In the Regular Meeting, the council sent a few items on to committees for further discussion. One was Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams’ response to the acting mayor’s proposed budget. It is one of the duties of the comptroller to review and respond to the budget. Miller-Williams acknowledged that it’s hard to maintain city services when the city is in a financial crisis. However, she questioned the budget’s reliance on uncertain revenues (like the successful approval and creation of a parking ramp authority). She was, she said, “deeply concerned about the city’s ability to sustain these levels of operations” going forward. This letter will be discussed at the Finance committee on May 6 at 10am.
 
Council members sent some new meeting regulation proposals to the Rules Committee for discussion. This committee meets only periodically—when the council wants to amend the rules that govern their meetings. They will convene on May 6 at 11am. This proposal would restrict what people can wear to meetings, what the public is allowed to say, and who the council will allow to speak; one rule is, in fact, titled “Prohibited Attire and Political Expression in Council Chambers.”
 
Council Member Golombek spoke about the importance of his proposal, “Making it Easier to Run for Office in the City of Buffalo.” When someone wants to run for elected office, the first step is to get signatures from voters. By signing, a voter is essentially saying, “yes, I want this person to be able to run.” Right now, candidates for common council must get 500 signatures to run. However, a candidates’ opponents will usually challenge their signatures and try to get them knocked off the ballot. Because of this, candidates usually try to get double or even triple the number of required signatures to ensure their place on the ballot. Candidates only have about a month to get these signatures, so it can be very difficult to do.
 
Golombek’s resolution asks the law department to draft legislation that would halve the number of signatures required. Under the proposal, mayoral candidates would have to get 1,000 instead of 2,000 signatures, and common council candidates would have to get 250 instead of 500 signatures. This resolution, the council member explained, came from Paul Wolf, the activist lawyer who founded New York Coalition for Open Government. “Mr. Wolfe believes the city’s charter allows us” to do this, Golombek said, and it would lower the barriers to participation in elections. This will be sent to the Legislation Committee for their May 6 meeting.
 
This week, there was a public hearing for the proposed 2025-2026 City of Buffalo budget. This was the one time when members of the public could come and talk about any part of the budget that they love, or hate, or don’t understand. Most speakers talked about the $5 million that the city has slated to build out a new police training facility. They said that this was a misuse of scarce funds, which many in the neighborhood and the city do not support. Others spoke about the fact that the city was once again relying on one-shot revenue deals (like selling the city’s parking ramps) and as-yet-nonexistent legislation (like the hotel bed tax.) Holly Grant, from Arts Services Inc. congratulated the city for budgeting money for frontline arts organizations but reminded them that these funds are almost never actually distributed.