Great discussion, even if it did degenerate from the original point.... There is no doubt that the taxpayers in Buffalo are not getting value for the amount that they are paying for basic services, the suburbs are a better value. The Town of Amherst has a very strong leader in Dr. Satish Mohan, and he is at odds with the Amherst Police Department because he won't cave in to every one of their demands, he has asked them to be accountable for their budgets. This is a foreign concept to most of the Town Managers. He has put controls on the use of Town cars and equipment, expense accounts, cell phones, and other amenities that the public employees had grown used to. He has taken things away from the town employees to save money for the taxpayers, and it has paid off so far, but at the price of upsetting the town employees. Anyone who says that WNY can change should look to Amherst to see where the opposition is coming from, it isn't the general public, it is the entitled employees.

When it comes to the City vs. Suburbs debate, I can only offer that I have lived in, and worked in, the city for quite awhile. My friends and colleagues live in the suburbs, mostly in Amherst and Orchard Park, they often ask me why I choose to live in the city instead of the suburbs. They ask in the same tone as one might ask a Vegan why he doesn't eat animal products, as though it is an extreme and foreign concept. I look at the plans and ideas generated throughout Buffalo, and most of them have the common element that our success is contingent on bringing more people from the suburbs to the city. We need the suburbanites to find fascination and interest in the city, they need to realize that there is something here to offer them; the same argument does not occur in reverse. The suburbs do not need the people of the city, they already have the critical mass at their doorstep. Businesses do better in the suburbs, people feel safer, there is less crime, and the suburbanites feel insulated from all the negative things that they perceive come from dense living in the big bad city. I do not subscribe to this point of view, but I have to understand it if I want to counter it.

As others have said, many of our problems stem from the inefficiencies and inadequacies of our local services. The Buffalo schools are substandard, but they are better than most urban schools in the country. The Buffalo Police are highly paid, but they respond quickly and with force when needed. The Buffalo Fire Department is still complaining about being downsized, but they still respond quickly to every fire, no matter what the value of the house may be. Our politicians are ineffective and we always vote the democratic party line, but who can we blame? We vote them in time and time again.

I love the city, but I also understand why we need the suburbs. Instead of competing against them, we should learn from their successes and failure. Instead of treating suburbanites as traitors to the city, we should embrace them and figure out how we can better meet their needs. Many of the suburbs have hit a maximum point of expansion, Orchard Park and Amherst have both denied building requests due to space and traffic issues, sewer capacity, and environmental impact. Maybe we should be looking at developing University Heights as an extension of Snyder and Amherst, instead of an extension of the East Side. Enact some of the same controls that has made Amherst successful, hell work out an arrangement to allow UH students to attend Amherst schools at the City's expense. Try seeing things from a different perspective. The generalizations about the suburbs posted here are no more intelligent or fact based than the suburban perception that the city is all crack fiends, gang bangers, and welfare cases. We know the truth but it takes an open mind to accept it.

Nope, it would be a "figure of speech" if it were exagerations made on behalf of the argument you yourself were supporting. Using such a long list of extreme mischaracterizations of an opposing viewpoint is what makes it staw man.

But either way, I didn't take it seriously - but I just thought it was beneath you since you obviously are very good at communicating your opinions without resorting to the low road of insulting differeing views.

More often than not in these threads, it seems to me pro-suburb people give balance in what they say and are more apt to acknowlege there are some good things about urban life but some factors make them prefer the burbs, whereas pro-city people express things in extremes that demonize all things burb. Seems to me there's a lot more anger and hate around here on the pro-city side toward the burbs than there is vise versa.

I certainly didn't intend to disrespect the volunteer companies. I grew up in a community with a volunteer fire department and I have real admiration for their skill and dedication. If response times like those reported by chiknill are the norm then I stand corrected. I would never have thought volunteers could mobilize their equipment and get on scene as fast as men and women stationed a few feet from their trucks, but I guess I was wrong.

another off-topic comment... but, how do we let the City police union frame the argument over police salaries in light of what ex-cop posted? those numbers, which i understand are correct, say it all. buffalo police are paid very well and i simply do not understand how or why they think they're getting screwed; especially since their employer (the City) is not doing all that well. as i've said before, and as a city home and business owner, how can the city police expect the citizens to be on their side when so many police live outside the city?

BPD - starting salary for 2007 is $44,299 (un-trained) to $57,978 (experienced) annually (per Buffalo Police Website), (not including uniform pay or shift / holiday differential)

Amherst Police - Current base pay without police certification is $39,478 (un-trained) to $46,432 (experienced)(per the Town of Amherst website)

NYPD - starting salary for 2007 is $34,970 Starting salary (including holiday pay, uniform pay and night differential).

Keep in mind that with overtime, many of Buffalo's most experienced and senior officers are making well over $100,000 per year.

The most recent contract negotions called for a $25,000 raise per officer over the next 3 years, to make up for the county's failure to provide raises for the preceding 2 years. This constitutes a 10% - 15% raise per officer / per year over the next 3 years. The BPA also stated that the City would save money by giving a higher rate of increase to make up for overtime that is current paid. They would hire in new officers to handle shifts currently being covered by overtime. This was the argument that was used during every negotiation in the past, yet we still see rampany use of OT as an additional benefit to the BPD.

Sorry for not sticking to the fire topic, but that seems already long gone.

There are already state and federal student finanical assistance programs to fund community college tuition for low income students, not to mention generally available subsidies such as the earned income tax credit, food stamps, section 8 housing, etc., to help fund their other expenses in addition to tuition.

any student who completes high school in the city of buffalo with a minimum attendence and GPA should get a free two year scholarship to ECC.

Nobody decides to become a violent criminal because they honestly tried and failed to obtain funds for ECC tuition. The biggest root cause by far is lack of adult male role models during the early lives of violent criminals, and in many cases lack of adult female role models either.

And besides, as sbrof points out violent crime is not higher in Buffalo than Amherst (all a media conspiracy) so why would there be any need to give special tuition benefits to Buffalo students?

I guess my previous post didn't make the cut because it contained links to the crime data for Buffalo and Amherst. I don't have time to rewrite it, but basically the crime stats speak for themselves, the Town of Amherst is considered one of the safest in the nation with only 1 murder per year compared with 70+ for the city of Buffalo. Violent crime is much higher in the city than in the suburbs, here are the links: http://tinyurl.com/ynu5fk (Amherst) vs. http://tinyurl.com/2xl44v (Buffalo).

Tell me that you would recommend that a new resident to the area should move to East Delevan, East Ferry, or Prospect Ave instead of any of the villages in the suburbs. I want you to convince them that they are just as safe in East Buffalo as they would be living in Amherst or Clarence, because after all there were a few murders in both suburbs over the past few years.

Get over it, there are sections of the city that are profoundly unsafe, the Mayor, the Police Commissioner and 35 uniformed BP officers (most on overtime) canvased the East Side looking for help in solving a totally senseless and random double homicide of 2 teenagers. Let's see if they display the same show of force when the next kid is killed in the coming weeks.

I love the city, I live in the city, but I am not your average citizen! I love it here, but would never allow my family or anyone that I care about live anywhere near the East Side or far West Side, it is just plain unsafe for them.

urbanesque, thank you for clearing that up with facts. My early experience was in a much smaller, more rural, community, where no volunteers were ever "on call" at the fire house, so that possibility(foolishly) didn't occur to me.

I stand completely corrected and wish I'd never taken Tiburon's bait. My apologies to the volunteer companies, I hope you can see how I ended up being mistaken.

A fire department (professional and volunteer) is considered to have arrived to a call 'on-time' if they arrive within 6 minutes of receiving the initial call. The Buffalo Fire Department responded to 97.8% of fires within this time frame in 2007; the Main-Transit Volunteer company in Williamsville responded to 94.4% of fires within this time frame in 2007, the Big Tree volunteer fire company responded to 98.8% within this time frame.

Does it take longer for a volunteer company to arrive? The U.S. Fire Administration (usfa.dhs.gov) reports that it does, especially in congested urban settings. Given the number of fires reported within the city, vs those reported in our biggest suburbs, it looks like the volunteer fire departments are providing the suburban residents a good value for their tax dollars, and the same can be said for the city of Buffalo Fire Department.

From my own personal experience, my best friend from High School has volunteered with the Getzville Volunteer Fire Company for more than 15 years (probably closer to 20). When he is on-call, he is at the station with several other volunteers, they are ready to go as soon as the alarm is received. Other volunteers will respond from where they are, it really is a well run organization, so a 4 minute response time that Chiknlil reports is probably not that uncommon. I would expect to hear a lot of negativity coming from the suburbs, and calls to hire professionals if the volunteer departments weren't working out. The fact is that they work fine, and god knows there are enough of them to respond when needed.

Peace!

In most things, I prefer the city. However, one thing the city lacks is the comfort of knowing a neighbor will respond, within a minute or two, if you are in need of emergency assistance. Granted, the first volunteer may not respond with a truck, but he/she arrives with the knowledge to aide in almost any situation.

Not having the ability to volunteer, within the city, contributes to a lack of community (let the other guy do it, that's what they get paid for). As I said, I prefer the city. But if a loved one fell on the floor unresponsive, it's not where I'd want to be.

RonR said: Sure teachers in the burbs get paid more and have more tools but they are also expected to deliver more.

Actually, Buffalo teachers are the highest paid in the area, Buffalo teacher salaries average $52,248, with a high salary of $89,929 (2005 data). Compare that to NYC Public School salaries (unadjusted) which are $59,983 a year average and a high of $102,201 per year. NYC is a Tier 1 MSA, Buffalo is Tier 3. Compare this to Amherst Central Schools, with an average salary of $46,399 (2005) and a high of around $81,000. Once again, the tail is wagging the dog in the city. Phil Rumore doesn't comapre Buffalo Teacher's salaries to other school districts, he compares them to the already inflated salaries of the BPD and BFD.

Jay and RisingDamp - You both characterize the suburbs as boring without anything to back-up your perceptions. I would characterize the city as boring with the exception of a few small, isolated strips of stores and restaurants, a few museums that aren't always open on the weekends and the bars that are only open at night. I live in the city and wind up driving to the suburbs most weekends to visit friends or shop.

I find the city to be more restrictive and prohibitive than the suburbs, there is always someone in my neighborhood bitching about the things that the other neighbors are doing. They complain that the kids are too loud, or the barbecue is too smokey, the music is too loud or the streets are too congested with parked cars, etc, etc, etc. I find the streets more active in the suburbs, with kids playing street hockey or riding bikes, adults walking in their neighborhoods, and parks that are being used almost every time that I pass by. The shopping malls, strip malls, big box retailers, and just about every other business is bustling with people, I can't say the same for the city. If you categorize this as 'boring' then I would like to know how you perceive the city. The only action that I see in my neighborhood is the police making their weekly visit to the young couple down the street who fight so loudly that we know every intimate detail of their lives, and the occasional robbery or fire in the near by streets. In this regard, there is a lot more happening in the city, but it isn't the good stuff that we want to live next to.

Good point. As a minority from a not particularly low income family, I was able to make $500 to $1000 a semester by attending Buff State. That's not including any of the available loans.

Nothing bad ever happens in the suburbs (even if it actually does)

I wasn't trying to be a troll or cause trouble, I honestly don't feel safe anywhere in the city. Sure I feel safe walking down Elmwood but living on one of the west side streets just off of it? No. I moved here in May from Orlando and got an apartment in Amherst . Would like to buy a house next year and would love to buy one in Buffalo, but honestly every "nice" area I see is surrounded by a run down area with lots of people just kind of standing around - that spells crime in the waiting. I truly wouldn't feel safe living there. The houses are 100 years old, and yes, many of my opinions are likely formed by the media, but I hear reports of crime and fires throughout the city and no such stories in my area. I'm really not trying to attack the city, just maybe gain the right perspective.

There are fires all the time in the suburbs too. Didn't you see in the news there was some kind of suspicious fire in Amherst in some shopping plaza. I guess though this one seems to have been accidental. Look on the bright side, it shows that buffalo has some hope when the fires you hear about aren't all insurance fires. I mean, if that house hadn't been saved, then no one would be living there, and there would have been no fire. This is a true fire of progress, and I look forward to more fires of this kind in the future.

"Us socially conscious urban do-gooder, Democrat types wouldn't be found guilty of fraud."

Knowledgedableone, I can't interpret your comment. Please choose one: 1. Farce 2. Sarcasm 3. Sincerity

I am thinking 1 or 2; 3 is too hard to believe.

Ron R....

I shall have to disagree again.

The residents of Amherst (or any other burb) would allow it to happen. They actually did. They picked up and moved outside the city borders and left the problems behind instead of taking care of them on either a city or regional level. Amherst is not a utopia all by itself out in no man's land that sprung up on its own. If this were the case it would be located all by itself in the southern tier with no crime, poor schools, or any of the ills that come along with any society. Conviently though the ills can be kept a mile or two away across an invisible border and claimed not to be their problem since it is part of a separate data set.

It is very easy for a gov't to look good when a majority of the people are well off. But this is not an issue of gov't. It is an issue of residents. The invisible gov't borders will do nothing to slow down the residents just picking up and moving farther out. We are a society or runners with very few who are willing to put in the effort to save or turn a neighborhood around.

We can see the vacant houses now creeping in to Ahmerst and more so in Cheektowaga along the Buffalo border. There will be no stopping it. Why? Because we have a decreasing population and Lancaster and Clarance want to look good now and pat themselves on the back with thier "amazing growth". They would grow with monkeys at the helm only because of the abundant green fields, lack of legacy costs and being next to the hussle and bustle, yet opposite of the wave of decay, poverty and abandonment. Resident's in the marginal neighborhoods will continue to pick up and leave continuing the wave of disinvestment. I am happy to see it happening so the high and mighty can be snapped out of their dillusions. I have said for years, as people pointed their fingers to Buffalo, that the disinvestment will not stop at the city line and the first ring suburbs will finally have to deal with it too. But no one will take the blame, especially on an individual resident level. They will point fingers to the gov't, pick up and go to Clarence and claim how smart they all are now out there. And so the cycle goes and goes and goes....

I'd be willing to give all power to the burbs if we were to go to a singe county wide gov't just to see how well they would handle school desegregation, poverty, etc. Hell, make it metropolitan Amherst and lets see how they handle and fix 70 murders/yr, etc. Either way the deulsions would be snapped quickly as opposed to the slow process the wave of disinvestment is starting to create as the wave crosses the town lines.

By the way, Mohan is finding out you don't mess with the unions in Amherst either.

The suburbs are just a down right boring place to live. I moved into the city at the beginning of the year and have never looked back. Now I'm trying to convince my empty-nester parents to do the same.

The suburbs are so boring. They have the displeasure of sleeping in their quiet suburban homes without the excitement of nightly gang fights. They are missing out on the nightly parade of drunk idiots screaming and singing at 3:00 AM as they walk home. They sure are missing all the magnificent houses with their gray plywood windows and doors, they are so easy to find with their large fluorescent numbers spray painted across the front. I couldn't imagine the boredom of not listening to my neighbor's arguments as they echo off the buildings and wind up in my living room. I can't imagine how boring it would be to call the police to stop the thief from breaking into my car instead of confronting him directly because the police are too busy with more important crimes. They suburbs are missing out on so much that the city has to offer. The suburbs, completely devoid of any house over 20 years old, with all their absolutely pristinely manicured lawns and professionally decorated houses. They just don't know what they are missing by not living a block from a vacant house, living behind a garage that is collapsing on itself, or living near a vacant lot turned garbage dump. I pity them for all that they are missing!

RonR -- agreed and well put; is it me or virtually everytiem I hear form the mayor (in or on the news) he's talking about police pay. is this the City's most pressing problem deservng of so much attention?

It is all about media and perception, The whole nothing bad ever happens in the suburbs thing is old and false. The bike path rapist, how many people got attacked in Amherst / Clarence?

The poor Dynabrade guy that got killed in his car in the parking lot to be left there for DAYS before someone found him.

People get their homes broken into in every suburb in every corner of the county. The only difference is the news covers those stories differently than crimes in the city, if they cover them at all.

Create subsidized housing and transportation services that keep the poor all contained in one area and it is no brainer why one area is safer than another. Governments and how they handle it are secondary.

A scenario: after the next census, redistribute subsidized housing/reconfigure public transportation equally to each town/city/village etc until the median income is almost eaqual. Then show me how well each of the school districts perform, how great the crime data is etc.

Nothing can stop us from our current class segragation, but at least acknoledge that the areas (aka the city) that has been saddled with the poor and "undesireable" have a much greater hill to climb in order to reach the same rose color statistics as say Amherst or Lancaster.

From 42nate:

Thanks, Auburber and Steel, for puncturing some exceptionally wierd assumptions. One: that in all of human history, Americans alone perfected the place where Nothing Bad Ever Happens--no house fires, no addictions, no domestic violence, no pink slips, no automobile accidents, no thefts, no tumors, no heart attacks

From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Straw man: A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. A straw man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is in fact a misleading fallacy, because the opponent's actual argument has not been refuted.

although perception does play a role on what people think of the city.....with the local news ramming stories of shootouts and fires down our throats (especially Ch. 7)...some of it is totally warranted. Why else would auto insurance premiums be dicated in part by the zipcode of the car owner.....mine nearly doubled when I changed mailing addresses from Kenmore to the West Side...I would never leave the city but you do have to put up with a lot more crap

Tiburon was doubtless just trying to get a rise out of us, but I think it's worth noting that as wonderful, dedicated, and well-equipped as the volunteer fire companies in most suburban communities are, those of us who live in the City has a distinct advantage in cases of fire and medical emergency because of the professional firefighters of the Buffalo Fire Department.

Even with the recent cutbacks in numbers and fire stations, I am sure that their response time is significantly better than the suburban counterparts. The fact that so relatively little damage was done to this house is a credit to the fire companies that responded.

I'd love to move into Buffalo from the suburbs, but every time I turn around there's a news story about a fire always in the city, or someone being attacked, often in a supposedly "safe" part of the city. :(

I like the idea Al-Alo, but I'd imagine you wouldn't be able to limit that to city of Buffalo residents, as it is technically Erie County Community College. I'm sure you'd have to open that up to the whole county, and not to mention, the funding for those scholarships has to come from somewhere (more taxes?). Too many hurdles I would think for such a plan...

nevertheless, that is something that I've never heard before and an interesting plan. Never hurts to hear outside-the-box thinking!

Yeah, not moving to the city cause theres a house fire is the most retarded thing I've heard in a while.

This house was so nice. Too bad.

Maybe now we can have a Super Rite Aid.

Four mintues for a volunteer fire department to respond? They must live right next door to the fire house. Or it was only the captain that drove directly to the scene. But a fire truck with a few firefighters- doubtful unless the volunteers also live right next door to the staiton. And I bet they pulled up with two hook-n-ladders for that stove fire- the boys must have their toys afterall.

What next? Tooth fairy stopped over last night?

MJ....

Some of those people 'picking up and leaving...' (from the first ring suburbs) are relocating downtown, and not out to Lancaster, etc.

Fires don't happen in the suburbs?

quién es más eficaz, (who is more effective) Byron Brown o Satish Mohan?

I was actually asking a question, I am not sure which politician is more effective as a leader, Byron Brown or Satish Mohan... I hear people who love or hate each of them depending on their perspective. I am not looking at this as a City vs. Suburb thing, but really as an honest question about the new leadership in WNY. Any thoughts?

That sucks pretty bad though.

Seems a bit early in the season to be having a fire.