Two weeks ago this committee asked the administration to explain why city staff say they cannot talk to councilmembers. Nobody came. This time a deputy mayor came and spoke for fifty-one minutes — longer than the entire October meeting — without producing the order, and told the committee twice that no employee faces any penalty for speaking to an elected member.
On October 20 this publication reported that the Community Development Committee had tabled all seventy-six items on its agenda, that a member had described permits, police and fire staff each telling him “I'm not allowed to talk to the council member,” and that the administration had sent nobody for the second meeting running.[3]
What changed on November 4 is that the administration showed up. Four separate delegations appeared — planning and urban renewal, public works with a deputy mayor, interim parks, and a deputy mayor on the staff-contact question. The meeting ran roughly 144 minutes against 25 last time, and a single item took 51 of them.[1]
The chair opened by reading documents into the record. The first is dated: “an email that was sent on January 9th during the period of reorganization… from the commissioner of the fire department to all members, effective immediately. If a council member contacts a Buffalo fire department member directly, the member must notify the commissioner's office.”[1]
The second is a reply his own staffer received from a city authority: “Per the recent memorandum from the mayor's office, we have been directed to funnel all requests through the commissioner of public works, who has been CC'd on this email.”[1]
And then the detail that makes the point concrete. The same staffer, he said, later rang the authority's public complaint line, identified herself as a constituent at an address, asked the same question — “and they gave her the answer when she did that.”[1]
His own account of the effect was the most striking thing he said:
“one of the saddest incidents was I was in the basement of City Hall and I was talking to somebody from one of the departments, and he kept looking around and he said to me, I really don't want to be talking to you here because I don't want someone to see me talking to you.”[1]
And: “I've been at block clubs and there's been city employees at the block clubs and they've told me we're not allowed to talk to you.”[1]
The deputy mayor's answer did not dispute the facts. It defended the design. She framed it as deliberately redirecting “informal communications between council members and direct city departmental personnel” through the council liaison, a deputy mayor, or a commissioner.[1]
She also conceded, unprompted, that the old way worked: “you might be wondering why fix what's not broken… It was effective. It was efficient. So why change it? And I think, friends, this might be where we disagree.” Her reason: the previous system “also resulted in workarounds that bypassed the necessary triaging and the tracking of issues.” She gave three grounds — shared sight lines, the 311 data-tracking system, and accountability — and described the project as “build, measure, learn… we're building this new system.”[1]
The chair's reply: “I guess thank you for the word salad, but what I'm confused about is what is the policy?”[1]
Then the exchange that produced the clearest fact of the meeting. A member asked the direct question:[1]
“what is the penalty for the employee that talks to us? Is there a penalty?” — “Councilmember, I'm not aware of any penalty.” — “But then there's no penalty for them speaking to us, am I correct?” — “I'm not aware of any penalty.”[1]
His conclusion, addressed to the room: “so then if they do speak to us, she's not aware of any penalty. That's good to know — that they're not going to get penalized for speaking to us.”[1]
That is now on the public record, and it is the single most useful thing in 144 minutes for any city employee wondering where they stand.
| Oct 20 | Nov 4 | |
| Length | 25 min | 144 min |
| Administration witnesses | 0 | 4 delegations |
| Items advanced | 0 of 76 | 2 |
| Public speakers | 2 | 4 |
| Vote tallies recorded | 6 | 0 |
So the deadlock broke on talk, not on business. Two items moved; the rest were tabled again, and most of the agenda was never called.
The item was tabled again — but not before the chair issued a formal instruction to staff:
“staff, I would like you to put together a letter to the administration asking them that, also asking them for clarification on who is allowed to talk back to us and who is not.”
And why a letter rather than the answers he had just been given:
“I want a letter from the mayor's office, because once again I don't trust anything that's said at a council meeting. I want it written and I want it clocked in for the council meeting, and that is my request.”
That letter is the document to watch. Fifty-one minutes of testimony produced no order, no memorandum and no written policy — only a description of one.
Three things the administration did establish, which are worth separating from the dispute:[1]
What it would not say is what the written instruction actually is. The administration neither produced, confirmed, denied nor described the memorandum that the water authority's reply cites, and never referred to any written document of its own. The committee's question — “what is the policy?” — was answered with a rationale rather than a text.
There is also a plain contradiction on the record that nobody resolved. The deputy mayor says nobody has been told not to contact commissioners. The fire-commissioner email the chair read requires members of that department to report to the commissioner's office after any councilmember contact. And three members — the chair, the president pro tem and another member — each independently described employees telling them they are not permitted to speak. One member was the outlier: “I haven't been told that no one could speak to me. I don't even think I would even adhere to that if I was told that.”[1]
The president pro tem's contribution reframed it from procedure to atmosphere, and she began by conceding the administration's own premise:
“I do appreciate it, because I am a systems person — love a good system, love an Excel spreadsheet, love it all day long — but I think that what the council member is describing to you is a little bit further than that.” Her own experience matched his, and she put the stakes as staff perceive them: “it is almost like they are being pitted between the administration and the common council… so if you are talking to council members, your job might be in jeopardy.” And the line she said has moved: “that line has now turned into I can't even be seen with a council member — right — and that is weird, and that is odd.”[1]
Her simplest question was the one that produced the meeting's most telling pause, as a colleague described it afterwards: whether a councilmember with a straightforward question could simply telephone an inspector. The member who followed her called the hesitation before the answer “heartbreaking” and said “there was a minute of silence… just to ask a question. That is the culture she's referring to. That's scary, and we're friends here.”[1]
Two members put a motive on it; the administration put a mandate on it. One member said the system “was implemented to weaken the common council, so that we were not a strong oversight when it came to legislation and budgetary matters.” Another asked whether it had to be “this draconian, where you put us against each other, that folks are afraid to say things to us because they're in fear for their job,” and added a comparison: “I can tell you Byron Brown wasn't one of my favorite mayors, but I can say this — it was never a situation where we couldn't talk to the commissioners.”[1]
The deputy mayor's answer to all of it was an electoral one: “you are right, sir, we were elected on a change agenda. The administration was not elected and everybody said please carry on exactly the way they have been done. So that was not the message we took from the voters.”[1]
In the middle of that exchange the chair made a specific allegation about fire apparatus procurement, framed as a hypothetical and then not framed as one.[1]
He described a commission convened within the fire department that, he said, recommended two manufacturers — and said a third was chosen instead. “I can't talk to anybody in the fire department and I can't find out that the commission actually recommended” the two it did. He said he understood other municipalities had been disappointed with the equipment selected, and concluded: “it makes me wonder if there's some chicanery going on.”[1]
Nobody answered it. No administration witness addressed the procurement, no member asked a follow-up, and the manufacturers' names are rendered inconsistently enough in the recording that this brief does not print them. What is reportable is the structure of the claim: a councilmember alleging on the record that a departmental recommendation was overridden, and saying in the same breath that he cannot verify it because employees will not speak to him. That is the staff-contact dispute stated as a consequence rather than a grievance, and it went unchallenged.
He also said the quiet part about who he thinks the administration is: “the key people in this administration, the deputy mayors and the mayor… have never really worked for the city of Buffalo before.” And he raised the possibility of compulsion: “if we're not allowed to talk to people, or if they're not allowed to talk to us, perhaps we're going to have to, like, subpoena people.”[1]
Seven members answered the roll and a quorum was declared: Golombek, Everhart, Wyatt, Bollman, Nowakowski, Rivera and Scanlon. Council President Feroleto and Majority Leader Halton-Pope were not called, and the recording later establishes both were away. No vote tally was recorded on any disposition in 144 minutes — every motion carried on a second and a gavel — so this brief reports dispositions and attributes no position to any member.
A deputy mayor and the mayor's council liaison appeared. The administration described a redirection of informal staff contact through the liaison, a deputy mayor or a commissioner; confirmed commissioners remain directly reachable; and said it was aware of no penalty for an employee who speaks to a councilmember.
No written order, memorandum or policy was produced or described by the administration. The committee tabled the item and directed staff to write to the mayor's office demanding the directive and clarification of who may speak to councilmembers.
The second-longest item. The DPW commissioner appeared with his deputy commissioner of streets and sanitation and a director, joined by a deputy mayor. Equipment as stated: 44 pieces of snow equipment including 22 full-size plows, 12 high lifts, 7 tractors with blowers and 3 pickups; four new plow blades; six plows under construction with delivery “springtime in 2027” and four more via the next bond sale. Roughly 50 drivers with 10 more pending hire. Over 3,000 tons of salt on hand and arrangements to procure over 30,000 tons. Over $2 million allocated for contractual services.
Three loose ends: a member asked where the snow-contractor RFP is posted and was told “I don't know specifically, but I can get you the…”; a request to put councilmembers on city, county and state storm coordination calls drew no yes or no; and the GPS-tracked “public facing map is not public yet.”
Read alongside the road-salt warning a quarry executive gave the Clarence Town Board a week earlier — that Erie County solicited 75,000 tons and received no bids — the 30,000-ton procurement figure is worth following.[4]
Two mayoral nominees to the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority board appeared and were questioned at length. The committee first moved to table, then revisited the item, rescinded that motion and approved it.
The questioning was the sharpest of the day. One member told the nominees: “I'm not going to make the same mistake I've made in the past in giving people a pass to be on the BMHA board,” and pressed on federal inspection failures — “I don't know how we can continue to pass the inspections HUD brings forth. Somebody's blind. Are they asleep? What is going on?… it seems as though this guy survives and continues to make his big, fat paycheck. But the people suffer.” He warned one nominee: “if that's what you're going to do, then you need to stay wherever you are, because that's not helping the residents in my district.”
Both nominees left with open commitments: to return and brief the committee on the authority's operating budget, and to come back with maintenance response-time data.
On October 20 a Marine Drive resident appeared before this committee to ask that a 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. parking prohibition be shortened, calling it an extreme hardship for working residents. That item was tabled. The municipal housing authority then responded in writing, and the full Council referred the response back to this committee on October 27.
The entire record of its treatment here is one line: “Item four. BMHA response to Marine Drive resident parking concerns. Motion to table items four and five.” The response was not read, summarised or discussed, and it is not published with the agenda. Its contents remain unknown to the public and to this brief.[3]
Presented by the Office of Strategic Planning's director of planning and zoning with a senior programs manager from the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, who noted the office is covering for a programme manager who recently returned to HUD.
The substance is what counts as a change big enough to require public notice. The previous threshold was a cumulative 25%. The approved thresholds now are: for projects allocated $500,000 or less, a cumulative increase or decrease of 75% or more; for projects over $500,000, a cumulative increase of 51% or more. Members asked what “roll over” means and whether councilmembers are notified when funds are pulled from a district organisation.
One member said on the record “I'm not totally comfortable with that” and the item was nonetheless sent to the full Council without recommendation, with no objection called and no tally taken.
The interim parks commissioner appeared. Figures as stated: a local contractor's order-of-magnitude for dehumidification and pool equipment of roughly $1.1 million; requests of $1 million for buildings and $500,000 for parks in the 2027 capital budget; and a DPW emergency funding request that “includes $1 million for the Lovejoy pool.” Usage was given as about 400 people a month, close to 1,000 in peak months.
A resident came to correct the item's own title: “I noticed here it says regarding a rental inspection. It's not regarding a rental inspection. It's regarding my home.”
Her account: a man appeared saying he was there to inspect her house. She has a Section 8 tenant and an annual inspection already. “He said that that's the federal and he's the state. I'm not sure why someone needs to come into my home… Those are strangers. I have no idea. Anybody can make up a business card.” And why it alarmed her: “I was just concerned with everything that's going on in this country right now, showing up to my home. And I live by myself and I'm a widow.”
She did not let him in. A member's immediate advice: “Well, don't let them in your house, first and foremost.” Staff were asked to contact the Section 8 programme, and a member raised it with the police district on the ground that “maybe this is not an isolated incident.”
Three members of the public spoke in support of a proposed zero-emission vehicle procurement ordinance — two Sierra Club volunteers and a resident making the fiscal case. Figures were cited from New York City's municipal fleet programme and the NFTA's bus electrification, along with an escape clause under which the city need not buy a zero-emission vehicle costing more than 50% above the lowest bid in the next least-polluting category.
The committee adjourned while a member was still questioning them. No motion on item 66 appears in the recording. One speaker's remarks are also cut off by a 31-second dropout. This brief reports the subject and the fact of the testimony, and does not repeat figures drawn from other jurisdictions that it has not verified.
Red light camera installations were tabled after a brief exchange in which the chair noted his district's median income — “neighborhoods like I represent in 14207 that has about a median income of $35,000.” A letter of opposition to a proposed Code Blue shelter near Perry homes was tabled with five further unnamed items.
Item 17 produced a procedural contradiction: a member moved to take it from the table and the clerk recorded that the motion stands to table. The minutes are the authority.
Items 14, 15, 19 through 65 and 67 onward were never called. If the agenda again ran to seventy-six items, the great majority received no action for a second consecutive meeting.
The deputy mayor at the centre of this brief is never named on the record. Across fifty-one minutes she is addressed only as “Deputy Mayor.” She is not the deputy mayor who appeared separately on the snow plan, who is named and referred to in the third person during her own testimony. We have asked the committee clerk for her name and will add it. Until then she is identified by office, which is also how the committee identified her.
Why the long quotations are short. From roughly the 1 hour 49 minute mark to the end, the transcriber breaks into fragments of one to three words per timestamp. Individual words are mostly reliable; sentence and speaker boundaries are not. That stretch covers almost all of item 18 and all of item 66. Every quotation in this brief from that range has been kept short and checked for internal coherence, and where a passage could not be reconstructed with confidence we have paraphrased or omitted it rather than stitch fragments into a sentence nobody said.
No vote tallies, and that is the finding. This committee disposed of eighteen or more agenda items across 144 minutes without a single recorded count of ayes and noes — including the one item it sent to the full Council over an openly stated reservation. A dissent in that format leaves no trace. This brief therefore attributes no position on any item to any member, and the committee's own minutes are the authority.
Names. The Common Council roster is verified in this pipeline; the transcriber mangles most of it, rendering Bollman as “Balman” and “Mr. Bowman,” Golombek as “Glombeck” and “Mr. Columbus,” Wyatt once as “Mr. White,” and Halton-Pope as “Alton Pope.” Administration officials are named where they stated a name and title; two surnames are rendered several different ways and are given by office instead. Residents are named as they introduced themselves, with addresses as stated.
What we did not report. The fire-apparatus manufacturers named in the procurement allegation; a figure of roughly $1.6 million in foundation aid for salaries, which the speaker himself hedged as “or whatever it was”; and a claim comparing a stated 15% tax increase with an actual 26%, which is fragmentary as recorded. Each would need a document.