Buffalo Rising Online

This is a list of Career Politicians who accomplish nothing...year after year

Good post. Other than Delaware, central/west parts of Ellicott (downtown, Allentown, BNMC), and east half of North, it's hard to make a strong case for the "corner has been turned" "ongoing decline, what ongoing decline?" optimistic viewpoints when considering big majority of city's geography in other districts - Masten, Fillmore, Lovejoy, west half of North, east halves of Ellicott and University. I don't know much about South. Maybe that's fairly stable.

Gotta love the gerrymandering in these districts. Notice how the Elmwood village is chopped up into four different districts, each then (except for North) runs into neighborhoods that are a majority minority. Like dipping into the "white" areas to keep those votes.

Can see the same thing with Fillmore skirting along the Buffalo river to include the Waterfront village residents.. Come on... like the residents of the waterfront village and Broadway Fillmore are fighting the same battles. University is another one, I don't think that people who live in and around Shoshone park consider themselves university heights residents since there is a large 'natural' barrier between the two.

Do people think this is a good thing? It does create more diverse districts but at the same time I can't help but think it divides obviously congruent identities in the city probably making it difficult to 'get things done.' I can't help but think race was a driving factor in creating these borders.

ah the old days <------ (I was trying to figure out what to post and I decided on that)

Gerrymandering is wonderful stuff. The districts get drawn in ways that have little to do with the way people perceive their neighbohoods. By keeping a lot of Latino's in Ellicott there isn't much chance they can regularly win representation - though it worked in Niagara this time. Looking at the five relatively cleanly drawn boundaries of the police districts (see the city police website) and hopefully a reasonably drawn set of boundaries for the six district seats on the Board of Education (which I couldn't find online), makes you wonder if it isn't time to make school, council and police districts coincide. At the same time wecould revisit further reduction in the nimber of district councilmembers and the addition of one or two at large. That latter suggestion is just a hopeful thought that an at-large presence would provide some city-wide balance, which we had some of in the past, but it does work in other places. Plenty of time to tackle the discussion before the next census and required reapportionment thereafter.

Excellent public service, Queenseyes.

wunder_y, several years ago, a bitter battle resulted in the elimination of the at-large council seats. It was seen as either a way to reduce bloated government or a blatant anti-Black power grab. All of the seats being eliminated were occupied by African-Americans.

Frankster, you're right about how that reduction did eliminate minority representation. Restoring at large seats can actually improve that situation as African-American candidates have done well in past city-wide elections. MRodgers, any reduction in the number of districts would obviously lead to larger districts, and in the case of where you live would likely be comprised of parts of both the current Ellicott and Niagara districts, so maintaining that diversity would not be an issue.

For any who feel the council's racial/ethnic diversity is of extreme importance, they should be totally happy with its composition after Jan 1: about as perfectly matching the city's population as mathematically possible: 55% Euro-American (Franzcyk, Fontana, Kearns, Golombek, LoCurto), 33% African-American (Smith, Davis, Russell), and 11% Hispanic-American (when Rivera takes over the Niagara seat).

According to wikipedia's entry for Buffalo, the city population is:

54.43% White, 37.23% African American, 0.77% Native American, 1.40% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 3.68% from other races, and 2.45% from two or more races. 7.54% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo,_New_York#City_proper

Atwater, you are a master of data and statistics!

I owe it all to wikipedia and such (except for what I make up) - j/k

Are statements like this -- "This is a list of Career Politicians who accomplish nothing...year after year" -- helpful or even honest? I'm sure we could all name a bunch of things these folks have gotten wrong, but we could also name plenty of great things that they've done . . . well, some of them anyway.

Amherst welcomes everyone.. as long as you have the money to afford it.

As for the at large seats being a racial move I actually didn't think it was. If you look at other city's council setup then you would find that in many cities you have either all at large or all district base. The mixing the the two only creates more problems getting anything done as there is little direction that the whole council can take. Who looks out for the overall city's problems (something 3 / 9 at large members rarely could accomplish) so they ended up just joining forces with local council members on pet projects. Sure they were all african american seats at that time but whats the point of representing a sinking ship, the reduction of government was needed and important to moving the city forward.

We could have either moved to have all city wide members or all district but having them both was counterproductive.

its disgusting anyone wud make this a racial topic...put ur race card away. The council has been terrible no matter what color...

I agree with WeLovePanos that race and ethnicity should be irrelevant, and that council members of all races have been lousy for a long time. My point was that having at-large members isn't necessary for racial balance as some claimed in the past, since we now have balance as closely as possible matching our population. There's absolutely no ideological balance but that's due to a big majority of city voters having the political philosophies that they have. I never thought the at-large members took a good big picture view as intended. That sounds nice in theory but in practice it was just more of the same as we have now.

sbrof, there's some lower cost housing in Amherst too. Not as low cost as some streets in really run down areas of Buffalo, but there's certainly some affordable housing there.

Amherst welcomes everyone.. as long as you have the money to afford it.

Couldn't the exact same thing be said for some city streets such as Chapin Pkwy, Lincoln Pkwy, Tillinghast, Penhurst, and quite a few others? "Chapin Pkwy welcomes everyone.. as long as you have the money to afford it" What's the point?

Well the difference is that there are not laws on the books that regulate streets in Buffalo that prevent people of lower means to find a home. Sure there are some older sections of Amherst that have fallen on bad times and their property values have lowered to the point some lower - middle income housing is there. But if you were to build a new home you would have to do so in a manor (size, setbacks, square footages) that prevent even most middle income people from building. It's called exclusionary zoning by the court system and is illegal but very often isn't enforceable until someone, with means, sues.

It isn't just Amherst that does this either many municipalities do it. Wheatfield was open to the news a few years back that they would not allow anyone to build a residential structure for under 150k (or something like that). Often apartment buildings themselves are zoned out or given so many zoning stipulations that it is financially impossible to build them. They can claim what ever reasoning they want but in the end it is classism. Those streets you mentioned all have homes, some converted into apartments that anyone with a steady income could afford. I knew many people in college that lived on these streets with very modest incomes.

There are a whole slew of Land Use Law court cases, most of them rather boring, about this topic.

Sure there are some older sections of Amherst that have fallen on bad times and their property values have lowered to the point some lower - middle income housing is there.

"Some" is nice and vague.

Affordable residential areas include the big Campus Manor complex on roads between Main St and Sheridan near Daemen College, the Boulevard Towers complex near Tops, rentals in many residential streets around French Rd near Sweet Home (Pheasant Run, Sundridge, etc.), as well a big bunch of residential streets near Willowridge off of NFB, about a half dozen streets around Allenhurst, Cambridge, Princeton near North Bailey, etc.

I could go on, and I've never even lived in Amherst but those are just off the top of my head from people I've known.

But no doubt no matter how many streets and complexes I listed you would say it's still only "some" and by your definition not enough. Whatever.

You're more than entitled to your interpretation, but IMHO your implication that Amherst is basically only for upper income people is among the more misleading things I've read on here lately. Yes it has a greater percent of high income people than Buffalo does, but it has significant lower income and a lot of middle income residents too.