Journey, Foreigner play inspired on August 11th, 2011

What appeared to be a close-to-capacity crowd took in inspired sets from Journey and Foreigner Wednesday at the Darien Lake Performing Arts Center.

Band gives fans a Big Time Rush on August 11th, 2011

The Erie County Fair got off to a big start Wednesday, serving up Nickelodeon boy band Big Time Rush to a sold-out crowd of more than 8,000 mostly screaming teens.

Caulcrick would love to stay in Bills country on August 11th, 2011

Former Clymer star and WNY's all-time scholastic leading rusher appeared in two games with his hometown team last year.

Pushing to improve patient safety on August 11th, 2011

Hospital patient-safety programs have experienced uneven success

Byron Brown’s Own Process on August 11th, 2011

Yesterday, this story appeared, revealing that Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown had vetoed a Common Council plan, adopted 9-0, to distribute $200,000 to city-based cultural organizations. Here’s why:

While the mayor has “no problem” with any of the groups on the Council’s list, DeGeorge said, Brown believes that he should have the right to establish his own process for distributing the $100,000 that his office is providing.

As Councilmember LoCurto aptly put it,

“I would hope that the mayor will stick to the Fund for the Arts figures and not use ‘his own process’ to reward friends and political allies,”

This is identical to Brown’s earlier opposition to the installation of a restaurant at the base of the Naval Park and Museum at Canal Side. The excuse given for that:

Brendan R. Mehaffy, director of the city Office of Strategic Planning, wrote shortly afterward to the Naval Museum. He expressed the city’s concerns about needing to be part of the process, and raised potential health and safety concerns about putting a restaurant in the museum.

Cunningham said he subsequently was asked where the museum had advertised for a vendor, and noted it had been in the Amherst Bee, the Challenger and other publications.

“I was asked to send the RFP to Mattie’s Restaurant, which we did,” Cunningham said. “That was the only one we were asked to go back and send [the RFP] to.”

George and Mattie Holt, owners of Mattie’s, were out of town Tuesday and unavailable for comment. However, Alessi said Mattie’s later responded in a letter that it was not in a position to consider operating a restaurant in the Naval Park.

Savage said mentioning Mattie’s was not improper. The mayor, who had not been involved in the RFP process, was simply making sure a variety of restaurateurs had had a chance to respond.

Chris Smith has a piece up asking philosophical questions about the direction of Buffalo. I think that the above examples are a perfect example of the city’s direction. A lack of vision and controlling how to spend public money in a way best suited to exact political gains is what it’s all about, in the end.

It’s sad, really. Here we have a smart, likeable Mayor who seemingly couldn’t care less. The only time he’s ever shown any passion in his tenure? When Mike Bloomberg said Buffalo was a sad little place with a housing glut. Regrettably, Mayor Brown has the political capital and apparatus at his disposal to do really great things in this town, but he’s completely unwilling to do so.

What a waste of time.

Summer Seasonal POWER RANKINGS on August 11th, 2011

The Buffalo Question on August 11th, 2011

I’d like to pose a couple of questions to the entirety of Western New York.

• As a city, what are we doing well? Do we excel at anything?
• As a region, what are we doing well? Do we excel at anything?
• What broad based municipal goal(s) are we moving toward?
• How will we know when we’ve achieved that goal?
• Who is measuring progress towards achievement?
• Who is held accountable if we fail to achieve that goal?
• What do we want to look like as a region in 2020?

Let’s start with government for now and we’ll use Chicago as an example.

Ten years ago, Mayor Daley’s stated strategic goal was to build one of the most diverse economic environments in the world. A healthy mix of financial services, education, health care, construction, manufacturing, retail, etc.

He believed that planning for such an environment ultimately creates the opportunity for arts and culturals to succeed and a tax base is grown to foster the delivery of public services. This is all done in the confines of a greater regional framework in which the city exports wealth to the suburbs. They value urban planning and place a premium on excellence. Their approach is such that the government creates the opportunity for the market to thrive. Unlike Buffalo, most decisions in a city like Chicago are not made on an ad hoc basis; there is a vision, plan, goals and success. Measurement and accountability? Fuck, it’s Chicago, no one is held accountable. But, they get the bigger picture.

Or lets focus on our neighbors to the near north, Toronto. Those crazy canadians are silly with plans.

Here is the strategic vision laid out for 2010 by the Mayor.

Building upon that framework of ideas, the city council and other city agencies built their own plans and established measurable goals and markers for progress.

Chicago and Toronto are models for planning excellence. What can we learn from them? What are we doing that is similar? In this instance, size of the metro doesn’t matter, it’s the planning and the execution.

So, as a city and region, what are we doing well? Are we marching toward an overarching, unified goal?

We might be doing something well in town/city/county government, arts and culturals, urban planning, economic development, private sector business, anything.  Seriously, what are we doing well?

This exercise has a dual purpose.

1. If we can’t readily identify what it is that we are doing well, we have a larger problem.  We’ll need leadership interested in setting goals, establishing measurements for progress and building a consensus to accomplish them.
2. If we can identify a core list of successes, we should find ways to transfer the methodology to other projects and issues.

This month marks six years since I moved back to Buffalo. After all of that time, I’m still not certain what it is we are trying to accomplish in this region. Nor do I know who is empowered to make decisions to move the region forward. Nor do I know if anyone is doing anything well.

So, lots of questions, but a jumping off for a discussion for the rest of the week.

YAK Car Pic of the Day on August 11th, 2011

’60 Olds Super 88, Ramsomville, N.Y. Dig those fender skirts, side pipes, and spinner hubcaps; not to mention the scalloped paint job and dummy spotlight. Looks like one of my old AMT model kits with all the trimmings, but it’s an actual 1960 Oldsmobile Super 88 Holiday Scenicoupe, parked in a Ransomville driveway. According to [...]

Green and Healthy Homes: Going Beyond Lead-Safe on August 11th, 2011

I wrote my first article about efforts to make homes lead safe shortly after I began writing for Buffalo Rising.  It's a crucial issue in community development, and some outstanding folks from my hometown were among the earliest voices raising it to statewide prominence.  Shortly after moving to Buffalo, I was delighted to cover the kickoff of the local Wipe Out Lead campaign, which took ongoing efforts here to a new level.  And last summer, my one-year update covered the welcome addition of Western New York AmeriCorps (now The Service Collaborative of Western New York) to the team.

Fast forwarding a year, I couldn't be more delighted to report that things are in the midst of a transition to an even more ambitious and comprehensive effort: the Green and Healthy Homes Initiative.  How did that come about?  Through a lot of hard work and excellent organization, to be sure.  But the big moment came late last year when Buffalo was named a Green and Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI) pilot community by the White House, and received a grant of $2.1 Million through then-Attorney General Cuomo's office -- funding from a settlement of environmental violations.

According to the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo,

GHHI focuses on whole-home interventions to address all the health and safety issues present.  The model braids dollars from across government agencies (local, state, federal) with corporate and philanthropic dollars so that we can address ALL the problems that our target homes have -- not just the lead paint.  In addition to lead, we're able to focus on weatherization, energy efficiency, reducing asthma triggers and providing green jobs training so that we have a competent workforce to carry out all these tasks.  We got off to a great start with these efforts thanks to a $2.1 million grant from the NYS AG's office in November, and with the GHHI designation have access to training, expertise and resources from outside our region to help us get the job done here.  It's a really exciting, common-sense approach that streamlines everything while producing even greater results -- and the Buffalo team is one of the GHHI communities leading the way because of our history of success with our lead poisoning prevention work.

A milestone in that work was celebrated last week at the Lt. Col. Matt Urban Human Services Center.  The first class proudly graduated (see entry image) from their pilot program in residential lead-hazard abatement, home repair and renovation, and environmental and green demolition contracting.  The program is targeted to unemployed city residents.  The Matt Urban Center ("Buffalo's best kept secret") always seems to have good stuff in the works, and it's hard to imagine a program more relevant and needed than this pilot program to give "green jobs" training to unemployed workers.  These are in-demand skills.

The program, according to the Community Foundation, which has jointly funded the program with the Erie County Department of Health, "is one of the first in the nation that braids public and private funds to train welfare-to-work program participants to make them eligible for jobs in lead hazard control, environmental contracting and green demolition."

"This program is a great example of what can be accomplished when public and private entities come together to invest in our community," said Marlies Wesolowski, Executive Director of the Matt Urban Center. "The results speak for themselves -- with this specialized training the program participants are in a stronger position to find meaningful employment, and through the course of their training they have directly improved the health and safety of homes in some of our most distressed neighborhoods."

As part of the program, participants received on-site skills training by assisting in removing lead hazards from eight homes in zip codes 14215 and 14217.  Several of these homes had previously been cited by the Health Department for lead paint hazards, but the homeowners were unable to do the work themselves.

While there are numerous job training programs in the City of Buffalo, none have lead hazard control as the primary focus, according to the Foundation and the Matt Urban Center.  "Given the deteriorated condition of much of the city's housing stock, current economic conditions and the prevalence of high unemployment, this initiative is critical to creating jobs and a sustainable workforce to address lead poisoning prevention through hazard reduction," said Wesolowski.

At last week's graduation ceremony, graduate Tahwana Roberson spoke about the experience and what it meant to her.  "I'm grateful for the opportunity to be in this program.  I feel like we made a difference in the community, and it gave me a real sense of accomplishment."

The Community Foundation has promised more information to come about the Green and Healthy Homes initiative -- so stay tuned.

Image credit: Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo (all)

Good Morning, Buffalo on August 11th, 2011

A quick look at what's happening today in Western New York

Practice Notes – Day 10 on August 10th, 2011

A host of injured players returned to the practice fray Wednesday night and it certainly had a positive impact on Buffalo’s defense as they controlled most of the play during the two-hour session. ...

Thomas provides beacon of light to hometown with 411 All-Star Weekend on August 10th, 2011

Successful businessman with ties to Buffalo is determined to give back to his old East Side neighborhood.

Rookie safety Searcy has the power on August 10th, 2011

Fourth-round pick from North Carolina believes his upper-body strength will help in pass coverage.

Bills’ Evans shrugs off trade rumors on August 10th, 2011

Arizona radio station reports Cardinals have interest in Buffalo's veteran wide receiver.

Slide Show: International Thunder on the Water on August 10th, 2011

This weekend, the Buffalo waterfront is going to get fired up as some of the biggest, baddest performance boats gather to compete in the city's Fourth Annual Buffalo Poker Run. Last year 60 boats showed up, which is more than double the number from three years ago. I was invited to be a guest on one of the boats for a past poker run, and let me tell you that seeing these powerhouses gather in one place is exhilarating. This year proceeds benefit Excalibur Leisure Skills, an organization that helps to get disabled and disadvantaged people out onto the water.

Honestly, even if you can't make it onto one of the boats, half the fun is to see them when they rev their engines and head out to the starting point. From there the boats head down the river to the first checkpoint to get a second card (the first is secured at check in). Throughout the day and into the evening the boats return to the Buffalo Harbor (see schedule) below, meaning that there's going to be a lot of noise and excitement on the waterfront. Bring the kids down to see the boats, and find the best vantage point to witness the spectacle. Here's a slide show of a previous Poker Run:



Brought to you by the WNY Offshore Powerboat Association.

This year's International Thunder on the Water is August 12-13, 2011 at Templeton Landing.

Here is the schedule for this weekend's event:

Fri August 12th, 2011
5pm - 7pm Poker Run Event Registration
5pm - 10pm Boats on Display - Templeton Landing Docks and Public Parking Lot
6:30pm - 9pm Welcome Party at Templeton Landing  (Registration Required)
 
Sat Aug 13th, 2011 Buffalo Poker Run
8pm - 9:30am  Late Registration
10am Drivers Meeting - Card #1
10:30am Engines are Started at Templeton Landing Docks
11am Poker Run Officially Starts from Buffalo Harbor
11:15am-11:30am Vantage Point Peace Bridge/International Bridge
11:30am Card #2 - Private Dock - West River
11:30am - 12pm West River
12:00pm - 12:20pm Parade of Boats up Little River (Smith Boys, East Pier, TILC)
12:30pm Card #3 North Tonawanda Public Docks in Erie Canal
1pm Poker Run Restarts Nia-Wanda Park
1:30pm Parade of Boats up the Buffalo River to Inter Harbor
1:45pm Card #4 - Public Dock - Buffalo Harbor in front of HSBC Arena
2pm Poker Run Restarts - Buffalo Harbor for Lake portion of Run
2:45pm Card #5 - Sunset Bay Beach Club/Cabana Sams
5pm All Boats Leave Beach as Group
5:30pm-6pm Boats Return to Templeton Landing
6:30pm - 10pm Awards & Dinner at Templeton Landing