If your neighborhood block in Buffalo needs work, this is a great year to contact your councilmember. What's usually $400,000 in discretionary infrastructure spending in each district doubles this year.
Between the $25 million in the city's capital budget and the $331 million from the Biden Administration's American Rescue Plan, there's a lot of cash. After bargaining between the Common Council and Mayor Byron Brown, the city's capital budget will provide $400,000 to each district to be used as each councilmember wants, plus another $400,000 in federal stimulus money to each district.
Capital issues vary by district, but Masten District Councilmember Ulysees Wingo said his district can use every dollar.
"We got more for the infrastructure for the city," Wingo said. "Of course, it's never going to be enough. We'll never have enough. We will never — let me repeat — we will never have enough to do all of the things that need to be done in the City of Buffalo, as it relates to our infrastructure, roads, sidewalks, curbs and everything else. But this is a victory for everyone."
Council President Darius Pridgen pointed to the possibilities in those shoddily repaved projects digging up city streets.
"When people dig into the streets and put in new pipes and don't come back and clean up that stuff in the streets and put the new blacktop on. A lot of that happens," Pridgen said. "However, we are now addressing a lot of that, with now increasing the capital budget and also getting $400,000 promised from the American Rescue Plan."
The federal money can be spent immediately. There's an elaborate plan to divide up and spend that cash for city purposes.
Capital budget money can be spent only after June 30. The capital budget is what the city borrows to pay for items like a new fire house or new trucks for the Public Works Department. In late spring, Comptroller Barbara Miller Williams will sell the $25 million in bonds for the fiscal year starting July 1.
