Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Progress continues to be made with finalizing a plan to begin a massive $1 billion project to cap the Kensington Expressway, allowing for the reconnecting of communities in East Buffalo.
New York State officials have held three public meetings over the last several months to not only provide a preview of what will go into the project along the Kensington, but also to take in feedback from the public on the matter.
Despite the opportunities for residents in East Buffalo to discuss the project and its impact in meetings with state officials, there continues to be some voices of concern from residents and activists against the project.
Related
State Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes is among the louder voices in Albany advocating for the project in East Buffalo after several years, and does not agree with some of the people's reasonings for their push against it. However, she understands it's the public's right to have their say in the matter.
"This is an issue that ROCC [Restoring Our Communities Coalition], which is a collaboration of community-based organizations - both the Martin Luther King community, the Black Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Citizens Alliance - have been working on for almost 20 years. There have been public meetings, there have been a lot of them, I know that my staff has personally going door-to-door delivering messages about, 'Come to the meetings. Come to the meetings. Let's talk.' Everything you're bringing up now has been done. So a real citizen, who really wants to see something happen in their community, actually would have come to those meetings 10 years ago, 15 years ago. They wouldn't have waited until you identify, potentially, $1 billion to be invested on the East Side of Buffalo, and then find a reason why it can't happen," said Peoples-Stokes last week in an interview with WBEN. "So I respect their opinion to disagree, I just totally disagree with it."
This major project for East Buffalo is so extensive, Gov. Kathy Hochul extended the public comment period to allow for more feedback from those who will be impacted the most. Even then, Peoples-Stokes feels she saw and heard from more people who are in favor of the project making comments than those who are against it.
"I think we've done our political responsibility to allow everybody to weigh in and have a voice. They've had their voice, and I think we still have to keep talking about it, no question. They're entitled to that, and I wouldn't ever want to take anybody's ability to speak away from them, everybody has that," Peoples-Stokes said. "But I will remind people that we went through the same process with the Scajaquada Expressway. When people wanted to reform that, DOT came up with a good plan, more than once, and they got shut down multiple times by some of the exact same people. And they decided that nothing would happen on Scajaquada, so that's why it still looks like it looks. I have no intention or no desire to see the 33 looking like this 10 years from now, because some people came to the gate late and had an opinion. I respect their opinion, but I don't believe it's [enough] to stop the project."
Despite residents and activists continuing to voice their concerns against the project in East Buffalo, Peoples-Stokes is confident state officials have done the necessary work to ensure this $1 billion project will be most beneficial for the region.
"The State Department of Transportation hires professionals at their skill set, they have to take an exam, they have to pass it. They have to be qualified to be engineers, qualified to do environmental impact studies, qualified to look at what the DEC is making recommendations to, what the EPA is making [recommendations to]. They have to be qualified to do that. So you're sitting watching TV one day and hear that there's a billion dollars coming in, and all of a sudden you decide, 'My voice is more important than theirs,' in a way, that's a little bit disrespectful, but we are going to listen to your voice because you have that right," the State Assembly Majority Leader said. "But at the end of the day, the state has hired people, recruited people to do all the right things. And I can tell you, for sure, as well, as my staff can tell you, there were suggestions made by DOT that got shut down 10 years ago, five years ago. And finally, what DOT came up with, the community agreed there were some issues that we're not totally in agreement, but at the end of the day, everybody was like, 'Yes, this is the way we should do it.'"
Right now, Peoples-Stokes feels the state has the chance to make the community safer environmentally, and to invest multiple millions of dollars that will add value to the community and businesses along strips of Fillmore Avenue and Jefferson Avenue.
"That's going to add value, because you're gonna have tons of people in this community working, somebody's gonna make money from that," Peoples-Stokes said. "So already, we have an opportunity to invest in a community that has had so much taken from it. And not just from the guy who came here to kill 10 people last year, but from government policies that allow redlining, and banks that won't talk to you, all of these things. Now you have a chance to feed back into that, don't take this as an opportunity to just push it off on the wayside because one or two people - probably more than one or two - that disagree with it. I don't have a problem with the $1 billion being spent on my district, and quite frankly, I think we could use more."
Peoples-Stokes also reminds residents that the state money for this project is transportation money, which means if it's not invested on the Kensington Expressway, it will go somewhere else in the state. She feels that's something the people of the region who may be opposed to the project need to understand.
"I know many of them ran their City Council elections against the project, and by the way, they didn't win those elections either - I will point that out. But I think our strategy should be, and I believe the Commissioner of DOT's strategy is to help people understand exactly what's getting ready to happen," she said. "Unfortunately, in the few community meetings, they didn't get it. But there are people who have been sitting around the table for 20 years, and they do get it. So we're gonna go out and try to help people understand that it's time, and we'd like to see it happen.
"We don't want to lose these resources. And no, you cannot use transportation money to build housing. No, you cannot use transportation money to open supermarkets or to build businesses. You can't use transportation money for that. You can't even build a new school for it. You can only use it for transportation. These are the dollars that people work for for 20 years, and I don't think it should be denied because other people disagree."