The creation of the Control Board was the creation of the third party decision maker in Buffalo. It was created as an authority to say NO because Tony and the gang, and all his recent predecessors could never say to No to pay raises, political patronage goodies, no show jobs or eliminating jobs as the city's population declined. The surplus exists because the control board forced the necessary changes to be made to create the surplus. There is no evidence that Mayor Brown has immunity to any of the above mentioned political pressures and traditional practices just because he can tout the efficiency of Citistat or that he can withstand direct assaults from the unions once an immune-from-The Taylor Law Control Board is no longer their main target of anger or every politicians' sympathetically soaked favorite out of having to make the deals that eventually led to the creation of the Control Board in the first place. Does anyone seriously believe that the all of the usual players in deficit creation in Buffalo government won't be at his and the Common Council's front door the day the Control Board goes out of business. In my opinion, The Control Board can be done away with only when the current generation of municipal union leadership and city politicians has moved on from the scene.

Looking at the surplus by itself lacks context.

The BFSA Act should be modified if necessary to keep the control board at full power until long term lower cost contracts are in place for police, teachers, fire, and other employees. In exchange for raises, benefit packages should be reduced and work rules made less stringent. Mayors and Council members are usually very cozy with city unions. The control board represents the taxpayers (city and state).

Otherwise the city would before long slip back into the same mess that caused the control board in the first place.

My confidence in this administration has plummetted to Zero in the past year. No way should they actually gain any power, if anything, the opposite should happen.

Let's ditch the mayor and keep the control board.

Can we get a control board for the Erie County Water Authority, the State Thruway Authority, and the Power Authority? I'd like to see additional scrutiny and governance put on these organizations. What about a State Control Board?

I have an idea, let's take the only thing that's stopped Buffalo's 60 year downward spiral and get rid of it just when it's started to work. That's a F A N T A S T I C idea!!! Whoopee! Let's all go back to shopping ourselves to sleep and looking for good union jobs with the city, or perhaps one of the local utilities.

I like to compare the City to a young child and the Control Board to his parent. Let's say a jar of cookies is left out on the kitchen table and the child comes into the kitchen and eats them all. The parent comes in, scolds the child and puts the cookie jar up on a shelf so that the child is unable to reach it. As time goes by, the cookie jar slowly becomes full again. At that point, would the parent be wise to take the cookie jar down and put it back on the kitchen table? I don't think so!

If the control board keeps us in the black. We need to keep the control board.

Finally the city can purchase the solid gold Dig 'Em sculpture.

So much rare unanimity on an important topic, so it's worth a quick count of those saying directly yes or no -

At least 17 commenters want to keep a strong control board as is.

Zero commenters want it relaxed to advisory status.

Other comments don't say directly (incl. Tony, Joshua, Amir, Zen, Ecb, Drl, Gaustad). Won't count them either way.

17-0. Any politicians reading this want to go on record here with a rebuttal?

I have to agree with the majority of the people who have been commenting. If the control board seems to be working and the city is starting to turn around then why would we want to abolish it? We need it here for a good amount of time until the city can control spending on its own and until the cities projects take shape. Getting rid of it now would just let the "Good Ol' Boys" do what they do best...help each other and nobody else and put the city back where it was, if not worse.

chris69 needs a control board for his posts

ok too much to read but got into this too late. I also think the city should and needs to have the control board. The unions would drain this city dry in a heart beat if they could. Not all of them are bad but the big three are probably the worst offenders as they have the most votes to offer.

I don't think the control board really has any impact on influencing whether or not a developer wants to comes to the city. If anything it is proof that we are not going to be allowed to dig ourselves a deeper grave. Plus knowing that state aid has increased really does deflate these numbers significantly.

Maybe eventually we should get rid of the control boards but for now and the near term I think they should remain, perhaps as someone stated the best action to create a leaner better government will be to merge or eliminate some of them. I likes the article today in the News that said that if the village of OP's government disappeared and everything was handled by the county / town no one would even notice.

sleep8 for mayor

How about we use some of that surplus to fix Pearl downtown by HSBC. If I have coffee from starbucks in my car I have to avoid going down it or else it is spilt everywhere.... There is even a one foot ditch over there that spans the entire right side of the road for a few feet that cars swing to the left hand side to avoid.

I do have to say that I hope this surplus isn't spent all in one place and that the spending trends (cash flow) is utilized in a way that finds a balance between income and services that will prevent us from this embarrassment again.

It appears that the Control Board is working. I have no faith that the City can manage their own finances at any time in the near future. I expect that they will burn through any surplus and put us back into the red within a year of the control board's demise. I expect that our elected officials will give into the demands of local unions (teachers, police, fire, csea) to win votes and to perpetuate the decades of decline. We need the financial control board and we need a government oversight board to reduce waste and inefficiency, add meritocracy on top of that and we have a plan for future growth.

I agree with ben franklin....

Also, We cannot ditch the control board until we get rid of the Garbage User Tax... err fee.

IGNORANTBIGOTWHOHASNEVEREXPERIENCED69

i too have no faith in a control board-free city hall. brown wants the control board gone because he's in the pockets of the unions and so he can use that as one of his triumphs as mayor.

keep the control board forever please. same to erie county.

Now that a nice surpluss is built up the city should take a look at tweaking tax rates a bit somthing like reducing them by 2-3% per year times the nest five years with a goal of 10-15% tax reduction over 5 years. Somthing modest like that would go a long way I think, at the same time ( with a hard control board oversight) negotiate a fresh set of contracts for city and school district employees that can make these modest reductions possible, and sustainable. I know a lot of people will look at this and say 15% WTF you need 50% well to those people I think we have to be realistic, every year we reduce or even hold the line is great, and yes get rid of the garbage fee!!

imagine what kind of surplus we'd have if we could ditch the unions..taxes would be lower, more money spent on infrastructure, colleges, jobs, parks, etc etc etc...

Can we get a control board for nono?

The City is on the right path. A questions I have is: what is a truly healthy surplus for a municipality? Another thing that would help the City bank account would be the sales of the parking ramps and returning these to the tax roles. Spending money on road improvements to streets in the City, that most people would not even call a street, becuase of their poor condition, would be a good thing. Also restoring the brick streets and repaving some of the City streets with brick or cobblestone would be great!

If Brown gets rid of the control board then all I can say is that he is one dumb [deleted] guy and I think others can substitute a more suitable derogatory term.

Look around: abandoned homes and homes that have no hope of ownership without simple things like a new roof, gutters and paint that would be a fraction of the price of demolition or public housing.

Look around: streets need to be repaved, light rail extended, water mains leaking 50%, sewar overflows polluting our lake and rivers at the same time we are trying to increase tourism and waterfront property

Look around: CVB and Film Bureau lost their funding to promote and market Buffalo much less plan for a new convention and conference center

Look around: Idle brownfields and industrial sites and factories and warehouses that need marketing and updating....and well as help building new industries and new warehouses

Our employment base is precarious at best...we are still losing industry and if this subprime mess hits our local banking industry then everything could explode.

Neither the county or the city have reformed anything to produce any efficiencies or cost savings. Infact the majority of the surplus is state aid increases which could be taken away or cut on a moments notice.

and this jackass of a mayor wants to get rid of the only thing that has any capability of balancing union negotiations, especially with an arbitrator....and he wants to do it before any new union contracts are signed.

Brown...your an idiot

Can we use that surplus to build a football stadium?

What a great idea! Freeze wages for successive years and, POOF, we achieve a surplus!. Then, let people like us reorganize the city and spend it. Ingenious. There's nothing quite like "found money."

Yeah Damp, but that's the biggest sin of the CB according to the mayor - them nixing the guard contract. Latest canary in the contract coal mine.

Family Guy..... Nice one zen

BTD, Kevin Gaughan put together thecost.org, in an attempt to get local governments to downsize. His numbers are 439 politicians at $32,140,386. For more information, probably best to check the site.

http://www.thecost.org

...The unions aren't going to negotiate to the control board's wants, especailly since they know that if they hold out, they could very likely receive a ruling from the courts that provide them with all the pay hikes they would have received had the board not came in....

bfloBR - That's probably true, which is why I suggested extending a strong CB until AFTER long term contracts are approved by all parties: mayor, council, the CB, and all unions. Modify BFSA legislation if necessary to make that happen. Eventually unions might offer serious concessions in benefits and work rules in exchange for new contracts with some pay raises. There's no hurry. I'm not demonizing unions or the mayor, but the mayor and council in a city like Buffalo are very politically beholden to unions, the NYS arbitration laws are biased in their favor, and they can often find judges to rule their way as well. The taxpayers (city and state) are represented by a stong CB. I wouldn't oppose adjustment to expense limit for needing approval - say raise it from the $50K you mentioned up to $100K or something reasonable. The important thing is getting long term deals that are much more in taxpayers favor to help correct for so many decades of contracts having grown in the unions favor.

Btw, I think you forgot to mention another big reason the administration and council want the CB gone. Then again, it's so obvious maybe it doesn't need mentioning.

About the crossing guard contract, even the Buffalo News editorial board who supports liberal causes and usually endorses pro-union Dems (Jim Keane, etc.) strongly agrees with control board's rejection. They point out the proposed contract still exceeded what similar cities pay crossing guards. Excerpt from their Jan 8 editorial:

http://www.buffalonews.com/opinion/editorials/story/246164.html

...the control board is right, and Mayor Brown is wrong, on their conflict over the contract offered to the city’s school crossing guards. ...A 23 percent wage hike over three years, plus the continuation of partially paid health insurance that stays with the workers in retirement, are what have caused the board to hold up their own stop sign to the crossing guards. Control board research and common sense suggest that this is unusual for part-time, seasonal employees. That level of benefits is not available to crossing guards in, for example, Rochester and Syracuse. Taking such benefits away from current workers may be too harsh. But those who hire on after a set date ought not to expect such lavish terms. ... if the control board doesn’t have the clout to stop the city from entering into labor contracts that condemn future taxpayers to increasingly unaffordable benefit packages, the problems will never end. ...

I think we took a hard look at their revenue sources to see if the State is the reason we are experiencing surpluses, especially how all the rage lately is how much money the Capital District has rec'd thru Bruno and his barrel of pork. If the city is really producing new revenue sources, and cutting expenditures, to combat both a decreasing residential tax base and a left over supply of services, than this news really says something in five short years.

alikat - It's irrelevant and subjective whether unions are "the root cause of all of our region's problems". That's a wildly extreme standard. What's hard to deny is growing costs in city/union contracts have been a serious problem for many years.

One could argue the CB is undemocratic, but there's other non-elected power involved as well such as contract arbitrators who almost always seem agreeable to union demands over the years. They're also unelected and unaccountable. The mayor and council aren't fully accountable either because they commit future taxpayers to payments well beyond their terms of office. The CB provides good check and balance, its role is limited to matters of fiscal discipline (not policy), and its cost pays for itself many times over.

If more democracy is needed, how about a public referendum on whether a strong control board should continue indefinitely or at least until lower cost contracts are in place?

Just a quick thaught the interest alone on $117 mil probably adds up to somthing in the range of $5-7 million per year, that alone is nothing to scoff at. Do any of you think that some of this let's say even the yearly interest should be aimed at tax relif? I know it's not a lot but the interest is truely " found money"