Nate Benson | January 17, 2025

Community-based think tank Partnership for the Public Good unveiled its 2025 Community Agenda Friday morning during an event at Buffalo State University. 

The community agenda is a list of 10 policies, voted on by the partners of PPG, that the organization will focus on to advocate for change. 

According to Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, executive director at PPG, the top policy they will be advocating for in 2025 is the full removal of the Kensington and Scajauada Expressways and the full restoration of the Humboldt Parkway. 

"This is a generational issue," Ó Súilleabháin said. "Over 100 community organizations and nonprofits came together and selected that as the number one priority for the year."

Ó Súilleabháin says that PPG partners want to see highway removal similar to project in with the Rochester Inner Loop and I-81 Syracuse, both of which have received state and federal funding.

"So many of our partners and advocates and local residents have seen other cities have successfully done highway removal, and as the coalition says, why not us?" Ó Súilleabháin said. "It's those residents who opened their doors right onto the Kensington who came and pitched this onto our advocacy agenda."

The East Side Parkways Coalition along with Citizens for Regional Transit and the WNY Youth Climate Council are the leading partners pushing the agenda. Ó Súilleabháin says that the partners vote on the policy initiatives anonymously, and it would be their choice to say publicly if they support the initiative.  

"We know that state government did sit down with community members for many years, and now there is an even bigger, more broad set of the community coming to say this is what we want now," Ó Súilleabháin said. 

The Kensington Project has been tied up in state supreme court since the summer and it is expected that Judge Emilio Colaiacovo will be issuing a ruling soon. The ruling will determine whether or not the NYSDOT has to conduct an environmental impact statement for their now $1.5 billion cap and tunnel project.