1. Chris Collins submitted a wild-ass guess as to what the county’s revenues and expenditures will be over the next four years.

2. The appointed, unchecked county control board has its own wild-ass guesses as to the next four years’ county finances.

3. The control board rejected Collins’ four-year plan. No soup for you.

4. The law creating the control board suggests that the control board ought to now bring up a counterproposal representing its own wild-ass guess.

5. The control board will do no such thing, remaining perfectly happy to pick hypothetical nits and come up with unique ways to say “no”.

6. We need Governor David Paterson to grow a pair on this issue and reconstitute the board with people who are less political and more professional. Ever hear much controversy coming from the Buffalo control board? No, because the political agenda is not there.

The amazing expansion and renovation that the Pearl Street Grill & Brewery in downtown Buffalo has undertaken in recent years has been incredible. From upstairs expansion, the new outdoor decks and patios, its commitment to local businesses and the local economy, to the fact that it employs 111 people and contributes to the livability of this city, it is a business that deserves the benefit of the doubt always.

That’s why this story in today’s Buffalo News incensed me so.

The Preservation Board of the City of Buffalo is unhappy with Pearl Street’s recent changes, most recently including a corner sign depicting its new mascot, “Lake Effect Man”. Branding is an important component to a business like Pearl Street with ambitions such as the ones described in the article - to be the largest selling brewpub in the world.

“[Going before] the Preservation Board has been a terrible experience,” Ketry said. “They don’t respect anything that has to do with the private sector. They have these pie-in-the-sky notions and don’t get what it takes to create growth in a business environment.”

But the board considered Ketry’s proposals excessive and out of line for a street known for its variety of historic buildings. They include the recently restored Webb Lofts two doors down and the terra-cotta Guaranty Building at Pearl and Church streets.

“Should an 1840s building be a spectacle? Not in a historic district,” said Russell Pawlak, a board member. “It diminishes the beauty of the building. It’s death by a thousand cuts.”

“They have far and away exceeded what we thought would be appropriate for that building,” said John Laping, board chairman.

Laping said the Common Council should not have overruled the Preservation Board without seeking its advice.

Ellicott Council Member Brian Davis, who has come to Ketry’s aid, said he thought Pearl Street’s contribution to the local economy overrode other considerations.

“Buffalo can’t be afraid to take steps that are going to put more attention on the city in a positive way. I thought [the changes] would help bring more people to downtown,” Davis said.

The Council member said he considered Ketry’s role in making the business a success and the 111 people in his employ. None of the changes, he added, was necessarily permanent.

“Everything he has added to the building can be removed. It’s not permanent in nature; it’s nuts and bolts,” Davis said.

That quaint brick 1840s building was built to house a commercial entity. The fact that it still houses a viable commercial entity in 2008 is astonishing. Especially in this city. The changes that Pearl Street is making to the facade and structure in order to maintain and grow its business do not detract from the history of that building, or from its beauty. It’s not as if Pearl Street covered the brick with vinyl. It’s not as if Pearl Street ripped the whole thing down to build some sort of Dryvit-laden Panera Bread lookalike.

Let Pearl Street thrive.

(Photo by the Buffalo News’ Harry Scull)

Ricky on obesity (caution: language):

LITERACY VOLUNTEERS ANNOUNCES NEW OPPORTUNITIES TO BECOME VOLUNTEERS!

INFO SESSIONS PLANNED FOR THOSE WITH DESIRE TO HELP FOLKS LEARN TO READ AND/OR SPEAK ENGLISH-SESSIONS PLANNED IN TONAWANDA AND AMHERST TOO!

WHAT: Literacy Volunteers will hold “Power of Words” Information/Orientation sessions to showcase the organization and its’ multi-faceted work, and to present volunteer opportunities that are screaming to be filled. We currently have 63 students waiting to be matched with a tutor.

WHEN: Wednesday, May 14th at 8 am at LV

Thursday, May 22nd at 7 pm at Brighton Place 999 Brighton Tonawanda

Wednesday, May 28th at 6 pm at LV

Thursday, May 29th at 7pm at Barnes & Noble, 1365 Niagara Falls Blvd.

WHERE: Literacy Volunteers Headquarters (LV) 1313 Main Street at the corner of Riley/Parking lot and entrance in the back

***UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED such as May 22 and May 29***

WHO: All those who want to do something positive-that will truly help turn someone’s life around!

WHY: Because if you don’t do it who will?????

Because 30% of the City of Buffalo and 20% of Erie County are functionally illiterate!! 43% of adults with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty. 76% of adults on public assistance are functionally illiterate. Recent studies indicate that over half of Buffalo’s children enter kindergarten without the necessary skills to succeed. Our students achieve success as a result of our services.

For more information, contact Tracy Diina at 876-8991 or 208-1064

www.literacybuffalo.org

The NFTA recently transformed a lot of its buses to diesel/electric hybrids. So did Toronto’s TTC. But in Toronto, they discovered this:

Toronto’s new and expensive hybrid buses are saving less than half the amount of diesel fuel the transit agency - and the governments that paid for them - claimed.

The Toronto Transit Commission and the federal, provincial and city governments said as recently as March that the new hybrid diesel-electric buses - which cost $734,000, compared with $500,000 for a conventional bus - were using 20 to 30 per cent less fuel.

But the TTC’s current fuel-savings estimate, incorporated in its 2008 budget after tests on the new fleet last summer, is just 10 per cent - although officials expect that number to improve.

Since hybrids only make sense in stop-and-go, heavy traffic*, I’d wager that the fuel savings in the Buffalo-Niagara region is even lower still.

The NFTA says:

Metro estimates a 25% to 30% reduction in fuel based on the efficiencies of the hybrid drivetrain.

If Toronto is getting 10 - 20% savings, I’d bet that we’re getting 5 - 10%. If that.

*The hallmarks of hybrid engines are engine start/stop, occasional electric propulsion, and brake regeneration. For that to make sense, you need to be stopping and braking a lot. Hybrid vehicles make zero sense in zero traffic WNY.

President Bush took time out in Israel today by accusing Democrats of being modern-day Nevilles Chamberlain.

In a particularly sharp blast from halfway around the world, President Bush suggested Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats are in favor of “appeasement” of terrorists in the same way U.S. leaders appeased Nazis in the run-up to World War II.

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

The remarks seemed to be a not-so-subtle attempt to continue to raise doubts about Obama with Jewish-Americans. Those doubts were already stoked by Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, when he recently charged that Obama is the favored candidate of the terror group Hamas.

We have not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979. Have we changed their regime? Have we changed Iran’s behavior on the world stage? Have we put a stop to Hezbollah or Hamas by refusing to talk with them? We have not had diplomatic relations with Cuba since 1961. Did that stop Castro? Did that democratize Cuba? What a load of ignorant horseshit.

In 1939, as Hitler began his march across Europe, there were many, many people who wanted to avoid another world war, given the utter devastation that the first one had had on the continent. The appeasers of that time actually ceded control of territory to Hitler based on his promises that he’d be all done grabbing territory once he had the, e.g., Sudetenland.

That. Is. Not. What. Is. Being. Suggested. Here. You know who’s saying stuff like, “maybe we give the Golan Heights back to Syria in exchange for peace?” Israel. That’s who.

What harm is there to hold talks with nation-states that are our enemies? That it conveys some sort of legitimacy to them? Their legitimacy - or lack thereof - is an internal matter. If a particular government holds a seat at the UN, or holds itself out to be the duly constituted representative of a country, there’s little we can do to change that. What basis does the US have to challenge the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s regime?

For too long, this country has held a country’s good behavior as a prerequisite to high-level discussions. (Except for poorly-behaving countries that have oil or are anti-Communist or otherwise agree to promote US interests in some way). So, we’re being hypocritical about it all from jump street.

Does it not cross anyone’s mind that talks might lead to good behavior? Yes, Syria and Iran are causing havoc in Lebanon right now. Well, the Lebanese government is useless, we don’t talk to Iran, and we’re loath to talk to Syria (even though the Israelis are working towards doing that, using Egypt as a go-between). These countries with whom we refuse to speak are like the problem kid in school who thrives on negative attention. Sometimes, the carrot works a whole lot better than the stick.

But…um…here’s my question. Isn’t what Bush did here supposed to be off-limits?

When a Dixie Chick - a Dixie Chick had the bare-faced gall to criticize Bush to a UK audience, she was excoriated for being a traitor, or worse. But the President of the United States - it’s ok for him to launch an attack on an opposing US party from a foreign country?

If Obama had launched an attack on George W. Bush from somewhere off US soil, the media - left and right - would have a fricking field day. George Bush? The one who honors dead American servicemen and women by not playing golf? It’s ok for him.

But the long and short of it is this: Talking with our enemies does not equal appeasing them.

Obama responds:

“It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack,” Obama said in the statement his aides distributed. “George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.”

January 2009 can’t come soon enough.

UPDATE: Check out Joe Biden’s reaction:

“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement…

“He is the guy who has weakened us,” he said. “He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It’s his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.”

Biden noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both suggested that the United States ought to find a way to talk more with its enemies.

“If he thinks this is appeasement, is he going to come back and fire his own cabinet?” Biden asked. “Is he going to fire Condi Rice?”

The Buffalo News reports today on a retail project that is proposed to be built on Transit Road in Clarence near County Road. Given the demographics surrounding that area, it’s not surprising that projects such as this are being proposed for that corridor.

The Wellesley, Massachusetts-based developer has a website up showing renderings of the proposed “Carriage Court at Clarence”.

The renderings make it appear to be an upscale shopping plaza (.pdf). Nothing particularly new or different. So, I have a suggestion.

Do you see in the site plan (.pdf) how the bulk of the parking is surrounded by retail? How about reversing that. Put the parking in the back, put the retail in the center, and run a tree-lined little pedestrian area down the middle, sort of like how Benderson proposes to do with its Amherst Centre project on Maple (.pdf).

In 2008, this is how you do it:

Also, kudos to both Benderson and Berkshire for putting the plans on their websites so that one doesn’t need to traipse to town board meetings to see what’s what.

Saw this at Andrew Sullivan’s site, and it made me laugh:

Direct link to the video at Channel 4 is here.

The largest Apple store in the world opens on Boston’s Boylston Street on Thursday morning. It is located just inside Boston’s famous/infamous Back Bay Architectural District. Let’s just say that this organization does not make it easy for developers in the tony Back Bay.

Here’s what the store looks like:

(Photo courtesy CKelly at Flickr)

The store is literally eight years in the making, and the preservationists did not make this remotely easy for Apple.

Preliminary design proposals for Apple Computer’s first Boston store got a cool reception last night from the Back Bay Architectural Commission, but several commissioners said a revised design might address their concerns.

Apple hopes to demolish a small building at 815 Boylston St., which is occupied by a Copy Cop store at street level, and build a flagship store across from the Prudential Center.

Projects involving the demolition of an existing building in the Back Bay Architectural District generally require the commission’s approval

Sounds almost Buffalonian, no?

One concept presented was a three-story building whose front would be largely glass. The building would likely have a green roof, said Bob Bridger, an Apple vice president of retail development.

Glass. Green roof. Definitely modern. Definitely different, given the brownstone-y nature of that neighborhood. But this is the quote that helped to underscore how similar Buffalo and Boston are:

Donna Prince, an alternate on the commission, acknowledged that the design was ”beautiful,” but that it ”doesn’t have a sense of place.”

Luckily, Apple prevailed, and the glass, green building opens tomorrow for business.

Here’s the building with “sense of place” that it replaces:

Photo courtesy Clarkwood at Flickr.

If you haven’t read Dana Milbank’s piece in today’s Washington Post likening Hillary Clinton’s campaign to the parrot in the Python sketch that’s not dead, but pining for the fjords, you should do so…. NOW!

I especially love this passage:

2:57 p.m., Yeager Airport, Charleston, W.Va.: A steep descent brings Clinton’s plane to Charleston’s hilltop airport. After an appropriate wait, she steps from the plane and pretends to wave to a crowd of supporters; in fact, she is waving to 10 photographers underneath the airplane’s wing. She pretends to spot an old friend in the crowd, points and gives another wave; in fact, she is waving at an aide she had been talking with on the plane minutes earlier.

Oh, and since I know you want to watch it now, here ya go:

From the Daily News:

John Edwards, whose own bid for the Democratic presidential nomination ended in January, will throw his support behind former rival Barack Obama, the Illinois senator’s campaign announced.

Edwards is scheduled to endorse Obama at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, this evening.

Edwards, 54, quit the race Jan. 30 after failing to score a victory in the first four nominating contests. He remained on the sidelines as both Hillary Clinton and Obama sought his backing.

Marc Arbinder even had Edwards’ private flight tracked as a “hint”.

Edwards has 16 pledged delegates, and he will urge them to switch to Obama. And they probably will.

From another local website, Republican County Legislator, and candidate for SD-61 Michael Ranzenhofer writes:

Michael Ranzenhofer (R), a veteran of 19 years as a county legislator from Amherst, is off and running as the expected Republican candidate for the State Senate seat being vacated by retiring Mary Lou Rath.

“Spending is out of control in Albany,” said Ranzenhofer in a telephone interview … “My platform will be about cutting spending, reducing taxes, and eliminating the terribly burdensome regulations that drive up the cost of doing business in this state.”

As a county lawmaker, Ranzenhofer says he never voted for a tax increase. The lawyer/legislator also said he has tried to cut wasteful and unnecessary spending, pushed for road and bridge repairs, and helped restore the ranks of volunteer fire fighters by offering an education incentive similar to what is offered by the military for years served. The “V-Fire” program allows for fire fighters with at least five years experience to become eligible for free education at Erie Community College.

He never voted for a tax increase, and he didn’t do a whole lot to battle spending increases. He was instrumental in promoting the Giambra budgets that led to fiscal disaster. He is loath to lend any support to rank-and-file county workers, but went along with every single request for a variable minimum put forth by Giambra and Collins (a variable minimum is a way for the government to give a candidate for an appointed county job years’ worth of seniority on day one - and an instant pay raise).

He never voted for a tax increase, but one of the gimmicks he pushed for time and time again throughout his time on the legislature was for a gas tax holiday. Unfortunately, gas taxes happen to pay for road maintenance, and if one was to ask his constituents on Tonawanda Creek Road in Clarence whether that road has properly been maintained, I think they’d give you an earful. The road slid into the creek years ago, and hasn’t yet been fixed.

As for the county budget crisis of a few years ago, Ranzenhofer says he stood up against the political establishment and the power brokers by refusing to go along with the one percent sales tax increase without accompanying spending cuts.

“I insisted we must have cuts to go with tax increases, and frankly many people backed away [from me],” says Ranzenhofer. “But I held fast that we can’t do business this way and I was the first legislator to favor a control board because no information about our finances was forthcoming from the county executive’s office. I thought we needed a control board to make sure fiscal discipline was re-established.”

Think about that for a second there. He had been in the legislature for about 16 years before the budget crisis came down the pike, and he was the majority leader during the run-up to it. He was supposed to be that control board - the legislature is a check on the executive’s power, yet Ranzenhofer and the other Republicans in the legislature behaved as if it was a rubber stamp for anything and everything Giambra wanted.

That led to a $200 million budget deficit that had to be plugged.

Yes, he’s made noise about spending cuts, but when the budget crisis was in full effect, and legislators met with Giambra during late-night and weekend sessions to figure out what would get cut, and by how much, Ranzenhofer was absent. It’s so easy and convenient to bleat on about how we need to find $200 million in spending cuts.

But when the hard work came along to figure out where the cuts would be made, he let others do the work and take the heat.

He claims to want to work bipartisanly, yet he has no record on which to run, and no evidence of bipartisanship exists there.

In essence, Ranzenhofer is saying that the county needed the hard control board to clean up what was partly his own mess.

Now that the county has a control board, which currently is at odds with the county executive over borrowing for capital improvements, Ranzenhofer says he still favors a hard board “but I think the time will come where they can go from hard to soft where in the past I felt a hard board was essential.”

Ranzenhofer says if elected to the 61st District seat, which includes the city of Tonawanda, Town of Tonawanda, Amherst, Clarence, Newstead, and all of Genesee County, he will work in a bipartisan fashion to get things done.

Republicans are expected to put plenty of resources behind Ranzenhofer’s bid to keep the seat in the GOP aisle, given the very slim majority Republicans hold in the Senate.

For his part, Ranzenhofer says, “I think the importance [of the seat] is that if it goes from the Republican side to the Democratic side, it could change the over-all balance of power in the state and we would, in effect, have one-party rule which includes the governor. Taxes would skyrocket and spending would go way up. We would also see a very liberal fiscal and social agenda.”

One would hope that the importance of the seat is to represent one’s constituents in Albany. One would hope that the importance of the seat in this day and age is to work for change and reform in a dysfunctional state legislature.

But then, we’re talking about the guy who voted against the creation of the County Charter Revision Commission, so we’re unlikely to see any push for reform from him.

Spending went way up under Giambra and the Republican county legislature.

Ranzenhofer, who said he is also seeking minor party backing, says he is out every night, going from place to place throughout the district, talking to one and all about his candidacy.

He’s been in the County Legislature since 1989. The question that he should be asked over and over again: What is your record?

Hand it to him for one thing - he sure has vast experience dealing with dysfunctional governmental entities.