Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown sat down with us to chat about everything from the new memorial to road construction to the Clean Sweep Program.
The African American American’s Veterans Monument opened on Saturday. The mayor say, “It was really an emotional moment for everyone that was there, the first monument of this type not only not only in the nation but in the world honoring the service and sacrifice of African American veterans who have fought in all twelve American wars, serving in every single branch of the service. I want to just commend the African American Veterans Monument board of directors and my colleague in government, majority leader of the New York Assembly Crystal Peoples Stokes who was really a champion of this project and through her work and efforts, with the board got the monument built.”
Mayor Brown is heading to our nation’s capital. Mayor Brown says, “On Wednesday I will be a speaker for United States senator Cory Booker. He is holding a panel discussion during the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss community-based strategies for public safety to make our community safer from gun violence; what we can do to accomplish that.” He says since the mass shooting in Buffalo on May 14th there have been 288 additional mass shootings in our country.
There is a lot of construction in Buffalo. The mayor says there is a lot of construction, a lot of affordable housing opening, a lot of affordable housing breaking ground, housing of different income levels opening but also street repair and construction. He says, “We are spending tens of millions of dollars on repairing streets in the city of Buffalo, all across the city, so please excuse our dust, there is a lot of construction. That construction will continue: We have been very fortunate to get significate federal and state money in that will give us the ability to do a lot of infrastructure work, a lot of road repair work and for those of you who have been concerned about our roads, we will be doing repairs in every single section of the city of Buffalo.”
The mayor also gave an update on Clean Sweep Program. He says it is a data driven strategy to identify blight in neighborhoods across the city and over a one-day period of time to remove that blight. This coming Tuesday he says, “We will be at 26th clean sweep of the year where they replace street signs, trim vacant lots, assist seniors with grass cutting, with heavy trash pick-up so, anything you can think of to remove blight, to improve quality of life in communities from A through Z we do through the Clean Sweep, with Clean Sweep partners, not-for-profit organizations, private sector organizations, county, state and sometimes federal organizations as well all working with city crews.” For more information on this call 311.
