The Buffalo Common Council approved an amendment to the City of Buffalo’s American Rescue Plan Act Spending Plan in a special session Thursday. That amendment involves cutting almost $60 million earmarked for frontline community groups to plug the city’s budget gaps.
It has taken two years for the city to decide how the money should be spent.
"I don’t want the blame to lay at the foot of this council," said Majority Leader and Niagara District Councilman, David A. Rivera, who blamed the city's executive offices for the delay in getting the money out of City Hall, and to the communities it is intended to support.
"We have asked for two years now to release this money, to send the budget amendments, and I know those organizations are doing great work out in the community. And certainly, those services are very important. At the same time, we have to deal with our budget shortfalls," Rivera said.
But neither Mayor Byron Brown’s administration, nor the Common Council, has specified the exact revenue deficits the money will fill. That’s a problem for the Partnership for the Public Good’s Executive Director, Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, whose organization sent a letter to the council urging them to hold off on approving the cuts, due to legal concerns.
"We've been raising concerns this week about this $60 million cut because of the impact of removing it from programs that would have impacts across all of Buffalo's council districts, and instead, moving this into the general revenue replacement line. And a real issue here is that we still have not been told specific information from the Mayor's administration of why? What are the specific budget gaps to be filled?," Ó Súilleabháin said.
One of the groups hit by the cuts is the Frontline Arts Organizations Fund, who are a coalition of Buffalo arts groups. Almost 80% of their proposed funding has been slashed.
"I mean, it's really quite disheartening," said Zainab Saleh, the executive director of Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Arts Center, a member of the coalition. "That money could have been used to do something quite significant to stabilize organizations that are already functioning in such a precarious organizational way. Instead, now we are looking at something around half a million dollars. We're a lot of organizations competing for a smaller amount, and the funds are really just going to be Band-Aids to try and keep us afloat, when they could have been doing so much more."
The city of Buffalo received $331 million in federal ARP money in 2021, intended to bring relief to communities struggling due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Brown administration’s original spending plan already allocated $100 million of that money to shore up the city’s revenue loss. With the cuts approved by the Common Council Thursday, almost half of the city’s total ARP funds will now fill its own budget shortfalls.
