If you found frost on your windshield Monday morning, it's a sign that winter is right around the corner.
Recently on social media, Kelly McKinney, the former deputy commissioner at the New York City Office of Emergency Management, said the City of Buffalo's snow plan is "doomed to fail" because the city does not have its own emergency manager. It's a position that has lawmakers inside city hall divided.
The mayor said a search for the emergency manager position is underway but he believes the city can handle winter without one. The City of Buffalo created two positions after the Christmas blizzard, a fleet manager, and an emergency manager, but has yet to fill either. Interviews for the positions are taking place this week.
7 News' Kristen Mirand asked McKinney how he foresees another blizzard without an emergency manager.
"The mayor's got to do it himself, you know, and sometimes mayor's can do it. You hear about these crisis leaders, but it's going to be a heavy heavy lift," McKinney said.
McKinney is currently the Assistant Vice President of Emergency Management and Enterprise Resilience at NYU Langone. He has years of experience in managing emergencies in New York City including natural disasters.
"Weather presents its challenges because you don't know what the weather is going to be until it's on top of you, but what you need is you need what emergency managers do, which we bring that worst-case mindset," McKinney said.
He said he saw the storm response task force recommendations made public last week by the City of Buffalo and shared his opinion on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Without this, without that essential emergency management team that will own the snowstorm threat on behalf of Mayor Byron Brown, the new and improved Buffalo Snow Plan is doomed to fail
— Kelly McKinney (@kellymnyc) October 20, 2023
"The City of Buffalo right now with this new announcement of the task force recommendations — we have the right tools in our toolkit, but it's just a matter of how well this is going to be executed," Mirand asked.
"That's it. That's it. That's the first thing. The second thing and in many ways, the most important thing is you need the contrarian you need that individual with that worst-case scenario mindset that is watching every single storm and saying that's the next blizzard," Mckinney responded.
During a news conference Monday, 7 News asked Mayor Byron Brown to respond to McKinney's take.
"I don't feel that we're doomed to fail at all. I know that the city has looked at many of the reports, the post-storm analysis. We have incorporated a lot of new things," Brown said.
Some of those new additions include increasing the number of emergency shelters and expanding communication when storms hit, which McKinney applauded. Still, he said the emergency management position is crucial.
"If there is no emergency management team that owns the issue of snowstorms for that government, that plan will never work," he said.
