Brown touts Buffalo's economic gains, efforts to help city's poorest

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown says the state of his city is strong.

The three-term mayor delivered his 10th State of the City address on Friday, highlighting Buffalo’s economic development boom, strong fiscal position and improving schools during an hour-long speech.

“This has been an incredible decade of growth, development and progress in our city,” Brown told the crowd of more than 1,600 people. “It is a special time in Buffalo’s history and we are in the midst of a transformation that will be felt for generations to come.”

Indeed, there are many positive indicators in the long-beleaguered city. After decades of decline, unemployment has fallen to a 10-year low while job creation has soared. Brown has consistently turned in on-time, balanced budgets that have decreased residential and commercial property taxes while both major and smaller scale construction projects have changed the city’s physical landscape.

The national image of Buffalo has also shifted in recent years, slowly shedding its reputation as a struggling, post-industrial tundra with each glowing review from travel writers at major national and international publications. Even Katie Couric recently visited the Queen City to shoot a spot for her “Cities Rising: Rebuilding America” series.

“The momentum is undeniable,” Brown said during his address.

But even as the city has seen some of  its most robust growth in decades, major hurdles remain. Census data shows that the city is still deeply segregated, ranking as the sixth most racially segmented in the nation. The poverty rate hovers around 30 percent, with nearly half of children deemed poor by federal standards. Unemployment, while low overall, remains high for people of color, more than double the rate of white job seekers and worse than the state and national averages in that regard.

In recent months a number of groups have called on state, city and county leaders to use the economic prosperity to address those remaining issues, raising fears that segments of the population that were pushed to the side in harder times will continue to be marginalized as the well-connected and the powerful reap the benefits of the state’s focus and investment in Western New York.

During his speech, Brown pointed to a number of initiatives in motion aimed at addressing those concerns, including the city’s Opportunity Pledge, its involvement in the state’s Workforce Development Center, a planned industrial training center in one of the city’s poorer neighborhoods and the creation of the Office of New Americans to help Buffalo’s growing population of refugees and immigrants, who often struggle to find good jobs.

In addition, the mayor announced several new developments aimed at tackling the intractable issues: another $4 million in funding towards the East Side training center, the creation of a chief diversity officer position and the founding of an exchange center of minority- and women-owned businesses.

“I have always prioritized the need to drive our city forward by creating opportunity for all people,” Brown said.

But with the continued growth Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, SolarCity set to begin making solar panels this year and companies like IBM expanding their workforce in the city’s core, it remains to be seen whether Brown’s initiatives will be enough to move the needle.

While acknowledging that there are still many challenges for his administration, Brown sought to paint a picture of a city on the verge of regaining stability and its place as a center of growth and industry with a quality of life – arts, recreation, natural beauty – that is hard to match.

“These are the heartbeat of a great city,” Brown said. “And if there is anything that is undeniable, the heartbeat of the city of Buffalo has never been stronger.”