BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — After being elected to an unprecedented fifth term in November 2021, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has announced he plans to resign from office to become the next president and CEO of Western Regional Off-Track Betting.
He's leaving the second-floor office to Interim Mayor Chris Scanlon.
Brown sat down with 7 News Political Analyst Bob McCarthy about stepping down from office and taking the top job at OTB. You can watch the full conversation below and read more here.
Brown, who was first elected in 2006, leaves behind quite a legacy as the first Black mayor in the City of Buffalo.
Northland Workforce Training Center
Among his list of accomplishments, Brown was most proud of the redevelopment of the Northland Avenue corridor. It's something he'd been pushing, since his time on the Buffalo Common Council in the 1990s.
In his biography on the City of Buffalo website, the mayor explained this "transformed an idle industrial site into a state-of-the-art workforce training center, combined with new business operations."
Construction of the Northland Workforce Training Center began in 2018. The center was part of a $120 million investment on Buffalo's east side.
Center President and CEO Stephen Tucker said the skills taught at Northland are in high demand. “We're projecting the need to fill 20,000 jobs in the next 10 years due to retirement. Both the advanced manufacturing and energy sectors have an aging workforce and a nonexistent pipeline," he added.
Tucker said jobs in those fields start at around $45,000 a year.
The mayor also touted "the sale of a city-owned parking lot for the purposes of development which has since been transformed into the Buffalo Sabres organization’s popular $200 million HarborCenter," at Canalside.
Watch: Northland Workforce Training Center expands programming
Buffalo's population rises
Under Brown's tenure as mayor, 2020 census data showed Buffalo's population went up 6.5% over ten years.
It was the first time the population had gone up in four decades.
People who were living in Buffalo at the time were younger than the rest of the state. The median age in Buffalo was just under 33.5 years old compared to 39 years old for all of New York.
"The fact that we've seen an increase of diversity means there is an opportunity. It means we'll have more diversity in terms of our representation, in terms of people in positions of our not-for-profit organizations and all those things will bold for Buffalo in the next 10 years," Director of CAO Better Schools Better Neighborhoods, Sam Radford said.
Buffalo's fiscal oversight moves from "control" to "advisory" or "hard" to "soft"
When the mayor first took office in 2006, he inherited fiscal problems that the state had been working to correct. The Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority had been established to deal with the instability of the city's finances.
It was operating under "control" or "hard" rules.
But on May 29, 2012, according to a report from the Buffalo Financial Stability Authority, a decision was made that all provisions of the BFSA Act with respect to transitioning into an advisory period had been met and resolved to enter into an advisory period effective July 1, 2012.
At that time it moved from "control" to "advisory" or "soft" rules.
That "advisory" period runs through June 30, 2037. The report explains that advisory period will continue "unless a control period is reimposed."
It hasn't been all roses, though.
FBI Raid at City Hall
In November, 2019, the FBI and the IRS raided an office on the third floor of Buffalo City Hall.
Two large carts were rolled out of City Hall. They were wrapped with tape and blue tarps.
It turns out, those agents raided the Office of Strategic Planning, which helps rebuild neighborhoods. An FBI spokesperson said they were doing "court authorized activity."
Brown's Office of Strategic Planning includes two agencies:
- Buffalo Urban Development Corporation and
- Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency.
Federal officials would not detail the extent of the "court authorized activity," but said the focus of the raid was City Hall.
No arrests had ever been reported as a result of this raid.
Walton vs. Brown
Before he won a historic write-in campaign, Brown lost the 2021 Democratic primary to India Walton.
Walton secured 11,132 votes (51.9%) across the city's nine districts to Brown's 9,625 votes (44.8%). There was no Republican running for mayor at the time.
Walton's strongest support came in her home district of Niagara, where she outperformed Brown by nearly a three-to-one margin. Brown secured 26% of the total vote in the district, compared to the 53% he won in the 2017 primary against Mark Schroeder - a drop of 27%.
Brown won his home district, Masten, securing 424 more votes than Walton. But even his home turf was less friendly than it had been. The mayor won 55% of the vote, down 13% from 2017 when he won 68% of the Masten District vote.
Brown refused to concede the election and instead launched a write-in campaign against Walton.
In the general election though, Brown won a majority of votes (59%, according to the Associated Press) with the slogan "write down Byron Brown."
The Erie County Board of Elections reported "about 237,000 votes were cast between early voting, general election day, and mail-in ballots, including in excess of 38,000 write-ins for Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown."
Watch: India Walton wins Democratic nomination
Mass shooting at Tops on Jefferson Avenue
On May 14, 2022, an 18-year-old white man drove from Conklin, N.Y., to Buffalo, with the intent to kill as many Black people as possible.
He wound up at the Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Avenue and killed 10 Black people. He hurt three others, carrying out his attack in under three minutes.
The hate-fueled mass shooting put the community's inequities in the spotlight. Many people had called for change on Buffalo's East Side.
They wanted to see as much investment and commitment to this neighborhood as there had been to Downtown Buffalo.
In the days after the shooting, Brown said,
To the victims’ families who are hurting and to the people of the Buffalo community, we’re not going anywhere. We’re going to be with you today. We’re going to be with you tomorrow and we’re going to be there with you to rebuild...
Two years after, while many question if there's been real change, the Buffalo branch of the NAACP reached out to the Erie County Industrial Development Agency to get a $25,000 grant.
They wanted to create an Urban Land Institute Advisory Panel to examine the Jefferson corridor. They are concerned there isn't enough being done for the community.
But during an ECIDA meeting, the plan was tabled and the mayor prevented approval.
“I did not use any powers to stop it. I talked about what's going on Jefferson. I thought it was important for people to know that things have happened. Things are happening and much more will happen in the future with probably over $100 million of the project coming for Jefferson Avenue,” Brown said.
Watch: Live coverage from 5/14
Yet as the community marked two years since the mass shooting, Brown said the sense of unity in this city has changed. He said this community is more united than ever before.
