...that we're just going to hope it doesn't snow. And so far, it hasn't, so we've been lucky in that, at least.
Actually, there's a lot more to this story than I keep reading on various national blogs. I appreciate the efforts to bring attention to the problem, but it's more complicated than it seems, especially if the source is a local television station (no offense, DU, but here's a better summary of the situation, with only a few intentional heartstring-tugs:
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20041208/1043124.asp).
The County Executive (whatever the hell that is; I grew up in a place with a logical, if vaguely corrupt, local government, and I can't figure out what half the officials in Erie County actually do for a living) proposed two budgets: one that relies on a 1-cent sales tax to raise revenues that will at least curb the cutbacks. That's the "green budget." The other one, the "red budget" (believe it or not, they get their names from the colors of the floppy disks he supposedly submitted them on--county legislators were saying as late as last week that they hadn't seen the "green budget," only the red one), proposes cutting spending on police and firefighters, closing all the libraries, and gutting the cultural attractions.
This week the legislators are fighting like stray dogs with a soup bone over who gets the money from the 1-cent sales tax. Today is the deadline; if they don't pass a different budget, the red one goes into effect.
A lot of people I talk to say that the reason the City of Buffalo is in trouble now is that when a similar measure was passed many years ago the rest of the municipalities in the county got all the money and didn't have to share it with Buffalo. I wasn't here back then, and I find the whole mess pretty puzzling. I live in the city, but unlike many of my neighbors, I wish we'd move to a regionalized government--I just don't want it to be the current county government (which is what the County Executive pushes every chance he gets). They seem to do an awful lot of hiring relatives and friends and paying them exorbitant fees for everything from non-jobs to office furniture, and to me, the County Executive's calls for regionalism seem more like fiefdom-building than government. But a true county government, with an actual PLAN for centralized services, could benefit all of us. Unfortunately, the officials here seem to talk a lot about "plans" without ever actually MAKING one.
When Giambra (the County Exec) proposed the "red budget," most of us with a cynical bent thought he was just trying to get a reaction from the public, which he has; but the thing is, residents of this area already have a pretty high degree of civic involvement, and didn't need to be "mobilized" this way. If anything, especially coming right after the presidential election, many of the people who seem like tireless community advocates (a largely Democratic group) are tired and burned out, and are having a hard time deciding whether to fight FOR the libraries and police or AGAINST the 19% rate hike from our natural gas utility or FOR the vote recount in Ohio or AGAINST NBC and CBS... you get the idea.
In the meantime, the state is being pretty stingy with money to our region--while offering $300 MILLION to NYC for a new football stadium for the Jets. Because the folks in Albany don't seem to realize that anybody actually lives west of the Adirondacks.
All in all, it's pretty depressing to live in Buffalo right now.
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