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Artvoice Weekly Edition » Issue v12n6 (02/07/2013) » Section: Week in Review


Searching For Sergio

Nothing will quite so starkly upset the Buffalo Republican establishment as Sergio Rodriguez’s announcement of his run for mayor of Buffalo, which took place at 1pm in Niagara Square. For Western New York Republicans, Buffalo is a tool used to depress the Democratic turnout for countywide candidates; Sergio Rodriguez, for instance, is Stefan Mychajliw’s worst nightmare. Our new county comptroller—who press-releases a new crisis nearly every day—won last November by a narrow enough margin that the outcome wasn’t formalized until weeks after Election Day. With a proper big-ticket race on the marquee, Mychajliw’s path to a full term becomes hypothetically more difficult. The hypothesis is contingent, of course, on Democrats coming up with a competitive candidate to challenge Mychajliw.

McCarley Gardens: UB Won't Respond to "Ultimatums"

The saga continues to evolve around plans by the UB Foundation to purchase McCarley Gardens—the HUD-sponsored, moderate income housing development that sits on 15 acres adjacent to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus—from the Oak-Michigan Housing Development Fund Company, Inc., a development arm of Reverend Michael Chapman’s St. John’s Baptist Church. UB wants to move the 150 families that live there and knock it all down to make way for future development.

Ohio Street Improvements: Better Plan, Questionable Process

A hearing in federal court this week put environmentalists in an odd position, arguing against a proposition to redo Ohio Street from Michigan Avenue to the Ohio Street bridge as a pedestrian-friendly 35-miles-per-hour urban arterial, instead of a 50-miles-per-hour truck route, which had been the plan.

Small Talk

There has been talk of peacemongering between the Erie County Democratic Party’s new chairman, Jeremy Zellner, and Mayor Byron Brown, who was long at odds with Zellner’s predecessor and mentor, Len Lenihan. Brown even attended an ECDC presidential inauguration party at Zellner’s invitation. But there may be storm clouds on the horizon: The ECDC camp is reportedly looking to replace a Brown ally, Jack O’Donnell, on the Erie County Water Authority, with attorney named Chris O’Brien. O’Brien has been a reasonably big donor to ECDC and its candidates, and gave $2,000 to Zellner’s campaign to become ECDC chairman last year.



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