It’s been a while since I’ve properly fisked something. This article from Buffalo Business First, penned by the Buffalo Law Journal’s Matt Chandler, is ripe for this treatment.  It deals with oppressed, local, rich, connected person, Carl Paladino.

Though the gubernatorial election has long since passed, opponents of Buffalo developer (and attorney) Carl Paladino aren’t ready to put down their collective sticks and stop whacking away at the Paladino pinata.

In fairness, Paladino brings on many of these attacks with his own words, including the scathing letters he regularly pens attacking those who he thinks are doing wrong by this once great city. In spite of that, and putting politics aside (I know that can be difficult for a lot of people) not only is Paladino good for Buffalo, Buffalo needs him.

The opening paragraphs set up the argument – that it is Paladino’s critics and opponents who are unreasonable, wielding “sticks” with which they “whack” away at the poor, oppressed, wealthy, and connected kvetcher. Chandler acknowledges that Paladino is an abrasive loudmouth, but argues that, for some reason, we need that?

Buffalo has long had a reputation as a dying rust-belt city buried in snow 13 months out of the year and is viewed by many as about as desirable a place to live as a hornet’s nest. Paladino is, at the core of the issue, a passionate voice fighting to overcome those challenges and return Buffalo to the powerful city it once was.

Is he outrageous at times? Absolutely. Does he speak off the cuff and on occasion toss the politically correct handbook aside? Without a doubt. But Paladino has never apologized for who he is, and that is refreshing.

Carl Paladino ran for governor and was such a polarizing and hateful character that not only did his admittedly attractive and baseball-bat laden platform of Albany disdain fail to propel him to the governor’s mansion, but he helped turn Buffalo into an even bigger statewide laughingstock than it already was.  I grew up downstate – I’ve heard all the jokes. Paladino is a caricature of the sort of unenlightened, brash, uncultured upstate loudmouth with a misguided sense of entitlement that the part of the state with all the people in it loves to hate. For a city with low self-esteem and a serious inferiority complex, Paladino’s frequent mouth-craps serve to bring us down further.

Visit Lovely Buffalo!

While I would agree that, at one time, Paladino’s civic involvement and bomb-throwing may have been compelling and entertaining, if not productive, now it seems much more bitter – as if he’s just angry for anger’s sake.

And he’s angry at anybody who doesn’t do exactly what Carl wants.

As for Paladino “never apologiz[ing] for who he is”, that’s not refreshing; that’s depressing. We know him to be entertained by the most base defamation against women, gays, blacks, the President, etc. There’s not much there of which to be proud.

Disingenuous cries of “political correctness” are, in cases like this, merely complaining that society demands a certain amount of courtesy, temperance, and politeness. Carl has money; he doesn’t need to be any of those things. Right?

Part of what makes our country great is that we have the ability to speak our mind without persecution or prosecution. Paladino personifies that and though we may not always agree with him, I respect not only his right to say what many other people are thinking, but his willingness to do so.

That paragraph more properly belongs in the comments section of this blog. Whenever we criticize someone for being an intemperate asshole, some dummy will type something similar to it. Who ever said that Paladino didn’t have a “right” to say the hateful things that he has said? Just because “other people are thinking” that way doesn’t make it socially acceptable, or something that we should all applaud, regardless of its legality.

Over the last year, I’ve been privy to countless conversations between people bent on crushing Carl Paladino. Those conversations, as of late, have centered around a series of letters the former Republican gubernatorial nominee has written, then mass-emailed to seemingly everyone on earth. For those of you not on his email list, he fired off a caustic letter last week to Buffalo News Publisher Stan Lipsey where, among other things, he called Lipsey “spineless” and predicted the longtime publisher would soon resign.

Lipsey is so “spineless” (a synonym of “coward”), that he’s let loose the reporters at the News to start paying attention to matters that Paladino – through his money, power, and influence – had gotten away with for years. Crumbling buildings, code violations, threats to health and safety, lies. Lipsey is anything but spineless – he’s taken the fight to Paladino, who isn’t used to being confronted negatively.

Carl's Insult Billboardatorium

He followed that letter with one aimed at Brendan K*******, the attorney for the Buffalo Board of Education. The letter was directed to the Erie County Bar Association Grievance Committee and, in a nutshell, called for Mr. K******* to be disbarred based on his conduct in various school board related issues.

This is ironic. In his zeal to destroy the lives and livelihoods of those whom he dislikes, Paladino has publicly released a complaint he filed with the attorney’s grievance committee? That’s patently improper. Under Section 90(10) of the Judiciary Law, “…all papers, records and documents upon the application or examination of any person for admission as an attorney and counsellor at law and upon any complaint, inquiry, investigation or proceeding relating to the conduct or discipline of an attorney or attorneys, shall be sealed and be deemed private and confidential. “

Only Supreme Court Justices can unseal or otherwise make public any such documents. Because an allegation against a lawyer is just that – an unsubstantiated complaint to be reviewed and investigated, nothing is made public about the committee’s work until and unless a negative finding is rendered. By violating this section of the Judiciary Law, Paladino may have, himself, opened himself up to scrutiny by the grievance committee.

And what did K******* do? He did his job! He is zealously representing the client who is paying him. Nothing he is doing – or that Paladino accuses him of doing – is improper, or frankly much different from what any lawyer does every day on behalf of every client. You’re not supposed to agree with it – he’s advocating for a particular position.

Although I have a copy of Paladino’s letter regarding Mr. K******* in my possession, I will not publish or link to it here until and unless I obtain approval from the grievance committee to do that.

I’ve never met Lipsey, so I can’t speak to his character, but I certainly believe that having people willing to question the press and call them out when they cross the line is critical (the News used Wikipedia as a source in questioning Paladino’s military service).

I’ve also never met K******* and I have no idea if Paladino’s charges are true, but in a state known for crooked politicians and public figures who put their own interests above those of John Q. Public, I think Paladino keeps people honest. If he crosses the line with any of his rants, those in his cross hairs can fight back through legal channels. But if he doesn’t, then he is someone using his pulpit to turn over the rocks, look in the corners and make sure the I’s are being dotted and the T’s are being crossed.

Squalor: For the People

The Buffalo News wrote a poorly sourced screed blasting Paladino on its editorial page, and that makes Stan Lipsey “spineless” how, exactly?

Paladino’s apparent, alleged breach of grievance committee confidentiality is honorable? No, it is quite the direct opposite. “If he crosses the line”, people can sue him? Have you ever tried to sue someone for defamation? Doesn’t this guy work for the local legal newspaper? Don’t you know how much a defamation case costs, Matt? Now try doing that against someone who owns his own law firm. This is a facile and clumsy apologia for the schoolyard bully – hey, if the bully sends you to the hospital, you can sue the family to pay the bill! What price would you assign to your reputation in the community?

As for that pulpit, I also find it curious how quickly Paladino’s detractors are willing to overlook what he has done for this region. It seems as though “creating jobs” is the big national buzz phrase and Paladino has made a career in his development business of creating jobs.

Paladino has a proud record of renting space to state agencies, thanks to his political connections and financial largesse, and has a massive stable of vacant properties, as well as a handful of properties that are currently subjecting him to housing court prosecution. He’s run a successful business.  So do a lot of people.  Carl has made a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. What, exactly, is Carl Paladino’s big political legacy? Jane Corwin? Jim Domagalski? His own race? Kevin Helfer? Mickey Kearns?

Going back to the Paladino bashers I’ve listened to over the last 12 months, those engaged in the mud-slinging have never created a single job among them, nor have they ever built anything. Yet their wrath is finely honed in on, among other things, the fact that he had the “arrogance” to put a billboard on one of his buildings overlooking the I-190 attacking the aforementioned Buffalo News.

Pride

Wait, the publisher of the Buffalo News has never “created a job”? No one who has ever criticized Paladino has created a job? Who are these strawmen “bashers”, exactly? They’re not named, or even alluded to, so there’s no effective way to rebut this fantasy paragraph.  Not all of us can build brand new Rite-Aids directly across the street from older Rite-Aids we built a few decades ago. Not all of us have the juice to get that rich off the public’s dime.

Knowing the folks on the other side of the argument, I chalk it up to pure jealousy. Who among us wouldn’t love to have the financial resources to put up a giant billboard overlooking a highly-traveled road attacking our foes? I only wish I had Paladino’s resources; the biggest problem I would have is deciding who I would choose to call out if given only a single billboard. I’d probably have to convert it to one of those fancy digital billboards.

Crumbling. For Real.

Well, shit, I wish I was rich, too. I’ll tell you, however, what I’d do if I was rich like Carl. I’d make sure my family was taken care of. I’d treat people the way I want to be treated. I’d help the less fortunate – not demonize them. I’d work hard to make sure the properties I owned were kept up in compliance with all relevant health, safety, and building codes.

If I had money and influence like Carl, I’d work to make Buffalo better. I’d work to make it less of a laughingstock. I’d make sure I kept my nose clean. We need more mensch, less schmuck.

Let’s don’t forget that Paladino ran for Governor of this state.  Juxtapose that thought against the epic first 6 months of the Cuomo governorship.

We’ve got local school mandate relief, ethics reform, marriage equality, UB 2020, and a property tax cap. And that’s just in the last month.

Under a Paladino regime, the sides would be further entrenched, there would be no negotiations, the government would likely be shut down with a flourish, Paladino would be compiling his enemies list, and homosexual New Yorkers would still flock to Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Ontario to legalize what their own state frowns upon.

If I had Carl’s money, power, and connections, I’d choose to be either quiet or inspiring – someone people look up to, than down on. I’m sure there are some who like Carl, some who respect him. But there are far more who wish he would use his bully pulpit, his voice, his money, his resources for good, rather than ill. He had so much promise to do good by the little people in this city. As time went on, he became more polarizing, more angry. Just what this region, this city, this community don’t need.

At the end of the day, his detractors won’t be deterred, and they can say what they will about his style, but Carl Paladino invests in the community, creates jobs, appears to love Western New York and isn’t afraid to take a stand.

While a growing faction of angry malcontents continue to bash Paladino, I wish we had more people like him. Buffalo could use more people with that kind of a commitment to a community so desperately in need of people willing to stand up and fight for it.

I like how Mr. Chandler dismisses people who disagree with Carl Paladino as being “angry malcontents”. As if there’s no way you could say a negative thing against such a great and beloved madman without being a disaffected jerk yourself. Nothing, happily, could be further from the truth.

Here’s what I wrote about Paladino and his platform – before the horse porn emails, before the fight with Fred Dicker, before Paladino’s implosion at his own hands:

Running on an “angry at Albany” platform is one thing, but we don’t stay in New York State because of our anger.

We stay here in spite of it.

We’re all angry, but we want solutions to the problems that make us angry. Railing against welfare queens and proposing stricter ethical rules are facile non-solutions. If suddenly Dictator Paladino changed the rules tomorrow to prevent Sheldon Silver from profiting from his law practice, that would not reform state government or help Buffalo in any remote way. If King Paladino changed the welfare eligibility rules tomorrow, the state’s population would still drop or stay the same.

We’re all angry at Albany. But like every other politician who has promise, Paladino’s platform fails to deliver. Byron Brown squanders a huge mandate and enviable likability. Chris Collins wastes his power and prestige on picayune micromanagement. Likewise, Paladino will take a unique opportunity to go to Albany and make big change, and instead promises to make little ones that will please a particular upstate, suburban constituency.

Not even lip-service was paid to good government…

We have plenty of people standing up and fighting for this region. Some you’ll agree with, some you won’t. But why do we honor a belligerent loudmouth with lots of money and a thin record, while ignoring the real heroes in this community?

Some are working with underprivileged kids, getting them back on the education track. Where’s Carl? Some of them are building and rebuilding homes throughout the city, rebuilding a broken community house by house. Where’s Carl? Some of them are braving the real risk of personal harm to get kids off drugs and out of gangs. Where’s Carl? Some are venture capitalists and investors in small businesses, taking a financial risk on new ideas and inventions. Where’s Carl? Some are promoting the beauty and sights and people of this area, trying to get new businesses, residents, and visitors. Where’s Carl? Some people are working to ensure that kids are clothed, fed, housed, taught a trade, and re-educated. Where’s Carl? Some are helping to introduce new immigrants and refugees to their new home in the United States, setting them up with homes, language courses, jobs. Where’s Carl?

Every day, scores everyday heroes do hard work – often without remuneration or praise – to help make this region a better place, to help lift people up from disadvantage. Few of them spend tens of thousands of dollars to call their political opponents assholes.

We do need people who are committed to the community, who are willing to stand up and fight for it.  We don’t need obnoxious, belligerent rich bullies calling everyone and their mother a motherf*cker when they dare to not be his sycophants.

(Updated to redact the attorney’s name in the hopes it never comes up in a Google search and harms his ability to earn a living). 

Veteran cooks offer their secrets of fine dining in the wild.

Your summer beach read doesn’t have to be the latest Top 10 disposable dreck, the literary equivalent of Ke$ha and Katie Perry. Challenge yourself just a little, and try on this entertaining romp: The Longships by Frans G. Bengtsson.

I am often humbled to learn that the “new” book I just “discovered” from a friend’s recommendation is actually classic beloved literature in its home country. The Longships is now nearly seventy years old and still immensely popular in Scandinavia. My first dog-eared paperback copy was appropriately loaned to me by a Danish friend when we studied together fifteen years ago in England, and viking voyages of exploration around Europe and Asia coincided with my own train rides across new lands. A nice symmetry, to be sure, but not required to appreciate the adventures of the Poet-Warrior Chieftain Red Orm, as I learned upon acquiring the newly released handsome New York Review Books Classic edition and re-reading it again for the first time this year.

You can read The Longships for the action, battles and pillaging good fun. You can read it for insight into the world view of tenth century Europe and the vikings who harried it. I recommend, however, that you read it for the humor. Can bashing someone’s head in be laugh-out-loud funny? It is when Bengtsson is at the helm.

Perhaps the tale’s most fascinating attribute is how the clever turn of phrase survives the translation. Deft wordsmiths are required on both sides of the writer/translator divide for sarcasm and dry wit to survive the process. But survive it does, in spades. As an example, here are typical thoughts on the hazards of long voyages:

Toke said that the thing that troubled him most was the fact that the ale was now finished. He was, he assured them, not a fussy man, and he reckoned he could stomach most things when necessity demanded it, not excluding his sealskin shoes, but only if he had good ale to wash them down. It would be a fearful prospect, he said, to envisage a life with out ale, either on sea or ashore.

Or the challenges of fighting a duel to the death during winter:

 ”It is not the fighting that worries me,” said Orm, “but the cold. I have always been a man of delicate health, and cold is the thing I can least endure. Nothing is more dangerous for my health than to go out from a hot room, after heavy drinking, into the cold night air. I do not see why, to please this Sigtrygg, [that I after I kill him] I should have to endure being racked with coughs for the rest of the winter…my mother always used to say that they would be the death of me if I did not take good care of myself.”

At last King Harald said: “I am sorry to see that young men are growing soft nowadays. They are not what they used to be. The sons of Ragnar Hairy-Breeks never bothered about such trivial considerations as their health or the weather.”

Gems like these pervade the book, and augment would already be a harrowing tale of Orm’s capture, sale into slavery, travels throughout Arabia, escape, sacking of the English coast, personal growth into responsible Chieftain, and final quest to steal Bulgar gold hidden deep within feudal Russia. While this is no deep character study, Orm and his compatriots are not two-dimensional caricatures. When Orm is wounded in a duel he sinks into deep melancholy that he will never sail and sack again. We may not share the specifics of his anxieties (sacrifices to sea gods for Weather Luck and defending against brigands burning down his farm), but worries build genuine endearment and interest in his ultimate fate. Throw in Orm’s love of composing the perfect poem for each battle, birth, or drinking game, and you have a genuinely compelling character that keeps the pages turning on your summer vacation. I’ll leave you with such poetry, to whet your appetite for more:

In my throat there is a feeling

Of dry rot most unblest.

Do physicians know the healing

For me, that ale is best?

Thirsting I rowed for many a year,

And thirsting did good slaughter.

All praise to thee, Gorm’s gracious heir!

Thou knowest my favorite water.

Out of the You Can’t Get ‘Em Here Dept., from the Czech Republic, the Škoda Roomster. I think we need “interestingly” designed cars in this country, too! Read more about it here. — Jim Corbran, You Auto Know

Most celebrity football camps around the United States are considered a success if they’ve had a strong five to 10-year run. Bills Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly has more than doubled that tota...

Later this morning, Alan Bedenko will publish our fisking of this journalistic blowjob of Carl Paladino published in yesterday’s Buffalo Business First. The column, written by Matt Chandler, included a paragraph that I thought required an entirely separate response from Alan’s article.

Going back to the Paladino bashers I’ve listened to over the last 12 months, those engaged in the mud-slinging have never created a single job among them, nor have they ever built anything. Yet their wrath is finely honed in on, among other things, the fact that he had the “arrogance” to put a billboard on one of his buildings overlooking the I-190 attacking the aforementioned Buffalo News.

Now, I know I am just some “angry malcontent” with an ax to grind due to my “overwhelming jealousy”, but I’m not pissed off that he has turned the historic Fairmont Creamery building into, as Alan calls it, “The Carl Paladino Insult Billboardatorium”. I am pissed off that he has neglected that historic building to the point that an emergency demolition order will certainly be in it’s future. Paladino has owned the property since 2001 and has been cited for ten housing court violations as per this article in The Buffalo News by Jim Heaney.

The building was purchased in 2001 by the 5277 Group, a limited liability corporation that Paladino controls. He announced plans to convert the building into apartments or condominiums, but the plans went nowhere, and the building was cited in March 2007 for 10 code violations, including a damaged roof, missing windows, loose bricks, rusty metalwork holding up the billboard and piles of dirt, trash and other litter.

The building was in such poor condition that the city immediately moved the case into Housing Court. Inspectors, in court documents, said the building is “posing a possible fire hazard and [has a] blighting effect on the City of Buffalo.”

Subsequent inspection reports showed no progress until two of the 10 violations were partly corrected in May 2008. While reports note some work to clean up the building’s interior, they repeatedly noted Paladino’s failure to correct most of the code violations and frequently mentioned piles of dirt and other debris and overgrown weeds.

The most-current report, dated Dec. 8 of last year, said only three of the 10 original violations have been corrected, while two others were partly repaired. Among the outstanding violations: missing windows, a deteriorated roof, and loose and falling bricks.

I decided to take a visit to the property yesterday to check on progress and ascertain whether any construction activity could be seen onsite. Unfortunately, the building was found to be in worse shape than it was found at the time of Heaney’s last article. This is what it looked like then:

And this is what it looks like today. It would appear that the top of the building, which faces the Seneca Garden Shed/Slot Machine Emporium is crumbing. Click on all images to “embiggen”.

Also noticed while touring the property is that bricks along the eastern roofline are still falling to the ground.

You can see the piles of blue bricks from the “Rich’s Coffee Rich” sign strewn about the grounds.

As Brian Castner wrote a few months back, The Fairmont Creamery is the embodiment of Buffalo.

No single structure in Buffalo combines as many hopes and failures, or as much political pettiness and small time crumb-scraping, as that poor abandoned building, passed daily by tens of thousands on a main highway artery. A gutted, century-old eight-story brick warehouse, it would be at home nearly anywhere within the city, discarded like much of our industry and left to rot.

It is bounded on four sides by an over-large highway, the newish Elk Lofts, rotting steel of a potential casino, and parking lots, each of which individually could have been chosen as a potential symbol of Buffalo themselves. The former Creamery also lies proximate to HSBC Arena, the stagnant Canalside, and the Cobblestone “District” (two streets and three bars does not make a destination), all in their time touted as indicative of Buffalo’s bright future. Sandwiched as it is between the symbol of Buffalo’s population growth and renewal strategy  (loft living), our infrastructure built for a city of twice the size (highway), and the epitome of the power of the lawsuit by the few to stop the development for the many (casino), it could not lie in a better geographic location for selection in the poll, or for actual redevelopment itself.

And yet it waits, like all of Buffalo, for market conditions to be right for investment. Will it be lofts itself? A hotel? Retail and offices? All of the above? We wait to find out, as we could ask the same question for much of shovel-ready and investment-ready Buffalo.

Mr. Paladino should be held accountable for the shame of this building. Held to account to pay the fines and remedy the myriad building code violations he has allowed to fester for a decade. Instead, he is lauded in the city’s business journal for hanging insulting billboards from this derelict property. Those billboards are middle finger to the denizens of a city desperate for a sign of hope and reinvestment.

The blight on our community is Carl Paladino, too bad the Buffalo Business Journal feels he’s just “misunderstood”.

I have a voracious appetite for internet memes, video, podcasts, news and analysis, so each morning I’ll share several that you can read during your “morning grumpy”.

1. Elena Cala is a lot of things; assistant to Buffalo Schools Superintendent Dr. James Williams, former editor of Buffalo Rising, Former Teacher, Mom, and Chanteuse, but she certainly isn’t known for handling the media very well. On Monday, her ongoing Sicilian blood feud with Buffalo News education beat reporter Mary Pasciak came to  a head. You see, Elena and other BPS staff are still upset over an article Pasciak wrote in which she demonstrated that several members of the superintendent’s staff did not hold the qualifications posted for their jobs, including Cala. There have been dozens of other perceived slights during Cala’s dealing with Pasciak, but the outcome of this one was fun to watch.Click through to watch the video tutorial from Elena on how NOT to handle media members who buy ink by the barrel.

My personal dealings with Elena have always been pleasant, but during her short tenure as an employee of Dr. Williams and the BPS, she has earned a horrible reputation as the most difficult press person in the region. That’s saying a lot, as there are a lot of pompous former media pros working in these PR departments around town.

As Pasciak reported in April,

Cala, special assistant to the superintendent for community relations, is supposed to have “seven years full-time experience in public or community relations in a large institution or educational setting,” according to the posting for her position.

The only such experience listed on her resume is a stint as a public relations assistant at Westinghouse Communities of Naples Inc. in 1985.

Cala, who makes $80,000 a year, worked most recently as an editor at Buffalo Rising for four years. Prior to that, she taught at a Catholic elementary school for four years. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Buffalo State College, where she became close friends with Mayor Byron W. Brown.

Questions remain whether it was her connections with Brown, her personal relationship with Joy McDuffie, or her efforts as editor at Buffalo Rising to drive favorable turnout during a critical school board election which got her the job, but Cala will probably not have to worry about dealing with oppositional media much longer.

2. As the seemingly pointless war in Afghanistan drags on, two stories came across my radar screen that I thought drove home the futility of the conflict and the long term human costs.

The BBC’s Ben Anderson spends 24 hours in Afghanistan’s bloody Helmand Province and shares his experience with analysts at VBS.tv.

The utter futility of the entire conflict is palpable. Bring them home.

Meanwhile, the children of our deployed soldiers face horrible conditions in military schools and deal with the mental strain and anguish of their Fathers and Mothers fighting on the front lines half a world away for over a decade.

The shame.

3. This just in from The Brookings Institute. Cleveland, Detroit, Youngstown and Buffalo are among 36 of the top 100 metropolitan areas whose population below the age of 45 declined during the last decade. At the opposite end of the spectrum, college towns such as Austin, Raleigh, Provo and Madison, experienced significant growth in pre-senior population. Think the Mayor or County Executive might be interested in addressing these problems or are we doomed to another couple of years of crumb hoarding at the political poker table?

4. Jon Stewart is America’s finest media critic and satirist and in this clip he very succinctly analyzes the entire strategy of Fox News. Nailed it.

5. Actual news headlines versus Fox News headlines.

6. Every national political reporter who has an opportunity to interview Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney needs to read this article first.

7. Should You Change Your Password?

8. Enjoy 57 minutes of excellence by The Hood Internet.

The Hood Internet - Trillwave by Мишка Bloglin

See ya tomorrow.

On July 12th and July 13th, the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation will host Placemaking Workshops for the Buffalo Harbor Bridge.  Each night is dedicated to a single bridge location - Erie Street and Main Street.  In addition to the "null" or "no build" scenario, these two locations were determined to be feasible alternatives under the scoping process completed in 2010.

The public is encouraged to attend the Workshops, walk the proposed sites, find out about the progress of the project, engage in breakout sessions to address various topics, and provide comments as the ECHDC works toward achieving a community-preferred solution.

Conducting the Placemaking exercise will allow attendees to fully understand the project setting, constraints and context of the crossing location and allow more informed input into the project process.

The project is intended to replace the former South Michigan Avenue Bridge over the City Ship Canal.  The former South Michigan Avenue Bridge once crossed the City Ship Canal in the vicinity of the General Mills Plant and connected Michigan Avenue to Fuhrmann Boulevard; it was rendered inoperable and removed by the City of Buffalo in 1964.

Information gathered at these workshops will be incorporated into the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, expected early 2012.  Because the preliminary scope of the project calls for a low-level bridge, it is likely a moveable structure (e.g., bascule, swing, lift, turntable or other type of moveable bridge).

Workers at Kaleida Health reached a tentative deal on a master bargaining agreement with management.

State audit puts loss at $137,866.

Judge finds Willie G. Cook Jr. guilty of killing an 18-year-old college freshman during a street fight eight months ago.

Attorney general hopes regional public integrity officers will restore faith in government.

Baseball Hall of Famer in town managing his Lehigh Valley IronPigs.

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

Adam Mickiewicz Library & Dramatic Circle presents a night of Disco Polo and Dance Club Flavor featuring DJ RED White & DJ Reminisce on deck spinning the favorites, open bar, 21 & over , $ 2 dollar cover and ladiesget free admission before 10pm , secure parking, for more info contact Greg at 605-3650.

Sunday, July 3 at 7:00pm