News	Getting Back at Betty by Peter Koch

If you were to ask Betty Tryjankowski what her work on the City of Buffalo’s demolition team includes, she would tell you, matter-of-factly, “Everything.” And she wouldn’t be lying. As an integral member of the city’s Department of Economic Development, Permit and Inspection Services (EDPIS) for the past 10 and a half years, it’s been her job to process all of the paperwork that makes city demolitions possible. She puts together bid packages, she opens the bids, she sends out notices to proceed to demolition contractors, she makes sure the funding is available to pay contractors and then she pays them, she bills the property owners for demolitions, she schedules air monitoring on demolition sites, she processes the information from final inspections and, finally, she enters all of the important data into the city’s Hansen computer system, so it can be tracked by the city. To put it simply, were it not for Tryjankowski working hard and pulling at the reins, the city’s demolition activity would come to a complete halt. And doubtless that is what is about to happen.

That’s because Tryjankowski—lovingly referred to by colleagues as “Board ’em up Betty” for her role in reforming the city’s board-up program—was physically transferred out of her office on the third floor in EDPIS to a first floor office in the Division of Treasury and Collections at the end of 2007. According to a December 11 memorandum sent by Tim Wanamaker to Tryjankowski’s commissioner, Richard Tobe, the transfer came at the recommendation of a secretive Billings and Collections Taskforce, formed, no doubt, at the behest of Deputy Mayor Steve Casey. The memo states, “…the Taskforce has determined that significant changes need to be made to the current process of billing and collecting demolitions and board-ups in the Department of Economic Development, Permit and Inspection Services. The report submitted by the Taskforce indicates a significant decrease in revenues generated by the department from $6.5M in 2002-03 to $3.2M in 2006-07.” To address the problem, the memo recommended Tryjankowski be transfered “no later than December 24, 2007.”

But Tryjankowski claims that the taskforce is flat-out wrong. “Those numbers aren’t correct at all,” she says. “They were looking at a really tiny portion of the stuff that was on one of the computer systems, the old one.” In fact, she says that since she changed the board-up billing system in 2005, collections revenues have been on the increase. The more recent information is stored on the city’s newer computer system, Hansen, and has been entered there since 2004. And even if the memo were correct about the numbers, it offers no clear solution to the supposed revenue dilemma. In her new post, Tryjankowski is ostensibly charged solely with the processing of board-ups, their billings and collections. The transfer, she says, “is kind of like being sent to Siberia.”

In a strange twist of fate, however, the new post is really the opposite of a work camp. Because Betty was on vacation when she was supposed to be transferred, it became effective on her first day back, January 2. She returned to City Hall to a stack of fresh bills to process for board-ups performed by the city’s clean-and-seal crew. It took her only two days to process the paperwork, and then she was done. For the week. “The work that they’ve assigned me to do comprised about five percent of my previous job,” she says, clearly disturbed. You see, Betty is a good worker, concerned with filling out her job description effectively and efficiently. She’s done so in various posts as a civil servant in the City of Buffalo for decades. This month marks her 33rd year with the city. And all of this sitting around idly while demolitions languish has Betty stressed out, so much so that she’s out on sick leave until February 1.

If something doesn’t seem right about this whole situation—a taskforce working in secret, a respected, efficient employee set adrift, a demolition program put in jeopardy—there’s probably good reason for it. Here’s the rub: Although she’s only met the mayor once in person, Betty Tryjankowski has had another, more publicly adversarial relationship with Mayor Byron Brown’s office. Think back, if you will, to a February night in 2007, when the mayor’s SUV was “stolen” from his house, crashed into several vehicles in the neighborhood of Canisius College and abandoned. We all know now, of course, that it was the mayor’s son, Byron III, who took the vehicle joyriding. One of the vehicles that he damaged, a small pickup, belonged to Betty’s college-aged daughter, Janelle Tryjankowski. In early April, while the story was unfolding, Betty’s husband, Stephen, and daughter appeared numerous times on television news and were quoted by the Buffalo News about the incident. But Betty never approached the media, and she asked that she not be quoted or pictured in the news. As was the case with this article, the media sought out the Tryjankowskis; they didn’t go in search of a media circus. But eventually her name appeared in print. In an April 7, 2007 article, News reporter Brian Meyer quotes Betty thusly: “‘But I don’t believe the son was lying to his parents all this time,’ said Betty Tryjankowski. ‘I believed it was a concerted effort to cover it up.’”

And that, you could say, is where she gets herself in trouble. Free speech is not a highly regarded right now in City Hall, and publicly accusing the administration of a coverup is akin to workplace suicide.

The main reason that the Tryjankowskis were concerned about the whole incident in the first place was because the mayor’s insurance—Allstate—wouldn’t release the money to pay for repairs to Janelle’s truck until the case was deemed something other than a genuine theft. So, the longer it took for Byron III to reveal that he was behind the wheel—a fact that surprised almost nobody save for the mayor—the longer it would be before Janelle had an operational vehicle. By the time the truth came out six weeks later, the Tryjankowskis had already begun repairs to the crippled truck. The force of the impact had spun the truck 180 degrees in the accident, ruptured the gas tank and rammed the exhaust system into the engine. To make matters worse, two months later, after Allstate had paid off on the accident, the truck’s head gasket blew and it died anyway. And then the mayor’s office accused the Tryjankowskis of “running to the media” and making the mayor’s car caper into a bigger deal than it really was.

So is this whole situation the result of a long-held vendetta by the mayor’s office against Board ’em up Betty? It’s the explanation that makes the most sense, simply because no other explanation makes any. Everyone who works with Betty—from her commissioner to her director to her direct colleagues—supports her, and warned against transferring her to another department. Her work is integral to the functioning of EDPIS. When the Billings and Collections Taskforce was told that they had looked at information from an old system, it neglected to inspect the correct, up-to-date information held on the Hansen database. And now everyone’s suffering, particularly the demolitions contractors who aren’t getting paid for their work. Several contractors have reportedly sought audiences with the mayor to discuss Betty’s situation, but none have been granted. Things have gotten so bad, in fact, that a number of asbestos and demolitions contractors are holding a rally in support of Tryjankowski this Saturday.

Where does that leave Mayor Brown’s much-touted five-in-five demolition program? It’ll be hard to demolish 5,000 structures over the next five years if there’s nobody in City Hall to process them.

Above all, though, she just wishes the situation would disappear, and she’d be free to return to her old job. “I just need to be left alone to do the work that I’m supposed to do,” Betty says, finally. “If only I’d be allowed to do the work I’m supposed to do.